BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The discovery of five words inscribed on a 2,000-year-old bronze hand may help rewrite the history of the Basque language, one of Europe’s most mysterious tongues.

The Vascones, an iron age tribe from whose language modern Basque is thought to descend, previously viewed as largely illiterate More than 2,000 years after it was probably hung from the door of a mud ...