Raetic and Runes

Abstract

The paper investigates the potential role of the Raetic inscription corpus for the derivation of the Germanic futhark. It gives an overview of the North Italic corpora and the current state of research, focussing on the Raetic epigraphical evidence. A detailed comparison of the grapheme inventories of Raetic and Runic as well as their respective epigraphical characteristics shows that the Raetic alphabets do not serve as convincing models for the Runic script.