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[Bronze Age Text]
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(CLICK to Enlarge) This
previously undeciphered stele was reported by Professor Santos Junior,
president of the Sociedade de Antropologia e Etnologia. It was associated with numerous stone
images of animals, found in the Berroes District of northern Portugal,
adjacent to a dolmen-bearing zone where early Basque inscriptions were disclosed
by Fell's (1982) translations. This
stele also is Basque, written in the Euskera syllabary. The Laminak (plural of Lamina) are usually
stated by present-day Basques to be "mountain dwarfs," still feared
in country districts of the Basque lands.
But the great Basque scholar and lexicographer Resurección María de
Azukue cites the word as having the sense of pythoness or priestess where it is used in the Basque Bible, and
other ancient sources speak of them as female monsters that inhabited the Basque
lands prior to the coming of Christianity.
Professor Santos Junior regards his finds as implying the worship of
beasts in ancient Iberia (Santos Junior, 1977), especially at Tras-os-Montes. Perhaps the Laminak are in some way
connected with the religion. (see Edo Nyland
for discussion of the Basque language origin) |
