The Tita Vendia vase is a ceramic impasto pithos[1] (wine container[2] made around 620-600 BC,[3] most likely in Rome[4]). The pithos, which exists only as an incomplete set of sherds,[5] carries one of two earliest known inscriptions in Latin language (the Vendia inscription)[2] and is usually, but not unanimously, interpreted as the earliest instance of a bipartite female Latin name with praenomen and gentilicum.[1]
The sherds of the vase were found by Raniero Mengarelli and deposited in the collection of Museo di Villa Giulia.[6] The exact location of the find is unknown but it probably occurred in Cerveteri[6] (ancient Caere).[7] The vase belongs to a type found in Southern Etruria.[6] In its original form, based on the collection of sherds found, it was likely to have been approximately 35 centimetres tall and 45 centimetres wide.[1] The letters, 15 to 25 millimetres tall, had been scratched near the bottom.[1] They were inscribed by a right handed artisan, using reversed letter S, and with letters VH instead of normal F (VHECET instead of fecit; according to Baccum, this rules out Faliscan origin of the vase).[1] The inscription reads:
ECOVRNATITAVENDIASMAMAR […] EDVHE[1]
The lacuna between MAMAR and EDVHE is ten to twelve letters wide.[1] Only part of it has been reliably filled by interpreters. The missing part probably contained the name of the second potter; the first potter is unanimously identified as Mamarcos or Mamarce.[6] With the lacuna partially filled the inscription is expanded into:
ECO VRNA TITA VENDIAS MAMAR[COS … M]ED VHE[CED][2]
The most common English interpretation of this text is:
In this interpretation, archaic ECO is used where we would expect normative Latin ego, since Latin had not yet developed a separate symbol for the voiced velar /ɡ/; the personal name VENDIAS uses archaic genitive declension (as in paterfamilias) which is omitted in TITA, most likely due to a writing error.[2] There are also alternative interpretations: