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Two famous inscriptions. Renowned epigrapher Frank M. Cross, of Harvard University, stands beside two of Sardinia’s most important ancient inscriptions: the Nora Fragment, upper left, and the Nora Stone, lower left. Probably a piece broken off of a stela, the Nora Fragment bears a two-line inscription of only nine Semitic letters written in the Phoenician style (see drawing). Cross dates the still-undeciphered inscription to the 11th century B.C., making it the oldest Semitic inscription ever found in the central or western Mediterranean.

Inscribed with eight lines of Semitic letters in a Phoenician style, the Nora Stone probably once had two more lines of writing at the top, now broken off. Cross suspects that the first two lines told of a battle between the Phoenicians and local Sardinians, which took place “at Tarshish,” the beginning of the surviving inscription. Derived from a Semitic root meaning “to smelt,” Tarshish may have been a Phoenician mining town in Sardinia. The inscription goes on to say, “and he drove them out. / Among the Sardinians he is [now] at peace, / (and) his army is at peace: / Milkaton son of / Suhna (Shebna), general / of (king) Pummay.” Pummay, also written “Pu’myaton,” ruled in Tyre from 831 to 785 B.C., which helps Cross to date this memorialized conflict to 825 B.C.