Fresh Batch #118: The Affinity Between Irish and Punic-Maltese (Sicilian Phoenician)

Ancient Italian Cultural Diffusion

Malta

The following notes are from An Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language; Being a Collation of the Irish with the Punic Language by Col. Charles Vallancey, published in 1818 AD.

Vallancey wrote (Essay Irish Lang. p. 19.), “If an affinity of the Irish language with the Punic be allowed, this discovery will throw great lights on the darker periods of the Heathen Irish history. It will shew, that though the details be fabulous, the foundation is laid in truth. It will demonstrate the early use of letters in this island, because nothing but that use could preserve the least affinity from the flourishing era of Carthage to the present, a space of more than 2300 years. It will account for the Irish assuming to themselves the names of Feni or Fenicians, which they have retained through all ages. It will with the same certainty account for their giving the name of Bearla Feni (the Phœnician tongue) to one of their native dialects. In fine, it will shew, that when they adopted the Phœnician Syntax, they confined their language to oriental orthography, while it harmonized itself out of its primitive consonantal Celtic harshness, by the suppression of many radical letters in the pronunciation of words.”

Recall that the Punic language is better termed Sicilian Phoenician regarding its origins. Rather than looking through the lens of the Gauls (for lack of a better term), who also colonized Ireland as well as Britain and spoke a similar Phenian or Phoenician dialect, I suspect it is more helpful to acknowledge the origins of this diaspora being from Italy, specifically the western and northwestern portion, what historians call Etruria. This is because I suspect the Phoenicians are the Etruscans, or the natives of Italy prior to them, mislabeled. The reason for this, among many, is found in the alphabets and mythology. Recall the flags of Sicily and the Isle of Man using the same triskelion symbolism dressed up differently. The difference of dialects would be found in places such as the Basque region, whose language was referred to as Spanish Phoenician, which Vallancey claimed had no affinity to the Irish version, which he was adamant was a Punic-Celtic compound (Ib. p. 21.), “It has been generally thought, that the Irish language, is a compound of the Celtic, and old Spanish, or Basque; whoever will take the pains to compare either of these languages with the ancient manuscripts of the Irish, will soon be convinced, that the Irish partakes not the least of the Biscayan.” (The Basque people were called Biscayers by the Britons till fairly recent times.)

I will demonstrate that the Basque language does, however, contain remnants of Etruscan in their language, specifically from Volterrae, which is modern Chiusi, Italy (Tuscany). At the very least, the Basque stock had influence from the Volterraeans if they weren’t descended from them. For those of you who are Biscayers and would like to learn more about your heritage, or for those who would like to learn more about Volterrae, reference this article I published on August 23, 2023 titled Fresh Batch #93: The Etruscan City of Volterrae.

Volterra (Etruria). Chiusi, Italy (Tuscany).

Vallancey continued (Ib. p. 22.), “The Irish historians do all agree, that they received their letters from the Phœnicians, and that their language was called bearla Féne or the Fenician dialect, of which their ancient manuscripts bear sufficient testimony.”

This sentence is an appeal to both authority and consensus, and needs to be demonstrated to be used as an argument, but as this unfolds, it may turn out to be ironclad. There is more than just language to stoke these ideas. However, Vallancey and other historians of the time thought Britain was already peopled prior to the Phoenician arrival, yet Aylet Sammes demonstrated that Britain was peopled by Phoenicians in his Antiquities of Ancient Britain. Neither of these gentlemen noticed the likelihood of the Phoenicians being Etruscans. Vallancey and other scholars called the Irish people prior to the arrival of the Carthaginian/Sicilian Phoenician/Tyrrhenian “pirates” by the name Nemedians, of whom Vallancey wrote were “Fomhoraicc’s, or African pirates, in Ireland at several periods: that they introduced the art of building with stone and lime, astronomy, &c. that they adored certain stars, supposed to have power from the God of the Sea, either to guide or mislead the ships: that at length they over-ran the country, and made a complete conquest, drove out the Nemedians, and laid the island under tribute.”

According to Wiki, the word nemed means privileged or holy in Old Irish, and seems to have been a designation of a druid. The reconstructed Proto-Celtic language root nemos means sky or heaven (Proto-Celtic is currently being reconstructed through the comparative method by relying on later Celtic languages, and is not a language that exists in the historical record. It is merely a modern construct, just like Proto-Indo-European). In the ancient Celtic religions a nemeton was a place of worship (which included temples, shrines and sacred natural places). Similar roots are found in place names across Celtic culture. For example, there was a Nemetes tribe of the central Rhine area, who had a goddess Nemetona.

Here we have the same symbolism of the Holy Sailors, or Pelasgians. During these times, North Africa was Celtic (Etrusco-Phoenician), which you can see in their ancient cities like Lixus, and the Berbers of North Africa spoke Punic (Sicilian Phoenician). Their real appellation was Numidian, which is philologically Nemedian. So again, all roads lead to Rome, which was quasi-Etruscan even by status quo admissions, but I suspect Italy’s real history was covered up by the legendary stories of Rome and Greece, and I also suspect the authentic history of the Etrusco-Phoenician empire extends chronologically closer to the Common Era than we’ve been taught. If this subject intrigues you, invest in yourself with The Holy Sailors, available in all formats including audiobook.

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