Introduction

There is a great variety of writings on these plaques but the predominant alphabet is the Greek one with some adaptations. It’s surprising, for a forger, this option especially in those times when linguist B.P. Hasdeu was communicating the existence of two supposed Dacian alphabets – one that Deceneu most likely brought from Egypt, and another perpetuated in a writing system said to belong to the Transylvanian Szeckler population from the 18^th century. The author of the presumed fake would have been able to give the Dacian people an alphabet of their own, consolidated, if he would have wanted to prove that they are a superior civilization.

It’s good to know that a people that does not know how to write, when they borrow a writing system, doesn’t just select a few signs that it considers necessary, but adopts the system entirely, with all its signs even if these are not sufficient (because it doesn’t know the afferent sounds). In time, futile signs were eliminated or used for noting other sounds and new signs are added that will represent specific sounds of the new language (JEFFERY 1961: 41 and next).

This is a classical example that we see in the Greek alphabet, descended from the Phoenician one that was a consonant one, more useful when writing a Semitic language. The Greeks used some of the signs for noting vowels, redistributed the signs that noted the four Phoenician sibilants (the Greeks had only one sibilant), created new signs (for example omega - ω, created by Ionians from the joining of two omicrons – o, or ψ – psei, from an unknown origin). There have been differences in the way that Greeks from several regions have adapted the Phoenician alphabet. For example, the occidental Greek alphabets used the sign het to represent aspiration, while the Ionians, whose dialect did not include psilosis, used this sign to annotate the long e vowel (eta). The occidental Greeks annotated through X the consonant group ks, while the oriental ones annotated the mute aspired velar consonant by using kh. The Greeks did not perceive their new alphabet as a new one, for a very long time, stating they were using Phoenician letters to write. In reality, after all the modifications were applied to the Phoenician alphabet, a new alphabet was born. The same happened with the Latin alphabet that was rooted from the Greek occidental alphabet (Chalcidian), borrowed through an Etruscan intermediary. The same goes for the Getic writing plaque writing: we can no longer speak about a Greek alphabet, only of a personal Getic writing, as later on we can speak of an Gothic and Cyrillic alphabet.

The Getic people knew, besides the Greek writing other writings of unknown origins, possibly very old ones. There is a chance that these writings were not very suited for  annotating their language and, at a given moment, they might have started using the Greek alphabet, the Ionian variant (was it known, that at the same time with the presumed forger – not long after the first half of the 19^th century, the Dobruja colonies used the Ionian alphabet?). Or with the same possibility they might have adopted the Greek alphabet from “trend” issues generated from the need to be in line with the flow of those ages, as all barbaric nations that knew the writing (even at the court’s level) used this alphabet. Maybe the attempt to use a clean Greek alphabet, unmodified (type A), did not have chances for success, because of the big differences between the phonetic Greek system and the Getic one: the Getic language seems not to make a difference between long and short vowels (but makes a difference between opened and closed vowels) and recognizes palatal sounds, unknown to the Greek language. The Greek alphabet was enhanced at first (to the B type) for this reason, by adding the signs for the two palatals, taken from an archaic cursive writing (C type), and simplified as it reached the third phase (D type) by eliminating the signs that corresponded with the long vowels – eta, omega and y. The process is very similar to what the Phoenician alphabet has gone through while passing to the Greeks, to the Greek alphabet passing to the Etruscans and Romans. The same happened to the Gothic alphabet (that includes three superfluous signs without phonetic value) and to the Cyrillic one (that added plenty new signs), and this if we only stick to the European world. In more recent times, adaptations have been mostly made by adding diacriticals to existing signs, not by adding new ones (as in Romania’s, Czech Republic, Poland or Turkey’s case), so that new, official alphabets are not formed.

These plaques contain a great diversity of writings, evidently not just different “hands”, but different ages and places. The writing types correlate impeccably with the details in the plaques (illustration, decorative work, information and texts), a very hard to do thing if we are speaking of only one possible author. Dan Romalo created a general classification of the plaques’ alphabets dividing them into classical, pre-classical and archaic. We propose a more detailed classification, formed by a few big categories, each one having its own subtypes and variants. We identified two categories: the Greek one (1^st category) and the “semi-Greek” one or cursive (2^nd category) to whom we may add a heterogeneous category of unknown writings (3^rd). The incisions, made after the plaques were cast, deserve a special attention in the 4^th category. There are also monograms and logograms (5^th category). The first two categories, with the best representations, each contain three large types, noted using capital letters (that have sometimes coincided with the initial of a first name associated to it). The subtypes were noted by adding a digit to the type letter. Type variation or subtype variations are noted by adding a minor letter.

Among the unrecognizable types, the most interesting (and old ones) appear to be the writings found on shrines and temple frontons. Among the recognizable writings types C1 and F1 seem to be the most archaic and old in comparison to the Greek alphabet. There is, without a shadow of a doubt, a clear logic when distributing these writings into plaques, and one can see pretty easy the way they evolved in time: adding own signs, dropping out useless signs, coexisting with or being in competition with more “modern” writings and adapting to the trends of the time. If all this process was thought by a single mind, we are certainly dealing with a unique genius mind.

I. Greek alphabets

1. A (Helis 1), A1, Aa, Aa1, Ab, Ac

3. B (Burebista), B1

2. D (Decebal), D1 (Duras), Da (Orolio / Helis 3), Db (Cotizo 2)

 II. “Semi-Greek” cursive alphabets

1. C (Ceneu / Helis 2), C1

2. E (Sarmisegetuza archaic

3. F (Cotizo 1), F1

III. Unknown writtings

IV. Incisions

V. Monograms and logograms

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