Languages in Iron Age Italy, 6th century BC
The 'Etruscan
language' was spoken and written by
Etruscan civilization in the ancient region of
Etruria (modern
Tuscany plus western
Umbria and northern
Latium) and in parts of
Lombardy,
Veneto, and
Emilia-Romagna (where the Etruscans were displaced by
Gauls), in
Italy. However,
Latin superseded Etruscan completely, leaving only a few documents and a few
loanwords in
Latin (e.g., ''persona'' from Etruscan ''phersu''
[1]), and some place-names, such as
Roma.
History of Etruscan literacy
Etruscan literacy was widespread over the
Mediterranean shores, as can be seen by about 13,000
inscriptions (dedications,
epitaphs etc), most fairly short, but some of some length.
[Bonfante (1990), page 12] They date from about 700 BC.
[2]
The Etruscans had a rich literature, as noted by Latin authors. Unfortunately only one book (now unreadable) has survived, although there is always some possibility that more will turn up. By
AD 100, Etruscan had been replaced by Latin.
Only a few educated Romans with antiquarian interests, such as
Varro, could read Etruscan. The last person known to have been able to read it was the
Roman emperor Claudius (
10 BC –
AD 54), who — in the context of his work in twenty books about the Etruscans, ''Tyrrenikà'' (now lost) — compiled a dictionary (also lost) by interviewing the last few elderly rustics who still spoke the language. Urgulanilla, his first wife, was Etruscan.
[3]
Livy and
Cicero were both aware that highly specialized Etruscan religious rites were codified in several sets of books written in Etruscan under the generic Latin title ''Etrusca Disciplina.'' The ''Libri Haruspicini'' dealt with
divination from the entrails of the sacrificed animal, the ''Libri Fulgurales'' expounded the art of divination by observing lightning. A third set, the ''Libri Rituales'', would have provided us with the key to Etruscan civilization: its wider scope embraced Etruscan standards of social and political life as well as ritual practices. According to the
4th century Latin writer
Servius, a fourth set of Etruscan books existed, dealing with animal gods, but it is probably unlikely that any contemporary scholar could have read Etruscan at such a late date. Christian authorities collected such works of paganism and burnt them during the
5th century; the single surviving Etruscan book, ''
Liber Linteus'', being written on linen, survived only by being used as mummy wrappings.
Etruscan had some influence over Latin. A few dozen words were borrowed by the Romans and some of them can be found in modern languages.
Geographic distribution
Inscriptions have been found in north-west and west-central
Italy, in the region that even now bears the name of the
Etruscans,
Tuscany (from Latin ''tusc'' "Etruscans"), as well as in today's
Latium north of Rome, in today's
Umbria west of the
Tiber, around
Capua in
Campania and in the
Po valley to the north of Etruria. Presumably this range is a maximum Italian homeland where the language was at one time spoken.
Outside of Italy
[4] inscriptions have been found in
Africa,
Corsica,
Elba,
Gallia Narbonensis,
Greece, the
Balkans and the
Black Sea. By far the greatest concentration is in Italy.
A Etruscan inscription found on Lemnos in 1886, which is in an alphabet practically identical.
Classification
The majority consensus is that Etruscan is related only to other members of what is called the
Tyrsenian language family which in itself is
isolate, that is, unrelated to other language groups by any known relationship. Since Rix (1998) it is widely accepted that Tyrsenian is composed of
Rhaetic and
Lemnian together with Etruscan.
In the
1st century BC the Greek historian
Dionysius of Halicarnassus stated that the Etruscan language was unlike any other.
[5] He agrees with the prevalent modern view that Etruscan, or more recently Tyrsenian, is an isolate. Bonfante, a leading scholar in the field, says "... it resembles no other language in Europe or elsewhere ...."
[ ]
Speculative relationships
The Etruscan language has been difficult to analyze, which is attributable to its being an isolate. The
phonology is known through the alternation of Greek and Etruscan letters in some inscriptions (for example, the
Iguvine Tables), and many individual words are known through loans into or from
Greek and
Latin, as well as explanations of Etruscan words by ancient authors. A few concepts of word formation have been formulated (see below). Knowledge of the language is incomplete.
Speculators nevertheless continue to compare known languages to Etruscan searching for a pattern match. Speculative decipherments utilize partial pattern matches. The key follows the formula: "Etruscan is really a form of X" where X is the known language or language group. None of these have found general academic credibility.
Semitic hypothesis
The interest in Etruscan antiquities and the mysterious Etruscan language found its modern origin in a book by a Dominican monk,
Annio da Viterbo, called "il Pastura", the
cabalist and
orientalist who guided
Pinturicchio's allegorical frescoes for
Pope Alexander VI's Vatican apartments. In 1498 Annio published his antiquarian miscellany titled ''Antiquitatum variarum'' (in 17 volumes) where he put together a fantastic theory in which both the Hebrew and Etruscan languages were said to originate from a single source, the "Aramaic" spoken by Noah and his descendants, founders of Etruscan
Viterbo. Annio also started to excavate Etruscan tombs, unearthing sarcophagi and inscriptions, and made a bold attempt at deciphering the Etruscan language.
Hungarian hypothesis
A recent (2003) study by linguist
Mario Alinei has proposed the idea that Etruscan may have been an archaic form of
Hungarian. Alinei's theory is based on similarities between certain words (magistrature names), agglutination, vowel harmony, construction of personal pronouns when used together with prepositions, etc. This theory has not been widely accepted in academic circles, and it has been rejected by practically all specialists of
Uralic comparative linguistics. Critics accuse Alinei's work of being the product of
mass comparison, a methodology that is not accepted by comparative linguists.
Indo-European hypothesis
In 1861 Robert Ellis proposed that Etruscan was related to Armenian,
[6] a view that is now untenable. Some modern scholars
[7] assert that the Tyrsenian family is distantly related to the
Indo-European family. Proponents of this hypothesis put together similarities of phonetics, vocabulary and syntax that they see.
Luvian
Frederik Woudhuizen has developed a theory that the Tyrsenians came from
Anatolia, including
Lydia, when they were driven out by the
Cimmerians in the early Iron Age, 750-675 BC, leaving some colonists on
Lemnos. He makes a number of comparisons of Etruscan to
Luvian and asserts that Etruscan is modified Luvian. He accounts for the non-Luvian features as a
Mysian influence: "deviations from Luwian ... may plausibly be ascribed to the dialect of the indigenous population of Mysia."
[8] According to Woudhuizen, the Etruscans were colonizing the Latins and the Villanovan and all preceding cultures were
Indo-European. The Etruscans brought the alphabet from Anatolia. Dionysius of Halicarnassus was right for his time, but the Iron Age inhabitants of
Lydia were Luvian.
Writing system
Etruscan words have been successfully explained from the resources of the
Armenian, the
Albanian, and the Rhaeto-Romansch languages.
[9]
Alphabet
The
Latin alphabet that is used in English owes its existence to the Etruscan writing system, which was adapted for Latin in the form of the
Old Italic alphabet. The
Etruscan alphabet[10] employs a
Euboean variant
[Bonfante (1990) chapter 2.] of the
Greek alphabet using the letter
digamma and was in all probability transmitted through
Pithecusae and
Cumae, two Euboean settlements in southern
Italy. This system is ultimately derived from
West Semitic scripts.
The Etruscans recognized a full 26-letter alphabet, which they depicted as itself for decoration on some objects such as an occasional ink-jar; for example, the "rooster ink-stand."
[11] This has been termed the model alphabet.
[12] They did not use four letters of it, mainly because Etruscan had no voiced stops, b, d and g, and also no o. They innovated one letter for f.
[ ]
Text
Writing was from right to left except in archaic inscriptions, which might use
boustrophedon. A local variant at
Cerveteri used left to right. In the earliest inscriptions the words are continuous; from the 6th century they are separated by a dot or a colon, which might also separate syllables. Writing was phonetic; the letters represented the sounds and not conventional spellings. On the other hand, many inscriptions are highly abbreviated and often casually formed, so that the identification of many individual letters is in doubt among specialists. Spelling might vary from city to city, probably reflecting differences of pronunciation.
[13]
Impossible consonants
Speech featured a heavy stress on the first syllable of a word, causing
syncopation by weakening of the remaining vowels, which then were not represented in writing: Alcsntre for Alexandros, Rasna for Rasena.
[ ] This speech habit is one explanation of the Etruscan "impossible consonant clusters." The
resonants however may have been syllabic, accounting for some of the clusters (see below under Consonants). In other cases the scribe sometimes inserted a vowel: Greek Herakles became Hercle by syncopation and then was expanded to Herecele. Pallottino
[14] regarded this variation in vowels as "instability in the quality of vowels" and accounted for the second phase (e.g., Herecele) as "
vowel harmony, i.e., of the assimilation of vowels in neighboring syllables ...."
Phases
The writing system had two historical phases: the archaic, 7th to 5th century BC, which used the early Greek alphabet, and the later, 4th to 1st century BC, which modified some of the letters. In the later period syncopation increased.
The alphabet went on in modified form after the language disappeared. In addition to being the source of the Roman alphabet, it has been suggested that it passed northward into
Venetic and from there through
Raetia into the
Germanic lands, where it became the
Futhark, a system of
runes.
[15]
The media
Bilinguals
The
Pyrgi Tablets are a bilingual text in Etruscan and
Phoenician engraved on three gold leaves, one for the Phoenician and two for the Etruscan. The Etruscan is in 16 lines, 37 words. The date is roughly 500 BC.
[The Bonfantes (2002) page 58.]
Longer texts
According to Rix and his collaborators only two unified (though fragmentary) texts are available in Etruscan:
★ The ''
Liber Linteus'' used for mummy wrappings (now at
Zagreb, Croatia). Roughly 1200 words of readable text, mainly repetitious prayers yielding about 50 lexical items.
[ ]
★ The ''
Tabula Capuana'' (the inscribed tile from
Capua). About 300 readable words in 62 lines, dating to the 5th century BC.
Some additional longer texts are:
★ The lead foils of Punta della Vipera,
[16] about 40 legible words having to do with ritual fomulae. Dated to about 500 BC.
★ The
Cippus Perusinus, a stone slab (cippus) found at
Perugia. Contains 46 lines, 130 words.
★ The
Tabula Cortonensis, a bronze tablet from
Cortona recording a legal contract. About 200 words.
★ The
Piacenza Liver, a bronze model of a sheep's liver representing the sky, with the engraved names of the gods ruling different sections.
Inscriptions on monuments
Tumulus on a street at Banditaccia, the main necropolis of
Caere.
The main material repository of
Etruscan civilization is or was its tombs. Public and private buildings were dismantled and the stone reused centuries ago. The tombs remain as they were except for the ravages of time and the activities of plunderers. More tombs continue to be found regularly.
The tombs are the main source of portables in collections throughout the world, provenience unknown. The Etruscans lived well and valued art. Their objets d'art are of incalculable value, causing a brisk black market and equally brisk law enforcement effort. It is against the law to remove objects from Etruscan tombs unless authorized by the Italian government.
The total number of tombs is unknown due to the magnitide of the task of cataloging them. They are of many different types. Especially fruitful are the
hypogeal or "underground" chamber or system of chambers cut into
tufa and covered by a
tumulus. The interior of the tomb represents a habitation of the living stocked with furniture and favorite objects. The walls may display painted
murals, the predecessor of wallpaper. Tombs are identified as Etruscan dating form the
Villanovan period to about 100 BC, when presumably the cemeteries were abandoned in favor of Roman ones.
[17] Some of the major cemeteries are as follows:
★
Caere or
Cerveteri, a
UNESCO site.
[Refer to Etruscan Necropolises of Cerveteri and Tarquinia, a World Heritage site.] Three complete
necropolises with streets and squares. Many
hypogea are concealed beneath
tumuli retained by walls; others are cut into cliffs. The Banditaccia necropolis contains more than 1000 tumuli. Access is through a door.
[18]
★
Tarquinia, Tarquinii or Corneto, a
UNESCO site.
[ ] Approximately 6000 graves dating from the
Villanovan (9th & 8th centuries BC) distributed in
necropolises, the main one being the Monterozzi
hypogea of the 6th - 4th centuries BC. About 200 painted tombs display murals of various scenes with call-outs and descriptions in Etruscan. Elaborately carved sarcophagi of
marble,
alabaster and
nenfro include identificatory and achievemental inscriptions. The Tomb of the Orcus at the Scatolini necropolis depicts scenes of the Spurinna family with call-outs.
[19]
★ Inner walls and doors of tombs and sarcophagi.
★ Engraved steles (tombstones)
★
ossuaries
Inscriptions on portable objects
Votives
Votive gifts
Specula
A speculum is a circular or oval hand-mirror used predominantly by Etruscan women. Speculum is Latin; the Etruscan word is malena or malstria. Specula were cast in
bronze as one piece or with a tang into which a wooden, bone or ivory handle fit. The reflecting surface was created by polishing the flat side. A higher percentage of tin in the mirror improved its ability to reflect. The other side was convex and featured
intaglio or
cameo scenes from mythology. The piece was generally ornate.
[20]
About 2300 specula are known from collections all over the world. As they were popular plunderables, the provenience of only a minority is known. An estimated time window is 530-100 BC.
[21] Most probably came from tombs.
Many bear inscriptions naming the persons depicted in the scenes, for which reason they are often called picture bilinguals. In 1979,
Massimo Pallottino, then president of the Instituto de Studi Etruschi ed Italici initiated the Committee of the Corpus Speculorum Etruscanorum (CSE), which resolved to publish all the specula and set editorial standards for doing so.
Since then the committee has grown, acquiring local committees and representatives from most institutions owning Etruscan mirror collections. Each collection is published in its own fascicle by diverse Etruscan scholars.
[22]
Cistae
A cista is a bronze container of circular, ovoid or more rarely rectangular shape used by women for the storage of sundries. They are ornate, often with feet and lids to which figurines may be attached. The internal and external surfaces bear carefully crafted scenes usually from mythology, usually
intaglio, rarely part intaglio, part
cameo.
Cistae date from the
Roman Republic of the 4th and 3rd centuries BC in Etruscan contexts. They may bear various short inscriptions concerning the manufacturer or owner or subject matter. The writing may be
Latin, Etruscan or both.
Excavations at
Praeneste, an Etruscan city turned Roman, turned up about 118 cistae, one of which has been termed "the Praeneste cista" or "the Ficoroni cista" by art analysts, with special reference to the one manufactured by Novios Plutius and given by Dindia Macolnia to her daughter, as the archaic Latin inscription says. All of them are more accurately termed "the Praenestine cistae."
[23]
Rings and ringstones
Among the most plunderable portables from the Etruscan tombs of
Etruria are the finely engraved
gemstones set in patterned gold to form circular or ovoid pieces intended to go on finger rings. Of the magnitude of one
centimeter, they are dated to the Etruscan floruit from the 2nd half of the 6th to the 1st centuries BC. The two main theories of manufacture are native Etruscan
[24] and Greek.
[25]
The materials are mainly dark red
cornelian with
agate and
sard coming in from the 3rd to the 1st centuries BC along with purely gold finger rings of a hollow engraved
bezel. The engravings, mainly
cameo, but sometimes
intaglio, depict
scarabs at first and then scenes from Greek mythology, often with heroic personages called out in Etruscan. The gold setting of the bezel bears a border design, such as cabling.
Coins
Etruscan-minted coins date ca. 500-200 BC. Use of the Euboïc-Syracusan standard, based on the silver litra of 13.5 grams maximum, indicates the custom, like the alphabet, came from Greece. Roman coinage supplanted Etruscan, but the basic Roman coin, the
sesterce, is believed to have been based on the 2.5 denomination Etruscan coin.
[26] Etruscan coins have turned up in caches or individually in tombs and in excavations seemingly at random, concentrated, of course, in
Etruria.
Etruscan coins were in gold, silver and bronze, the gold and silver usually having been struck on one side only. The coin bore a denomination, a minting authority name, and a
cameo motif. Gold denominations were in units of silver; silver, in units of bronze. Full or abbreviated names are mainly pupluna (
Populonia), Vatl or Veltuna (
Vetulonia), Velathri (
Volaterrae), Velzu or Velznani (Volsinii) and Cha for Chamars (
Camars). Insignia are mainly heads of mythological characters or depictions of mythological beasts arranged in a symbolic motif:
Apollo,
Zeus,
Janus,
Athena,
Hermes,
griffin,
gorgon,
sphinx,
hippocamp, bull, snake, eagle, etc.
Recent discoveries
A book of gold sheets bound with gold rings went on display in May 2003 at the National History Museum in
Sofia, Bulgaria. It consists of six bound sheets of 24-
carat (100%) gold, with low-reliefs of a horseman, a
mermaid, a harp and soldiers, with text. It was claimed to have been discovered about 1940 in a tomb uncovered during digging for a canal along the
Strouma river in south-western Bulgaria, kept secretly and anonymously donated by its 87-year-old owner, living in Macedonia.
[27]
Sounds
In the tables below, conventional letters used for transliterating Etruscan are accompanied by likely pronunciation in
IPA symbols within the square brackets, followed by examples of the early
Etruscan alphabet which would have corresponded to these sounds:
Vowels
The Etruscan
vowel system consisted of four distinct vowels. Vowels "o" and "u" appear to have not been phonetically distinguished based on the nature of the writing system where only one symbol is used to cover both in loans from
Greek (e.g. Greek ''kōthōn'' > Etruscan ''qutun'' "pitcher").
Consonants
Table of consonants
Voiced stops missing
The Etruscan consonant system primarily distinguished between aspirated and non-aspirated stops. Voiced stops such as English "b", "d" or "g" were non-distinct from [p], [t] and [k], respectively. When words were borrowed that had voiced stops, the stops were unvoiced: Greek thriambos to Latin triumpus and triumphus through Etruscan.
[28]
Syllabic theory
Based on standard spellings by Etruscan scribes that appear otherwise to lack vowels or that have strings of clusters that as they occur seem phonetically impossible to pronounce, as seen in words like ''cl'' "of this (gen.)" and ''lautn'' "freeman", it is likely that "m", "n", "l" and "r" were sometimes written for syllabic
resonants. Thus ''cl'' // and ''lautn'' //.
Rix postulates several syllabic consonants, namely and palatal as well as a labiovelar spirant and some scholars such as
Mauro Cristofani also view the aspirates as palatal rather than aspirated but these views are not shared by most Etruscologists. Rix supports his theories by means of variant spellings such as amφare/amφiare, larθal/larθial, aranθ/aranθiia.
Word formation
Etruscan was
inflected, varying the endings of
nouns,
pronouns and
verbs. It also had
adjectives,
adverbs and
conjunctions, which were uninflected.
Nouns
Etruscan substantives had five cases, a singular and a plural. All five cases are not attested for every word. Nouns merge the nominative and accusative; pronouns do not generally. Gender appears in personal names (masculine and feminine) and in pronouns (animate, or either masculine and feminine, and inanimate or neuter); otherwise, it is not marked.
[29]
Unlike the
Indo-European languages, the Etruscans might add two or three endings instead of alternative endings; for example, where Latin would have distinct nominative plural and dative plural endings, Etruscan would suffix the case ending to a plural marker: Latin nominative singular fili-us, "son", plural fili-i, dative plural fili-is, but Etruscan clan, clen-ar and clen-ar-aśi.
[30]
Pallottino calls this phenomenon "morphological redetermination", which he defines as "the typical tendency ... to redetermine the syntactical function of the form by the superposition of suffices."
[31] His example is Uni-al-thi, "in the sanctuary of Juno", where -al is a genitive ending and -thi a locative. Steinbauer uses the term "inflecting language" (rather than inflected), which he explains as "... there can be more than one marker ... to design a case, and ... the same marker can occur for more than one case."
[32]
Nominative/
Accusative Case:
No distinction is made between nominative and accusative of nouns. Common nouns use the unmarked root. Names of males may end in -e: Hercle (Hercules), Achle (Achilles), Tite (Titus); of females, in -i, -a or -u: Uni (Juno), Menrva (Minerva), Zipu. Names of gods may end in -s: Fufluns, Tins; or they may be the unmarked stem ending in a vowel or consonant: Aplu (Apollo), Pacha (Bacchus), Turan.
Genitive case:
Pallottino defines two declensions based on whether the genitive ends in -s/-ś or -l.
[33] In the -s group are most noun stems ending in a vowel or a consonant: fler/fler-ś, ramtha/ramtha-ś. In the second are names of females ending in i and names of males that end s, th or n: ati/ati-al, Laris/Laris-al, Arnth/Arnth-al. After l or r -us instead of -s appears: Vel/Vel-us. Otherwise a vowel might be placed before the ending: Arnth-al instead of Arnth-l.
There is a
patronymic ending: -sa or -isa, "son of", but the ordinary genitive might serve that purpose. In the genitive case morphological redetermination becomes elaborate. Given two male names, Vel and Avle, Vel Avleś means "Vel son of Avle." This expression in the genitive become Vel-uś Avles-la. Pallottino's example of a three-suffix form is Arnth-al-iśa-la.
Dative case:
The dative ending is -si:Tita/Tita-si.
[29]
Locative case:
The locative ending is -thi: Tarchna/Tarchna-l-thi.
[35]
Pronouns
Personal pronouns refer to persons; demonstrative point out: English this, that.
[36]
Personal
The first person personal pronoun has a
nominative ''mi'' ("I") and an
accusative ''mini'' ("me"). The second person has a
dative singular ''une'' ("to thee"), an
accusative singular ''un'' ("thee") and an
accusative plural ''unu'' ("you"). The third person has a personal form ''an'' ("he" or "she") and an inanimate ''in'' ("it").
Demonstrative
The demonstratives are ''ca'' and ''ta'' used without distinction. The nominative/accusative singular forms are: ''ica, eca, ca, ita, ta''; the plural: ''cei, tei''. There is a
genitive singular: ''cla, tla, cal'' and plural ''clal''. The accusative singular: ''can, cen, cn, ecn, etan, tn''; plural ''cnl''.
Locative singular: ''calti, ceithi, clth(i), eclthi''; plural ''caiti, ceithi''.
Adjectives
Though uninflected, adjectives fall into a number of types formed from nouns with a suffix:
★ quality, -u, -iu or -c: ais/ais-iu, "god/divine"; zamathi/zamthi-c, "gold/golden."
★ possession or reference, -na, -ne, -ni: pacha/pacha-na, "Bacchus, Bacchic"; laut/laut-ni, "family/familiar" (in the sense of servant)
★ collective, -cva, -chva, -cve, -chve, -ia: sren/sren-cva: "figure/figured"; etera/etera-ia, "slave/servile"
Adverbs
Adverbs are unmarked: ''etnam'', "again"; ''thui'', "now"; ''thuni'', "at first." Most
Indo-European adverbs are formed from the oblique cases, which become unproductive and descend to fixed forms. Cases such as the
ablative are therefore called "adverbial." If there is any such system in Etruscan it is not obvious from the relatively few surviving adverbs.
Verbs
Verbs had an
indicative mood and an
imperative mood. Tenses were
present and
past. The past tense had an
Active voice and a
Passive voice.
Present active
Etruscan uses a verbal root with a zero suffix or -a without distinction to number or person: ''ar, ar-a'', "he, she, we, you, they make."
Past or preterite active
The -ce or -ke suffix to the root produces a third person singular active, which has been called variously a "past", a "preterite" or an "aorist." In contrast to
Indo-European, this form is not marked for
aspect, nor are the roots, apparently, distinguished for their aspect; they are simply actions that went on in the past. Examples: ''tur/tur-ce'', "gives/gave"; ''sval/sval-ce'', "lives/lived."
Past passive
The third person past passive is formed with -che: ''mena/mena-ce/mena-che'', "offers/offered/was offered."
Vocabulary
:''See the and at
Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sibling project''
The Etruscan vocabulary is now a few hundred words known with some certainty. The exact count depends on whether the different forms and the expressions are included. The Wiktionary list referenced above is in alphabetic order. Below is a table of some of the words grouped by topic.
[37]
Some words with corresponding Latin or other Indo-European forms are likely
loanwords to or from Etruscan. For example, ''neftś'' "nephew", is probably from Latin (Latin ''nepōs, nepōtis''; German ''neffe'', Old Norse ''nefi''). A few dozen from Etruscan survive in Latin; for example, ''elementum'' (letter), ''litterae'' (writing), ''cera'' (wax), ''arena'' (sand).
The
Etruscan numerals are known although debate lingers about which numeral means "four" and which "six" ('huth' or 'śa'). Numerals are listed in their own article. Of them, and of the basic words in general, Bonfante (1990) says:
[38]
| Etruscan | English |
|---|
| Family |
|---|
| 'apa' | father | | 'apana' | paternal | | 'papa, papacs' | grandfather | | 'ati, ativu' | mother | | 'teta, ati nacna' | grandmother | | 'pui, puia' | wife | | 'tusurthir' | married couple | | 'clan' | son | | 'papals' | grandson | | 'sec, sech' | daughter | | 'ruva' | brother | | 'neftś, nefś, nefiś' | nephew | | 'prumath, prumathś, prumats, prumts' | great-nephew or great-grandson | | 'nene' | wetnurse | | 'snenath' | maid, companion | | 'hus' | youth | | 'husiur' | children | | 'pava' | boy | | 'talitha' | girl | | 'lautun, lautn' | gens | | 'lautni' | freedman | | 'lautnitha, lautnita' | freedwoman | | 'etera, eteri' | foreigner, slave, client | | Government | |
|---|---|
| 'Rasna' | Etruscans | | 'mechl Rasnal' | Etruria | | 'pes' | land | | 'tul' | stone | | 'tular, tularu' | boundaries | | 'tular rasnal' | public boundaries | | 'tular spural' | city boundaries | | 'vachr' | contract | | 'tudthi, tuthiu, tuthi, tuti' | state | | 'tuthin, tuthina' | public | | 'mech' | people | | 'mechl, methlum' | nation, league, district | | 'spur, śpur' | civitas, populus | | ' spureni, spurana' | civic | | 'thruna' | sovereignty | | 'lucair' | to rule | | 'lauchum' | king, prince | | 'lauchumna' | regal, palace | 'tenve, tenine,
tenu, tenthas' | hold office | 'zil, zilac, zilc,
zilach, zilath' | praetor | | 'camthi' | unknown magistrates
or magistracies | | 'cechase' | | 'parnich' | | 'macstreve' | 'maru, marunu, marniu,
marunuch, maruchva' | | 'purth, purthne' | | 'tamera' |
|
| Etruscan | English |
|---|
| Time |
|---|
| 'tin-' | day | | 'thesan' | morning, day | | 'uslane' | at noon | | 'tiur', 'tivr', 'tiu' | month, moon | | 'avil' | year | | 'ril' | at the age of | | 'Velcitna' | March | | 'Capr-' | April | | 'Ampile' | May | | 'Acale' | June | | 'Hermi' | August | | 'Celi' | September | | 'Chosfer' | October | | 'Masan, Masn' | unknown month | | Nature | |
|---|---|
| 'antha' | northwind, eagle | | 'arac' | sparrow-hawk, falcon | | 'arim' | monkey | | 'capu' | falcon | | 'falatu' | sky | | 'hiuls' | screech-owl | | 'leu' | lion | | 'neri' | water | | 'pulumchva' | stars | | 'thamna' | horse | | 'thevru' | bull | | 'tisś' | lake | | 'tiu' | moon | | 'usil' | sun | | 'vers-' | fire | | Vessels | |
|---|---|
| 'aska' | , flask (wineskin in Greek) | | 'aska eleivana' | olive oil flask | | 'cape, capi' | container, probably Latin ''capio'', "keep", perhaps capis, a bowl. | | 'capra' | urn | | 'cletram' | Umbrian kletra, a basin or basket | | 'culichna' | κύλιξ, a large wine-cup | | 'cupe' | κύπη or Latin cūpa, English cup | | 'lechtum' | λήκυθоς, a small bottle | | 'lechtumuza' | a small lechtum | | 'patna' | πατάνη, a bowl | | 'pruch, pruchum' | πρόχоυς, an ewer | | 'qutun, qutum' | κώθων, a vessel of Laconia. | | 'qutumuza' | small qutum | | 'thafna' | chalice | | 'thina, tina' | , a goblet | | Common verbs | |
|---|---|
| 'am-' | to be | | 'cer-' | to make | | 'Tur-' | to give | | 'zich-' | to write |
|
Notes
1. Online Etymological Dictionary
2. Bonfante (1990) page 10.
3. For Urgulanilla, see Suetonius, ''Life of Claudius'', Section 26.1; for the 20 books, same work, Section 42.2.
4. A summary of the locations of the inscriptions published in the EDP project, given below under External links, is stated in its Guide.
5. 1.30.2.
6. Robert Ellis, ''The Armenian origin of the Etruscans'', London: Parker, Son, & Bourn, 1861.
7. For example, Steinbauer (1999).
8. Page 83.
9. Etruscan researches - Page 351 by Isaac Taylor
10. The alphabet can also be found with alternative forms of the letters at Omniglot.
11. Rooster ink-stand at Etruscan Art Virtual Museum.
12. Bonfantes (2002) page 55.
13. The Bonfantes (2002) page 56.
14. Page 261
15. The Bonfantes (2002), page 117 following.
16. Brief description and picture at ''The principle discoveries with Etruscan inscriptions'', article published by the Borough of Santa Marinella and the Archaeological Department of Southern Etruria of the Italian government.
17. Some Internet articles on the tombs in general are:
''Etruscan Tombs'' at mysteriousetruscans.com.
''Scientific Tomb-Robbing'', article in ''Time'', Monday, Feb. 25, 1957, displayed at www.time.com.
''Hot from the Tomb: The Antiquities Racket'', article in ''Time'', Monday, Mar. 26, 1973, displayed at www.time.com.
18. Some popular Internet sites giving photographs and details of the necropoleis are:
Cisra (Roman Caere / Modern Cerveteri) at mysteriousetruscans.com.
★ class=wikiexternal target=_blank>/33.html Chapter XXXIII CERVETRI.a — AGYLLA or CAERE., George Dennis at Bill Thayer's Website.
Aerial photo and map at mapsack.com.
19. A history of the tombs at Tarquinia and links to descriptions of the most famous ones is given at [1] on mysteriousetruscans.com.
20. For pictures and a description refer to the ''Etruscan Mirrors'' article at mysteriousetruscans.com.
21. For the dates, more pictures and descriptions, see the ''Hand Mirror with the Judgment of Paris'' article published online by the Allen Memorial Art Museum of Oberlin College.
22. Representative examples can be found in the U.S. Epigraphy Project site of Brown University: [2], [3]
23. Paggi, Maddalena. "The Praenestine Cistae" (October 2004), New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in Timeline of Art History.
24. Classic Encyclopedia.
25. Beazley Archive.
26. Ancient Coins of Etruria.
27. BBC News report.
28. J.H. Adams pages 163-164.
29. Bonfante (1990), page 20.
30. Bonfante (1990) page 19.
31. Page 263.
32. ''Etruscan Grammar: Summary'' at Steinbauer's website.
33. Page 264.
34. Bonfante (1990), page 20.
35. Pallottino page 114, Bonfante (1990) page 41.
36. The summary in this section is taken from the tables of the Bonfantes (2002) pages 91-94, which go into considerably more detail, citing examples.
37. The words in this table come from the Glossaries of Bonfante (1990) and Pallottino. The latter also gives a grouping by topic on pages 275 following, the last chapter of the book.
38. Page 22.
Bibliography
★
Bilingualism and the Latin Language, , , , Cambridge University Press, , Available for preview on Google Books.
★
The Etruscan Language: an Introduction, , Giuliano, Bonfante, University of Manchester Press, 2002, ISBN 0-7190-5540-7 Preview available on Google Books.
★
Etruscan, Bonfante, Larissa, , , University of California Press, 1990, ISBN 0-520-07118-2 Preview available at Google Books.
★
Etrusco: una forma arcaica di ungherese, Mario Alinei, , , Le edizioni del Mulino, 2003,
★
Gli Etruschi: una nuova immagine, , Mauro, Cristofani, Firenze, Giunti Martello, 1984,
★
The Etruscans: A New Investigation (Echoes of the ancient world), , Mauro, Cristofani, Orbis Pub, 1979, ISBN 0-85613-259-4
★
The Etruscans, , Massimo, Pallottino, Penguin Books, 1955, Translated from the Italian by J. Cremona.
★
Etruskische Texte, , Helmut, Rix, G. Narr, 1991, ISBN 3-8233-4240-1 2 vols.
★
Neues Handbuch des Etruskischen, , Dieter H., Steinbauer, Scripta Mercaturae, 1999, ISBN 3-89590-080-X
★ Woudhuizen, Frederik Christiaan. April 2006. ''
The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples''. Doctoral dissertation; Rotterdam:
Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Faculteit der Wijsbegeerte.
See also
★
Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum
★
Etruscan alphabet
★
Etruscan civilization
★ Etruscan documents
★
★ ''
Liber Linteus'' — An Etruscan
linen book that ended as mummy wraps in Egypt.
★
★ ''
Tabula Cortonensis'' — An Etruscan inscription.
★
★ ''
Cippus perusinus'' — An Etruscan inscription.
★
★ ''
Pyrgi Tablets'' — Bilingual Etruscan-
Phoenician golden leaves.
★
Etruscan mythology
★
Etruscan numerals
★
Lemnian language
★
List of English words of Etruscan origin
★
List of Spanish words of Etruscan origin
★
Raetic language
★
Tyrsenian languages
External links
General
★
Etruscan News Online, the Newsletter of the American Section of the Institute for Etruscan and Italic Studies.
★
Etruscan News back issues, Center for Ancient Studies at New York University.
★
Etruscology at Its Best, the website of Dr. Dieter H. Steinbauer, in English. Covers origins, vocabulary, grammar and place names.
★
Viteliu: The Languages of Ancient Italy at web.archive.org.
★
The Etruscan Language, the linguistlist.org site. Links to many other Etruscan language sites.
Inscriptions
★
ETP: Etruscan Texts Project A searchable database of Etruscan texts.
★ ''
Etruscan Inscriptions in the Royal Ontario Museum'', article by Rex Wallace displayed at the umass.edu site.
★
Etruscan; The Pyrgi Bilingual, paper by Michael Weiss,
Cornell University.
Lexical items
★
An Etruscan Vocabulary at web.archive.org. A short, one-page glossary with numerals as well.
★
Etruscan Vocabulary, a vocabulary organized by topic at etruskisch.de, in English.
★
Etruscan-English Dictionary at iolairweb.co.uk. An extensive lexicon compiled from other lexicon sites. Links to the major Etruscan glossaries on the Internet are included.
Fonts
★
Etruscan and Early Italic Fonts, download site by James F. Patterson at webspace.utexas.edu.
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