The Quintus Marcius trilingual inscription is a Latin-Greek-Punic trilingual inscription on a stone object found in 1899 in Henchir-Alouin, near Uthina, in the outskirts of Tunis, Tunisia. The Phoenician script is considered to be between the Punic and the Neo-Punic phases, between the fall of Carthage and the beginning of the Christian era.
The inscription is engraved on a stone lintel, or more probable, an altar, decorated in the top and the bottom with molding.
The Latin inscription was published as CIL VIII 24030,[1] and the Punic inscription was published as RES 79.[2]
It is currently in the Louvre, with ID number AO 3240.[3]
The inscription reads:[4]
| (line 1 - Latin) | Quintus Marci[us...] | |||
| (line 2 - Latin) | Protomacus [the [[Physician]]...] | |||
| (line 3 - Latin) | made ... [...] | |||
| (line 4 - Greek) | Kouinktos Markio[s Proto-] | |||
| (line 5 - Greek) | -machos Heracleide[s the doctor...] | |||
| (line 6 - Punic) | [This altar] gave Quintus Marcius Proto-] | |||
| (line 7 - Punic) | [-makus the] doctor (in the) year of the Suffets Abdmelqart and Adonba |
The Greek inscription presents the name of the dedicator, following a genitive and the restored "", corresponding with Latin "medicus". However, the name corresponds with the Phoenician Abdmelqart; This fact makes a restoration like "" - which will make the Greek and Punic parts parallel - possible, although it doesn't explain the presence of only one Suffet, and hence it is simpler to see Herakleides as the father, following the tranditional Greek structure of such inscriptions.
The beginning of the first line of the Punic inscription is reconstructed with uncertainty; Zayin and Taw in this version of the Punic/Neo-Punic script are similar, therefore the logical reconstructions are "[hmzbḥ z]t" ("th[is <small>([[Grammatical gender|female]]) altar") and "[hmzbḥ ʾ]z" ("th[is <small>([[Grammatical gender|male]]) altar"). The last two letters of the second line, which end the name Adonbaal, seem to be missing.
The lack of h in the Latin transcription of the name Protomacus help determine the date of the inscription: aspirations began to be noted in Latin around the time of Julius Caesar and Cicero, so although the transition was gradual, it is plausible to date the inscription to the middle of the first century BC. The Phoenician script is between the Punic and the Neo-Punic phases, between the fall of Carthage and the beginning of the Christian era. The Punic transcription of the foreign names does not preserve the suffix s (Quintus was pronounced "Quinte", and Marcius "Marqi"); the Latin K and Greek Κ are rendered by Punic Qoph, and the Latin T and Greek Τ are rendered by Punic Teth.
Bilingual and even trilingual inscriptions for doctors are not rarity in Africa and elsewhere in the ancient world.[5]