A Good Works Translation from Beltran, Jordan, Diaz, and Simon 2021

The Novallas bronze is not a text whose whole meaning can yet be translated with confidence. It is still one of the most important Celtiberian sources: a late Republican bronze public document, in the Celtiberian language, written in the Latin alphabet, and preserving eleven damaged lines of a larger official text.

Translation

The Novallas bronze preserves the torn edge of a public Celtiberian document written in Latin letters. Its visible words point toward public space, legal measurement, civic names, and regulated open ground. The controlling publication states that the fragmentary condition and the limits of Celtiberian interpretation prevent a wholly satisfactory translation, so the English separates what is secure, probable, and still unknown.

Object and Public Setting

The Novallas bronze is a fragment of a bronze plaque found at the Chicharroya III site in Novallas, Zaragoza. It has been kept at the Zaragoza Museum since 2012. The preserved fragment is roughly 18.1 cm high, 22.5 cm wide, and 0.2 cm thick, with an original upper edge, cut left, right, and lower edges, and a square fastening hole near the top.

The inscription is in Celtiberian but uses Latin capitals. The preserved text has eleven lines and about forty words, several incomplete. The upper right margin suggests that the original plaque may have had at least a second column.

Cautious setting:

A damaged bronze public document, written in Celtiberian with Latin letters, probably displayed in a public space in the last decades of the first century BCE.

Source Line Guide

The following guide does not translate every word. It marks the main anchors and keeps the gaps visible.

Line 1: Broken opening with possible Latin -OQVENDI, a Celtiberian phrase containing BEDAM, DV, and probable CASCA-, perhaps connected with Cascantum / Cascante.

Line 2: Broken line with possible TERGAS, DOIBIM, ODAS, and the beginning of PVBLI-; TERGAS may point toward *Terga / Tierga, but this is less secure.

Line 3: Broken line with possible IIS, DVNDOM, LITANOM, and a damaged PVBLIC- form.

Line 4: Broken line with II ECQVE S, probably "two and a half" in a Latinizing numerical expression; VAMVS may mean highest; LITANAM is likely a feminine form of "wide."

Line 5: Broken line with AVDINTVM, ODAS, and PVBLICVS; ODAS PVBLICVS may be a Celtiberian-Latin public-space expression.

Line 6: Broken line with plural-looking BEDAS, MEDOM, and probable CONTREBAC-, related to Contrebia or a Contrebia-like adjective.

Line 7: Broken line with CABINT, SAM, BEDAM, and a damaged final element.

Line 8: Broken line with DERNV-; the earlier damaged form may be read several ways.

Line 9: Broken line with -ETAM and damaged CA-.

Line 10: Broken line with a damaged PVBL- form.

Line 11: Very damaged closing remnant.

Secure Public Meaning

The safe reader translation is structural:

The Novallas bronze preserves part of an official Celtiberian public text,
written in the Latin alphabet near the end of the Republic.
The surviving lines probably concern public space, legal measurement, or
regulated open distance, but the exact content cannot yet be translated.

The document is official or public in character. It is written in Celtiberian. It was made in the Latin alphabet. It was probably intended for display. These are stronger facts than any full sentence-level translation.

Probable Legal and Spatial Reading

Several source features point toward a legal or public-space regulation:

PVBLICVS appears as a Latin loan in a Celtiberian text.
ODAS PVBLICVS may belong to a public-space expression.
II ECQVE S likely corresponds to a "two and a half" expression.
LITANOM and LITANAM can be read as "wide" forms.
The editors connect these anchors with a possible rule about space left empty around a road, canal, or public property.

This is a hypothesis, not a complete translation. The page should therefore say:

probably a public legal or spatial regulation

not:

this is a fully translated road law

Place and City Anchors

CASCA- probably points toward Cascantum, the ancient Cascante near Novallas. TERGAS may be connected with *Terga or Tierga. CONTREBAC- may be related to Contrebia, but the editors warn that this could be an adjective rather than a specific city-name reference.

The safest public wording is:

The text may name or evoke nearby civic places such as Cascantum and perhaps Terga or Contrebia, but the damaged forms do not let us build a full itinerary or legal geography.

Why the Latin Alphabet Matters

Most Celtiberian inscriptions use Palaeohispanic script. Novallas is different: it is a long Celtiberian text in the Latin alphabet, and the article treats it as the longest Celtiberian-Latin text known at publication. The bronze shows that Celtiberian could still be used for public or official writing near the end of the first century BCE, while Latin writing habits were already being adopted.

Colophon

This page presents a source-close Good Works dossier for the Novallas bronze tablet from Novallas, Zaragoza. The English is based on Francisco Beltran Lloris, Carlos Jordan Colera, Borja Diaz Arino, and Ignacio Simon Cornago, "The Novallas bronze tablet: An inscription in the Celtiberian language and the Latin alphabet from Spain," Journal of Roman Archaeology 34 (2021), pp. 713-733, an open-access CC BY 4.0 publication.

The dossier follows the edition's own caution: a complete translation cannot presently be given. The Good Works layer therefore translates the object, line structure, secure anchors, and probable public/legal setting while leaving the damaged Celtiberian source text visible.

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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Source Text: Beltran, Jordan, Diaz, and Simon 2021, Novallas Bronze

Celtiberian source text from the open-access 2021 Journal of Roman Archaeology edition. Presented here for reference, study, and verification alongside the English source-close dossier above.

1  [---]OQVENDI · ANDO · BEDAM · DV · CASCA

2  [---]TICAŚ · TERGAŚ · DOIBIM · ODAS · PVBLI

3  [---]VS · IIS · DVNDOM · LITANOM · PVBLIC̣+[-1-]

4  [---]+AS · II · ECQVE · S · VAMVŚ · LITANAṂ [-1-2?-]

5  [---]ẠM · AVDINTVM · ODAS PVBLICVS [-2-]

6  [---] · BEDAS · MEDOM · CONTREBAC[-2-3-]

7  [---]+ẸIS · CABINT · SAM · BEDAM · T[-3?-]

8  [---]++GAM · DERNV[-2-3-]

9  [---]ẸTAM · CA+[-2-3-]

10 [---]S · PVBḶ[-1-2-]

11 [---]ẠD[-1-2?-]

Source notes from the edition:

3: the unidentifiable remnant may belong to a V.
4: the crux may be D, less confidently O; LITANAM is morphologically plausible.
7: the crux may be N or I; the next sign could look like F, but that is excluded by phonetic and epigraphic considerations.
8: the damaged sequence may be read as AIGAM, MIGAM, or less probably NGAM.
9: the angular crux can only belong to E or F.
11: the initial strokes may also be M.

Source Colophon

The source text above follows the edition in Beltran Lloris, Jordan Colera, Diaz Arino, and Simon Cornago 2021. The article supplies the object description, line text, commentary, metallographic comparison, historical frame, and interpretation boundary used in this Good Works dossier.

Local source controls are held at:

Tulku/Tools/celtic/sources/major_prestige_2026-05-13/novallas/novallas_jra_2021.pdf
Tulku/Tools/celtic/sources/major_prestige_2026-05-13/novallas/novallas_jra_2021.txt
Tulku/Tools/celtic/sources/major_prestige_2026-05-13/novallas/zaguan_novallas_record.html
Tulku/Tools/celtic/sources/major_prestige_2026-05-13/novallas/digibug_novallas_record_full.html

The Good Works page does not make a first-English claim, a complete-translation claim, or a settled-content claim. It presents the source as an important damaged public Celtiberian document whose main anchors can be explained while the full text remains partly opaque.

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