I B E - - 1 B E G05 interpretation have been sufficiently various. 1 According to M. Heiss, the Celtiberian coins are found most frequently in the north-east and east of Spain, in smaller numbers in the centre, rarely in the south, and more rarely still in Portugal and Asturias. The legends, he maintains, belong to peoples who inhabited the country at the time when the Greeks were still coining pieces with the type of Apollo and the wheel, that is, before the completion of the Iloman FIG. 2. Coin of Narbonne. FIG. 1. Coin of Illiberis or Granada. conquest. Their monetary system seems to have been imitated from that of the Roman republic, having a division analogous to that of the denarii and quinarii. The principal type on the reverse is either a horseman galloping with lance in rest or bear ing a palm-branch or laurel-branch, or a man leading two horses and brandishing a sword or a bow. The Latin coins of Bilbilis, Osca, Segobriga, &c., retain the type of the galloping horseman. Pieces with inscrip tions in the same alphabet and similar images are found in the district of Narbonne. The following is a list of M. Hciss s proposed identifications, and the accompanying alphabet is that which he has compiled from the coins : OVRIASAV, Turiaso ; KLAQRIQS, Kalaquri-qps, Calagurris; IAK, Jaca; PLPLIS, Pilpilis, Bilbilis; ILOVRE, Iluro ; NEREXCOX, Narbo; FAVRP, Perpinianum; CLSE, Celsa; SEQBHICS, Segobrica; ALAAVN, Alavona; 8ETISCON, Setisacon ; OLIGEM, Oligito; GLI, Gili; AAVSES- CON, Ausa, Ansenses ; AVSECRT, Osicerda ; LAAVRH, Laurona ; CSE, Cose; QNTRBA, Contrebia; SEQTZAS, Segontia; ERIRITZ, Bebryces; IIRNESQX, Hiicrues; IILSCAN, Iliosca, Osca; SECISA, Segisa ; TMANIAV, Dumania; ARCILIQS, Avcocili, Ocili; OELIEQS, Beliones; VRSONTCS, Balsiones. A A P D B G i r c r D At>D E B/E F F Z 1 E H Q TH
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1 vy CHJ OG Q D E E B b e PB r p r rpr E * M * TZ 2 y TYiuui? T AA Q Q00Q XXXK R C> !> R P R <i ^ ^ Q q fl H H HX X XX <J o<>9Qq> 2><J>BCD(D 3 M * 1 5 n 5 M ran p Nr T T XT < A A A A D UVB V P Y M f Y ft n e< < < O A $ ft ft r / A L OV AAAA Fia.3. Table of alphabets. The first column contains the English char acters ; the second the archaic Greek ; and the third the Celtiberian. _ It was not till 1821 that the Iberian problem became an estab lished piece de resistance in the ethnographical programme. In that year Karl Wilhclm Humboldt published his Prufung dn- 1 Tlip. most important contributions to the subject are P. A. 1km- (lard s Eludes sur I Alphabet iberien, Paris, 1852, and Numismatique iterienne, Bexiers, 1859; and Aloiss Heiss, Notes sur les monnaics celtibfriennes, Paris, 18C5, and Description yencrale dcs monnaics antiques de I Espayne, Paris, 1870. Untersuchungen iibcr die Urbcieohncr Ilispanicns vcrmittclst dcr Waskischcn Sprache, Berlin, 1821. As a matter of course this was a work of exuberant learning and bold hypothesis ; and partly through its inherent attractiveness, partly through the prestige of its author, the theory which it expounded met with general acceptance. The main arguments were these : that the Iberians were one great people, speaking a distinct language of their own; that they were to bo found in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, in southern France, and even in the British Isles; and that the Basques of the present day were the distinctly recognizable rem nants of the race which had elsewhere been expelled or absorbed. This last was the central and seminal idea of the work, and it has been the point round which the battle of scholarship has mainly raged. The principal evidence which Humboldt adduced in its support was the possibility of explaining a vast number of the ancient topographical names of Spain, and of other asserted Iberian districts, by the forms and significations of Basque. The first serious attack on the theory was made by Graslin (De I Iberie, Paris, 1839), who maintained that the name Iberia was nothing but a Greek mis nomer of Spain, and that there was no proof that the Basque people had ever occupied a wider area than at present ; and M. Blade has since, in his Origine des Basques (Paris 1869), taken up the same lino of argument and brought to bear on the subject a vast amount of laborious and many-sided erudition. His criticism is almost purely negative. Of the whole structure of the Iberian theory lie would not leave one stone upon another. He holds that Iberia is a purely geographical term, that there was no proper Iberian people or race, that the whole Basque-Iberian theory is a modern figment, that the Basques were always shut in by alien races, and that their affinity is still to seek. His main contsntion has met with some acceptance; 2 but the great current of ethnographical speculation still flows in the direction indicated by Humboldt, though it breaks up into a number of distinct channels. The anthropological researches of Broca, Thurnam and Davis, Huxley, Busk, Virchow, Tubino, and others have proved the existence in Europe of a Neo lithic race, small of stature, with long or oval skulls, and accustomed to bury their dead in tombs. Their remains have been found in Belgium and France, in Britain, Germany, and Denmark, as well as in Spain; but they bear a closer resemblance to the Basques than to any other living people. This Neolithic race has consequently been identified with the Basques and the Iberians ; and extreme exponents of the theory do not hesitate to speak of the Iberian an cestors of the people of England, recognizing the racial character istics in the "small swarthy Welshman," the " small dark High lander," and the " Black Celts to the west of the Shannon," as well as in the typical inhabitants of Aquitania and Brittany. (Compare the interesting resumd of the whole question in Boyd Dawkins's Early Man in Britain, London, 1880. 3 ) Some investigators go even further. M. D Arbois de Jubainville, for example Lcs premiers habitants de I Europe, Paris, 1877), regards the Iberians as the de scendants of the Atlantes (i.e., the hypothetical inhabitants of Plato s great western isle the Atlantis, see ATLANTIS), and maintains that in Europe they possessed Spain, Gaul, Italy, and the British Isles, penetrated inta the Balkan peninsula, and occupied a part of north ern Africa, Corsica, and Sardinia. And in reviewing M. Jubainville s work in Revue d Anthropologie, (1877), M. Hovelacqiie considers that it has been clearly made out that a race with distinctly marked characteristics was at one time in possession of the south of France (or at least of Aquitania), the whole of Spain from the Pyrenees to the straits, the Canary Islands (the Guanchos), a part of northern Africa, and Corsica. Tubino, in his Los aborujcncs ibcricos (Madrid, 1876), argues that the builders of the megalithic monuments of Spain and northern Africa, the ancient Iberians, and the modern Basques and Andalusian mountaineers, as well as the Berbers 4 in at least one of their main elements, are all of kindred blood; and in so doing he impugns the theory of Broca and his school. Besides the works already mentioned, reference may be made to Hoffmann, Die Ibcrcr im Wcstcn und Osfcn (Leips. 1838), and to Phillips, Ucbcr das ibcrische Alphabet (Vienna, 1870), Die Ein- wanderung der Ibcrcr in die pyrcn. Halbinscl (Vienna, 1870), and several other works by the same writer. IBEX, the common name of several closely allied species of ruminant mammals, belonging to the genus Capra or goats, inhabiting the loftiest regions of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The European ibex or steinboc (Ccifn-a ibex] abounded during the Middle Ages among the higher a W. van Eys, for example, " La langue Ihi rienne et la languo Basque," in Revue de linguistique, goes against Humboldt, ; hut Prince Napoleon and to a considerable extent A. Lucliaire maintain tlic justice of his method and the value of many of his results. See Liu haire, Lcs oriyines linguistiques de I A quitainc, Paris, 1877.
- i Air Dawkins even accepts the very questionable identification of
the Iberians of Spain with the Iberians of the Caucasus.
- The connexion of the Iberians with the Berbers was suggested by
Bory de Saint Vincent in Essai (jeulogique sur le genre humain.
