Tartessos (Spanish: Tarteso) is, as defined by archaeological discoveries, a historical civilization settled in the region of Southern Spain characterized by its mixture of local Paleohispanic and Phoenician traits. It had a proper writing system, identified as Tartessian, that includes some 97 inscriptions in a Tartessian language. In the historical records Tartessos (Greek: Ταρτησσός) or Tartessus appears as a antecessor semi-mythical harbor city and the surrounding culture on the south coast of the Iberian Peninsula (in modern Andalusia, Spain), at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River. It appears in sources from Greece and the Near East starting during the first millennium BC. Herodotus, for example, describes it as beyond the Pillars of Heracles (Strait of Gibraltar). Roman authors tend