Escrita do Sudoeste

During the Iron Age, the Iberian Peninsula was the place for great technological innovations and cultural transformations distributed in a commercial setting, carried out by sea, between the people of the Mediterranean.

More than 2500 years ago, in Southern Portugal and Andalusia, human communities transformed and adapted the Phoenician alphabet to create their own writing: the writing of the SouthWest – Escrita do Sudoeste.

Concentrated in the mountains between the Algarve and Baixo Alentejo, this writing appeared on stone blocks which were fixed to the ground (stelae). It was written in an arc, from bottom to top and from right to left. It has 27 signs, including vowels, consonants and syllabic characters, some with equivalences to some letters of our alphabet. Even so, the writing of the South-West remains indecipherable and mysterious.

Since the discovery of the first stela with southwestern writing, in 1897, to the present day, 15 stelae with southwestern writing are known in the municipality of Loulé, divided into two groups: Benafim/Salir and Ameixial. The writing of the Southwest is the voice which brings us closer to the thoughts and ways of life of the past. One of the mysteries and one of the greatest treasures of European archaeology; an archaeological reality of exceptional character; a brand image of this mountain range and a privileged symbol of the historical heritage of the Algarve.

It is, after all, the first manifestation of writing in the Iberian Peninsula and is still undeciphered today.