The Praeneste fibula (the "brooch of Palestrina") is a golden fibula or brooch, today housed in the Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography in Rome. The fibula bears an inscription in Old Latin, claiming craftsmanship by one Manios and ownership by one Numazios. At the time of its discovery in the late nineteenth century, it was accepted as the earliest known specimen of the Latin language. The authenticity of the inscription has since been disputed. However a new analysis performed in 2011 declared it to be genuine "beyond any reasonable doubt" and to date from the Orientalizing period, in the first half of the seventh century BC. Discovery The fibula was presented to the public in 1887 by Wolfgang Helbig, an archaeologist. According to some sources, Helbig did not explain how he had come to acquire the artifact at the time, although others state that the fibula "was first made known to the public in three short articles in the for 1887 where it is said to have been purchased in Palestrina by a friend of Helbig in the year 1871, or five years before the discovery of the tomb" – the tomb in question being the Bernardini Tomb whose treasure the fibula was later claimed to be a part of. Date and inscription The fibula was thought to originate from the 7th century BC. It is inscribed with a text that appears to be written in Old Latin or Proto-Latino-Faliscan (shown by as an accusative instead of ablative), here transcribed to Roman letters: The reconstructed Proto-Italic ancestor would have been: The equivalent Classical Latin sentence obtained by applying the appropriate differences between Old Latin and Classical Latin would probably have been: translated as: Manius made me for Numasius Hoax hypothesis In 1980 Margherita Guarducci, a leading epigraphist, published a book arguing that the inscription had been forged by Francesco Martinetti, an art dealer, and Helbig, who were known to have collaborated in shady dealings. Guarducci argued that the fibula's presentation in 1887 was a hoax perpetrated to advance the careers of both men. This was the most formal but not the first accusation of its kind: Georg Karo had said that Helbig told him that the fibula had been stolen from Palestrina's Tomba Bernardini. Subsequent arguments for authenticity Evidence in favor of the genuineness of the text came from a new Etruscan inscription of the Orientalizing period published