The Tita Vendia vase is a ceramic impasto pithos

Pithos

Pithos originally referred in ancient Greek to a large storage jar of a characteristic shape. The word was at one point used by western classical archaeologists to mean the jars uncovered by excavation in Crete and Greece, it has now been taken into the American English language as a general word...

 (wine container), crafted around 620-600 BC, most likely in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

. The pithos, which exists only as an incomplete set of sherd

Sherd

In archaeology, a sherd is commonly a historic or prehistoric fragment of pottery, although the term is occasionally used to refer to fragments of stone and glass vessels as well....

s, carries one of two earliest known inscriptions in Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 language (the Vendia inscription) and is usually, but not unanimously, interpreted as the earliest instance of a bipartite female Latin name

Roman naming conventions for females

Naming conventions for ancient Roman women differed from nomenclature for men, and practice changed dramatically from the Early Republic to the High Empire and then into late antiquity...

 with praenomen

Praenomen

The praenomen was a personal name chosen by the parents of a Roman child. It was first bestowed on the dies lustricus , the eighth day after the birth of a girl, or the ninth day after the birth of a boy...

 and gentilicum.

The sherds of the vase were found by Raniero Mengarelli and deposited in the collection of Museo di Villa Giulia

National Etruscan Museum

The National Etruscan Museum is a museum of the Etruscan civilization housed in the Villa Giulia in Rome, Italy.-History:The villa was built by the popes and remained their property until 1870 when, in the wake of the Risorgimento and the demise of the Papal States, it became the property of the...

. Exact location of the find is unknown but it probably occurred in Cerveteri

Cerveteri

Cerveteri is a town and comune of the northern Lazio, in the province of Rome. Originally known as Caere , it is famous for a number of Etruscan necropolis that include some of the best Etruscan tombs anywhere....

 (ancient Caere

Caere

Caere is the Latin name given by the Romans to one of the larger cities of Southern Etruria, the modern Cerveteri, approximately 50-60 kilometres north-northwest of Rome. To the Etruscans it was known as Cisra and to the Greeks as Agylla...

). The vase belongs to a type found in Southern Etruria

Etruria

Etruria—usually referred to in Greek and Latin source texts as Tyrrhenia—was a region of Central Italy, an area that covered part of what now are Tuscany, Latium, Emilia-Romagna, and Umbria. A particularly noteworthy work dealing with Etruscan locations is D. H...

, in its reconstructed form it should have been around 35 centimeters tall and 45 centimeters wide. The letters, 15 to 25 millimeters tall, had been scratched near the bottom. They were inscribed with the right hand, using reversed letter S (Ƨ), and with letters VH instead of normal F (vhecet instead if fecit; according to Baccum, this rules out Faliscan

Falisci

Falisci is the ancient Roman exonym for an Italic people who lived in what was then Etruria, on the Etruscan side of the Tiber River. The region is now entirely Lazio. They spoke an Italic language, Faliscan, closely akin to Latin. Originally a sovereign state, politically and socially they...

 origin of the vase). The inscription reads:

ECOVRNATITAVENDIASMAMAR EDVHE

The lacuna

Lacuna (manuscripts)

A lacunaPlural lacunae. From Latin lacūna , diminutive form of lacus . is a gap in a manuscript, inscription, text, painting, or a musical work...

 between MAMAR and EDVHE is ten to twelve letters wide. 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. With the lacuna partially filled the inscription is expanded into:

ECO VRNA TITA VENDIAS MAMAR[COS M]ED VHE[CED]

Most common English interpretation is:

I am the urn of Tita Vendia. Mamar[cos had me made].

In this interpretation, archaic eco is used in place of normative Latin ego; the personal name Vendias uses archaic genitive

Genitive case

In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...

 declension

Latin declension

Latin is an inflected language, and as such has nouns, pronouns, and adjectives that must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. A set of declined forms of the same word pattern is called a declension. There are five declensions, which are numbered and grouped by ending and...

 (as in paterfamilias) which is omitted in Tita, most likely due to a writing error. There are also alternative interpretations:

• that vrna connects to tita as vrna tvta, i.e. "this whole urn".
• that tita should be interpreted as an adjective, meaning prosperous.
• that vrna tita is a piggy bank
  Piggy bank
  Piggy bank is the traditional name of a coin accumulation and storage receptacle; it is most often, but not exclusively, used by children. The piggy bank is known to collectors as a "still bank" as opposed to the "mechanical banks" popular in the early 20th century. These items are also often used...
  
  .
• that tita is a teat that feeds Vendia wine.