Etruscan language
Encyclopedia
The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization
, in what is present-day Italy
, 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
). Etruscan was superseded completely by Latin
, leaving only a few documents and some loanword
s in Latin, such as persona (from Etruscan φersu), and some place-names, such as Roma
.
Etruscan literacy was widespread over the Mediterranean shores, as evidenced by about 13,000 inscriptions (dedications, epitaph
s, etc.), most fairly short, but some of considerable length. They date from about 700 BC.
The Etruscans had a rich literature, as noted by Latin authors. Unfortunately, only one book (now unreadable) has survived. 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, Etruscan had been replaced by Latin.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 Etruscan was the Roman emperor Claudius
(10 BC – AD 54
), the author of a treatise in twenty volumes on the Etruscans, Tyrrenikà (now lost), who compiled a dictionary (also lost) by interviewing the last few elderly rustics who still spoke the language. Urgulanilla
, the emperor's first wife, was Etruscan.
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, while the Libri Fulgurales expounded the art of divination by observing lightning. A third set, the Libri Rituales, might have provided a 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 unlikely that any scholar living in the 4th century could have read Etruscan. The single extant Etruscan book, Liber Linteus
, which was written on linen, survived only because it was used as mummy wrappings.
Etruscan had some influence on Latin, as a few dozen Etruscan words were borrowed by the Romans, some of which remain in modern languages.
, Tuscany
(from Latin tuscī "Etruscans"), as well as in modern 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. This range may indicate a maximum Italian homeland where the language was at one time spoken.
Outside of Italy 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.
An inscription found on Lemnos
in 1886, is in an alphabet practically identical to that of Etruscan.
. Bonfante, a leading scholar in the field, says "... it resembles no other language in Europe or elsewhere ...." The ancients were aware that Etruscan was an isolate. In the 1st century BC, the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus
stated that the Etruscan language was unlike any other.
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). Modern knowledge of the language is incomplete.
which is an isolate family, that is, unrelated to other language groups by any known relationship (see Language isolate
). Since Rix (1998), it is widely accepted that Tyrsenian is composed of Rhaetic
and Lemnian
together with Etruscan.
Another Aegean language which is possibly related to Etruscan is Minoan
. The idea of a relation between the language of the Aegean Linear scripts was taken into consideration as the main hypothesis by Michael Ventris
before discovering that in fact the language behind the more modern Linear B
script was Mycenean, a Greek dialect. Giulio Mauro Facchetti, a researcher who has dealt with both Etruscan and Minoan put forward again this hypothesis, comparing some of the Minoan words of known meaning with some similar Etruscan words
Some modern scholars assert that the Tyrsenian languages are distantly related to the Indo-European
family.
More specifically, Frederik Woudhuizen suggests a relation to the Anatolian
branch of the family. Woudhuizen revived a conjecture to the effect that the Tyrsenians came from Anatolia
, including Lydia
, whence they were driven 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 Luwian and asserts that Etruscan is modified Luwian. He accounts for the non-Luwian features as a Mysia
n influence: "deviations from Luwian ... may plausibly be ascribed to the dialect of the indigenous population of Mysia." According to Woudhuizen, the Etruscans were colonizing the Latins. The Etruscans brought the alphabet from Anatolia.
More recently, Robert S.P. Beekes presented a similar case, but argued that the people later known as the Lydians and Etruscans had originally lived in northwest Anatolia, with a coastline to the Sea of Marmara, whence they were driven by the Phrygia
ns c. 1200 BC, leaving a remnant known in antiquity as the Tyrsenoi. A segment of this people moved south-west to Lydia
, becoming known as the Lydians, while others sailed away to take refuge in Italy, where they became known as Etruscans. The Etruscan language could therefore have been related to a non-Indo-European substratum of Lydian
.
Both of these accounts draw on the story by Herodotus
(i, 94) of the Lydian origin of the Etruscans. Dionysius of Halicarnassus
(book 1) rejected this account of the people he called the Tyrrhenians, partly on the authority of Xanthus, a Lydian historian, who had no knowledge of the story, and partly on what he judged to be the different languages, laws and religions of the two peoples.
Another proposal, currently pursued mainly by a few linguists from the former Soviet Union, suggests a relationship with Northeast Caucasian (or Daghestanian) languages.
has also been discussed. This suggestion has been obsolete since the later 19th century. Various other speculative proposals have been made in the 19th and 20th centuries, all of them failing to gain significant acceptance.
The interest in Etruscan antiquities and the mysterious Etruscan language found its modern origin in a book by a Dominican friar, Annio da Viterbo (d. 1502), the cabalist and orientalist
, now remembered mainly for literary forgeries. He 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. The theory of the Semitic origins still found its supporters in 19th century scholarship. In 1858, the last attempt was made by Johann Gustav Stickel
, Jena University: "Das Etruskische (...) als Semitische Sprache erwiesen". A reviewer concluded that Stickel brought forward every possible argument which would speak for that hypothesis, but he proved the opposite of what he had attempted to do (Johannes Gildemeister in ZDMG 13, 1859, 289-304).
A Ural–Altaic connection with the Etruscan Language has also been proposed. The French orientalist Baron Carra de Vaux had shown the connections between Etruscan and Altaic Languages
. In 1874, the British priest Isaac Taylor brought up the idea of a genetic relationship between Etruscan and Hungarian
. This Hungarian connection was further developed recently by linguist Prof. Mario Alinei
Emeritus of Italian Languages at the University of Utrecht: Etrusco: una forma arcaica di ungherese, (2003) Bologna, Il Mulino. Alinei's proposal has been rejected by Etruscan experts such as Giulio M. Facchetti, Finno-Ugric experts such as A. Marcantonio, and by Hungarian historical linguists such as Bela Brogyanyi.
In 1861, Robert Ellis proposed that Etruscan was related to Armenian
, which is nowadays acknowledged as an Indo-European
language. Some scholars also see in Urartian art, architecture, language, and general culture traces of kinship to the Etruscans of the Italian peninsula.
Relation with Albanian in particular has been advanced by Zecharia Mayani
, as well as earlier writers such as Ascoli, 1877 , E. Schneider, 1889, Thomopoulos, 1912, Buonamici, 1919 ; but Albanian
is known to be an Indo-European
language.
owes its existence to the Etruscan writing system, which was adapted for Latin in the form of the Old Italic alphabet
. The Etruscan alphabet employs a Euboea
n variant 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 26-letter alphabet, which they used in and of itself for decoration on some objects such as the "rooster ink-stand". This has been termed the model alphabet. 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.
. An example found at Cerveteri
used left to right. In the earliest inscriptions, the words are continuous. From the 6th century BC, they are separated by a dot or a colon, which symbol might also be used to 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 the identification of individual letters is sometimes difficult. Spelling might vary from city to city, probably reflecting differences of pronunciation.
, 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 Hèraclès became Hercle by syncopation and then was expanded to Herecele. Pallottino 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 ...."
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.
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 language portion has 16 lines and 37 words. The date is roughly 500 BC.
The tablets were found in 1964 by Massimo Pallottino during an excavation at the ancient Etruscan port of Pyrgi
, now Santa Severa
.
Some additional longer texts are:
The main material repository of Etruscan civilization
, from the modern perspective, was its tombs. Public and private buildings were dismantled and the stone reused centuries ago. The tombs are the main source of portables in collections throughout the world, provenance unknown. The Etruscans' objets d'art are of incalculable value, causing a brisk black market and equally brisk law enforcement effort, as 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 magnitude of the task of cataloguing them. They are of many different types. Especially fruitful are the hypogeal
or "underground" chamber or system of chambers cut into tuff
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 mural
s, the predecessor of wallpaper. Tombs identified as Etruscan date from the Villanovan period to about 100 BC, when presumably the cemeteries were abandoned in favor of Roman ones. Some of the major cemeteries are as follows:
About 2300 specula are known from collections all over the world. As they were popular plunderables, the provenance of only a minority is known. An estimated time window is 530-100 BC. 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 Istituto di 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.
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 which became 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."
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 and Greek.
The materials are mainly dark red carnelian
with agate
and sard
entered usage from the 3rd to the 1st centuries BC, along with purely gold finger rings with a hollow engraved bezel
. The engravings, mainly cameo, but sometimes intaglio, depict scarab
s 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.
.
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, or other creatures who had symbolic significance.
consisted of four distinct vowels. Vowels "o" and "u" appear to have not been phonetically distinguished based on the nature of the writing system, as only one symbol is used to cover both in loans from Greek (e.g. Greek kōthōn > Etruscan qutun "pitcher").
s. Thus cl /kl̩/ and lautn /ˈlɑwtn̩/.
Rix postulates several syllabic consonants, namely /l, r, m, n/ and palatal /lʲ, rʲ, nʲ/ as well as a labiovelar spirant /xʷ/ 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.
Unlike the Indo-European languages
, Etruscan noun endings were more agglutinative, with some nouns bearing two or three agglutinated suffixes. 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. Moreover, Etruscan nouns could bear multiple suffixes from the case paradigm alone: that is, Etruscan exhibited Suffixaufnahme
. 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." His example is Uni-al-θi, "in the sanctuary of Juno", where -al is a genitive ending and -θi a locative.
Steinbauer says of Etruscan that "there can be more than one marker ... to design a case, and ... the same marker can occur for more than one case."
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), Paχa (Bacchus), Turan.
Genitive case
:
Pallottino defines two declensions based on whether the genitive ends in -s/-ś or -l. 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, Arnθ/Arnθ-al. After l or r -us instead of -s appears: Vel/Vel-us. Otherwise a vowel might be placed before the ending: Arnθ-al instead of Arnθ-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.
Locative case
:
The locative ending is -θi: Tarχna/Tarχna-l-θi.
Plural number:
In one case, a plural is given for clan, "son", as clenar, "sons". This shows both umlaut
and an ending -ar. Plurals for cases other than nominative are made by agglutinating the case ending on clenar.
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.
. Tenses were present
and past
. The past tense had an Active voice
and a Passive voice.
, 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."
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) (κηρός in Ancient Greek), arena (sand).
At least one word has an apparent Semitic origin: talitha "girl" (Aramaic; could have been transmitted by Phoenicians).
The word pera "house" may be a false cognate
to the Coptic language
per "house".
The Etruscan numerals
are known although debate lingers about which numeral means "four" and which "six" (huθ or śa). Numerals are listed in their own article. Of them, and of the basic words in general, Bonfante (1990) says: "What these numerals show, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is the non-Indo-European nature of the Etruscan language. Basic words like numbers and names of relationships are often similar in the Indo-European languages, for they derive from the same root."
The Etruscan numbers are (Bonfante 2002:96):
Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...
, in what is present-day Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, in the ancient region of 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...
(modern Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
plus western Umbria
Umbria
Umbria is a region of modern central Italy. It is one of the smallest Italian regions and the only peninsular region that is landlocked.Its capital is Perugia.Assisi and Norcia are historical towns associated with St. Francis of Assisi, and St...
and northern Latium
Latium
Lazio is one of the 20 administrative regions of Italy, situated in the central peninsular section of the country. With about 5.7 million residents and a GDP of more than 170 billion euros, Lazio is the third most populated and the second richest region of Italy...
) and in parts of Lombardy
Lombardy
Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...
, Veneto
Veneto
Veneto is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about 5 million, ranking 5th in Italy.Veneto had been for more than a millennium an independent state, the Republic of Venice, until it was eventually annexed by Italy in 1866 after brief Austrian and French rule...
, and Emilia-Romagna
Emilia-Romagna
Emilia–Romagna is an administrative region of Northern Italy comprising the two historic regions of Emilia and Romagna. The capital is Bologna; it has an area of and about 4.4 million inhabitants....
(where the Etruscans were displaced by Gauls
Gauls
The Gauls were a Celtic people living in Gaul, the region roughly corresponding to what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland and Northern Italy, from the Iron Age through the Roman period. They mostly spoke the Continental Celtic language called Gaulish....
). Etruscan was superseded completely by 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...
, leaving only a few documents and some loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s in Latin, such as persona (from Etruscan φersu), and some place-names, such as Roma
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...
.
History of Etruscan literacy
Epitaph
An epitaph is a short text honoring a deceased person, strictly speaking that is inscribed on their tombstone or plaque, but also used figuratively. Some are specified by the dead person beforehand, others chosen by those responsible for the burial...
s, etc.), most fairly short, but some of considerable length. They date from about 700 BC.
The Etruscans had a rich literature, as noted by Latin authors. Unfortunately, only one book (now unreadable) has survived. By AD 100
100
Year 100 was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Traianus and Frontinus...
, Etruscan had been replaced by Latin.
Only a few educated Romans with antiquarian interests, such as Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro was an ancient Roman scholar and writer. He is sometimes called Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus.-Biography:...
, could read Etruscan. The last person known to have been able to read Etruscan was the Roman emperor Claudius
Claudius
Claudius , was Roman Emperor from 41 to 54. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, he was the son of Drusus and Antonia Minor. He was born at Lugdunum in Gaul and was the first Roman Emperor to be born outside Italy...
(10 BC – AD 54
54
Year 54 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Lentulus and Marcellus...
), the author of a treatise in twenty volumes on the Etruscans, Tyrrenikà (now lost), who compiled a dictionary (also lost) by interviewing the last few elderly rustics who still spoke the language. Urgulanilla
Plautia Urgulanilla
Plautia Urgulanilla was the first wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius. They married sometime around the year 9 CE, when Claudius was 18 years old. According to Suetonius, Claudius divorced her in 24 on grounds of adultery by Plautia and his suspicions of her involvement in the murder of her...
, the emperor's first wife, was Etruscan.
Livy
Livy
Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...
and Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
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
Divination
Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic standardized process or ritual...
from the entrails of the sacrificed animal, while the Libri Fulgurales expounded the art of divination by observing lightning. A third set, the Libri Rituales, might have provided a 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 unlikely that any scholar living in the 4th century could have read Etruscan. The single extant Etruscan book, Liber Linteus
Liber Linteus
The Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis is the longest Etruscan text and the only extant linen book...
, which was written on linen, survived only because it was used as mummy wrappings.
Etruscan had some influence on Latin, as a few dozen Etruscan words were borrowed by the Romans, some of which remain 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 EtruscansEtruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...
, Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
(from Latin tuscī "Etruscans"), as well as in modern Latium
Latium
Lazio is one of the 20 administrative regions of Italy, situated in the central peninsular section of the country. With about 5.7 million residents and a GDP of more than 170 billion euros, Lazio is the third most populated and the second richest region of Italy...
north of Rome, in today's Umbria
Umbria
Umbria is a region of modern central Italy. It is one of the smallest Italian regions and the only peninsular region that is landlocked.Its capital is Perugia.Assisi and Norcia are historical towns associated with St. Francis of Assisi, and St...
west of the Tiber
Tiber
The Tiber is the third-longest river in Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Umbria and Lazio to the Tyrrhenian Sea. It drains a basin estimated at...
, around Capua
Capua
Capua is a city and comune in the province of Caserta, Campania, southern Italy, situated 25 km north of Naples, on the northeastern edge of the Campanian plain. Ancient Capua was situated where Santa Maria Capua Vetere is now...
in Campania
Campania
Campania is a region in southern Italy. The region has a population of around 5.8 million people, making it the second-most-populous region of Italy; its total area of 13,590 km² makes it the most densely populated region in the country...
and in the Po
Po River
The Po |Ligurian]]: Bodincus or Bodencus) is a river that flows either or – considering the length of the Maira, a right bank tributary – eastward across northern Italy, from a spring seeping from a stony hillside at Pian del Re, a flat place at the head of the Val Po under the northwest face...
valley to the north of Etruria. This range may indicate a maximum Italian homeland where the language was at one time spoken.
Outside of Italy inscriptions have been found in Africa, Corsica, Elba
Elba
Elba is a Mediterranean island in Tuscany, Italy, from the coastal town of Piombino. The largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago, Elba is also part of the National Park of the Tuscan Archipelago and the third largest island in Italy after Sicily and Sardinia...
, Gallia Narbonensis
Gallia Narbonensis
Gallia Narbonensis was a Roman province located in what is now Languedoc and Provence, in southern France. It was also known as Gallia Transalpina , which was originally a designation for that part of Gaul lying across the Alps from Italia and it contained a western region known as Septimania...
, Greece, the Balkans and the Black Sea. By far the greatest concentration is in Italy.
An inscription found on Lemnos
Lemnos
Lemnos is an island of Greece in the northern part of the Aegean Sea. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within the Lemnos peripheral unit, which is part of the North Aegean Periphery. The principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is Myrina...
in 1886, is in an alphabet practically identical to that of Etruscan.
Classification
The Etruscan language has been difficult to analyze, due to its being an isolateLanguage isolate
A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...
. Bonfante, a leading scholar in the field, says "... it resembles no other language in Europe or elsewhere ...." The ancients were aware that Etruscan was an isolate. In the 1st century BC, the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...
stated that the Etruscan language was unlike any other.
The phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
is known through the alternation of Greek and Etruscan letters in some inscriptions (for example, the Iguvine Tables
Iguvine Tables
The Iguvine Tablets are a series of seven bronze tablets discovered at Iguvium , Italy, in the year 1444. They are also known as Eugubian tablets...
), 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). Modern knowledge of the language is incomplete.
Tyrsenian family
The majority consensus is that Etruscan is related only to other members of what is called the Tyrsenian language familyTyrsenian languages
Tyrsenian , named after the Tyrrhenians , is a closely related ancient language family proposed by Helmut Rix , that consists of the extinct Etruscan language of central Italy, the extinct Raetic language of the Alps, and the extinct Lemnian language of the Aegean Sea.-The...
which is an isolate family, that is, unrelated to other language groups by any known relationship (see Language isolate
Language isolate
A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...
). Since Rix (1998), it is widely accepted that Tyrsenian is composed of Rhaetic
Raetic language
Raetic is an extinct language spoken in the ancient region of Raetia in the Eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by a limited number of short inscriptions in two variants of the Etruscan alphabet...
and Lemnian
Lemnian language
The Lemnian language is a language of the 6th century BC spoken on the island of Lemnos. It is mainly attested by an inscription found on a funerary stele, termed the Lemnos stele, discovered in 1885 near Kaminia. However, fragments of inscriptions on local pottery show that it was spoken there by...
together with Etruscan.
Another Aegean language which is possibly related to Etruscan is Minoan
Linear A
Linear A is one of two scripts used in ancient Crete before Mycenaean Greek Linear B; Cretan hieroglyphs is the second script. In Minoan times, before the Mycenaean Greek dominion, Linear A was the official script for the palaces and religious activities, and hieroglyphs were mainly used on seals....
. The idea of a relation between the language of the Aegean Linear scripts was taken into consideration as the main hypothesis by Michael Ventris
Michael Ventris
Michael George Francis Ventris, OBE was an English architect and classical scholar who, along with John Chadwick, was responsible for the decipherment of Linear B.Ventris was educated in Switzerland and at Stowe School...
before discovering that in fact the language behind the more modern Linear B
Linear B
Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...
script was Mycenean, a Greek dialect. Giulio Mauro Facchetti, a researcher who has dealt with both Etruscan and Minoan put forward again this hypothesis, comparing some of the Minoan words of known meaning with some similar Etruscan words
Some modern scholars assert that the Tyrsenian languages are distantly related to the Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
family.
More specifically, Frederik Woudhuizen suggests a relation to the Anatolian
Anatolian languages
The Anatolian languages comprise a group of extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language.-Origins:...
branch of the family. Woudhuizen revived a conjecture to the effect that the Tyrsenians came from Anatolia
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
, including Lydia
Lydia
Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....
, whence they were driven by the Cimmerians
Cimmerians
The Cimmerians or Kimmerians were ancient equestrian nomads of Indo-European origin.According to the Greek historian Herodotus, of the 5th century BC, the Cimmerians inhabited the region north of the Caucasus and the Black Sea during the 8th and 7th centuries BC, in what is now Ukraine and Russia...
in the early Iron Age, 750–675 BC, leaving some colonists on Lemnos
Lemnos
Lemnos is an island of Greece in the northern part of the Aegean Sea. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within the Lemnos peripheral unit, which is part of the North Aegean Periphery. The principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is Myrina...
. He makes a number of comparisons of Etruscan to Luwian and asserts that Etruscan is modified Luwian. He accounts for the non-Luwian features as a Mysia
Mysia
Mysia was a region in the northwest of ancient Asia Minor or Anatolia . It was located on the south coast of the Sea of Marmara. It was bounded by Bithynia on the east, Phrygia on the southeast, Lydia on the south, Aeolis on the southwest, Troad on the west and by the Propontis on the north...
n influence: "deviations from Luwian ... may plausibly be ascribed to the dialect of the indigenous population of Mysia." According to Woudhuizen, the Etruscans were colonizing the Latins. The Etruscans brought the alphabet from Anatolia.
More recently, Robert S.P. Beekes presented a similar case, but argued that the people later known as the Lydians and Etruscans had originally lived in northwest Anatolia, with a coastline to the Sea of Marmara, whence they were driven by the Phrygia
Phrygia
In antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now modern-day Turkey. The Phrygians initially lived in the southern Balkans; according to Herodotus, under the name of Bryges , changing it to Phruges after their final migration to Anatolia, via the...
ns c. 1200 BC, leaving a remnant known in antiquity as the Tyrsenoi. A segment of this people moved south-west to Lydia
Lydia
Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....
, becoming known as the Lydians, while others sailed away to take refuge in Italy, where they became known as Etruscans. The Etruscan language could therefore have been related to a non-Indo-European substratum of Lydian
Lydian language
Lydian was an Indo-European language spoken in the region of Lydia in western Anatolia . It belongs to the Anatolian group of the Indo-European language family....
.
Both of these accounts draw on the story by Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
(i, 94) of the Lydian origin of the Etruscans. Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...
(book 1) rejected this account of the people he called the Tyrrhenians, partly on the authority of Xanthus, a Lydian historian, who had no knowledge of the story, and partly on what he judged to be the different languages, laws and religions of the two peoples.
Another proposal, currently pursued mainly by a few linguists from the former Soviet Union, suggests a relationship with Northeast Caucasian (or Daghestanian) languages.
Other
Historically, a connection from Etruscan to the Semitic languagesSemitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
has also been discussed. This suggestion has been obsolete since the later 19th century. Various other speculative proposals have been made in the 19th and 20th centuries, all of them failing to gain significant acceptance.
The interest in Etruscan antiquities and the mysterious Etruscan language found its modern origin in a book by a Dominican friar, Annio da Viterbo (d. 1502), the cabalist and orientalist
Oriental studies
Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...
, now remembered mainly for literary forgeries. He guided Pinturicchio
Pinturicchio
Bernardino di Betto, called Pintoricchio or Pinturicchio was an Italian painter of the Renaissance. He acquired his nickname, Pintoricchio , because of his small stature, and he used it to sign some of his works....
's allegorical frescoes for Pope Alexander VI
Pope Alexander VI
Pope Alexander VI , born Roderic Llançol i Borja was Pope from 1492 until his death on 18 August 1503. He is one of the most controversial of the Renaissance popes, and his Italianized surname—Borgia—became a byword for the debased standards of the Papacy of that era, most notoriously the Banquet...
'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
Viterbo
See also Viterbo, Texas and Viterbo UniversityViterbo is an ancient city and comune in the Lazio region of central Italy, the capital of the province of Viterbo. It is approximately 80 driving / 80 walking kilometers north of GRA on the Via Cassia, and it is surrounded by the Monti Cimini and...
. Annio also started to excavate Etruscan tombs, unearthing sarcophagi and inscriptions, and made a bold attempt at deciphering the Etruscan language. The theory of the Semitic origins still found its supporters in 19th century scholarship. In 1858, the last attempt was made by Johann Gustav Stickel
Johann Gustav Stickel
Johann Gustav Stickel was a German theologian, orientalist and numismatist.- Biography :Stickel was born in Eisenach in 1805. He went to school in Buttelstedt and in Weimar. In his youth he demonstrated a gift for the Hebrew language...
, Jena University: "Das Etruskische (...) als Semitische Sprache erwiesen". A reviewer concluded that Stickel brought forward every possible argument which would speak for that hypothesis, but he proved the opposite of what he had attempted to do (Johannes Gildemeister in ZDMG 13, 1859, 289-304).
A Ural–Altaic connection with the Etruscan Language has also been proposed. The French orientalist Baron Carra de Vaux had shown the connections between Etruscan and Altaic Languages
Altaic languages
Altaic is a proposed language family that includes the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Japonic language families and the Korean language isolate. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe...
. In 1874, the British priest Isaac Taylor brought up the idea of a genetic relationship between Etruscan and Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
. This Hungarian connection was further developed recently by linguist Prof. Mario Alinei
Mario Alinei
Mario Alinei is Professor Emeritus at the University of Utrecht, where he taught from 1959 to 1987, currently living in Impruneta, Italy. He is founder and editor of Quaderni di semantica, a journal of theoretical and applied semantics...
Emeritus of Italian Languages at the University of Utrecht: Etrusco: una forma arcaica di ungherese, (2003) Bologna, Il Mulino. Alinei's proposal has been rejected by Etruscan experts such as Giulio M. Facchetti, Finno-Ugric experts such as A. Marcantonio, and by Hungarian historical linguists such as Bela Brogyanyi.
In 1861, Robert Ellis proposed that Etruscan was related to Armenian
Armenian language
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
, which is nowadays acknowledged as an Indo-European
Indo-European
Indo-European may refer to:* Indo-European languages** Aryan race, a 19th century and early 20th century term for those peoples who are the native speakers of Indo-European languages...
language. Some scholars also see in Urartian art, architecture, language, and general culture traces of kinship to the Etruscans of the Italian peninsula.
Relation with Albanian in particular has been advanced by Zecharia Mayani
Zecharia Mayani
Zacharie Mayani was a French writer and author of a number of books.-Education:He was educated at Paris University, where he received his doctorate. He was also a student in the École du Louvre...
, as well as earlier writers such as Ascoli, 1877 , E. Schneider, 1889, Thomopoulos, 1912, Buonamici, 1919 ; but Albanian
Albanian language
Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...
is known to be an Indo-European
Indo-European
Indo-European may refer to:* Indo-European languages** Aryan race, a 19th century and early 20th century term for those peoples who are the native speakers of Indo-European languages...
language.
Alphabet
The Latin alphabetLatin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
owes its existence to the Etruscan writing system, which was adapted for Latin in the form of the Old Italic alphabet
Old Italic alphabet
Old Italic refers to several now extinct alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European languages and non-Indo-European languages...
. The Etruscan alphabet employs a Euboea
Euboea
Euboea is the second largest Greek island in area and population, after Crete. The narrow Euripus Strait separates it from Boeotia in mainland Greece. In general outline it is a long and narrow, seahorse-shaped island; it is about long, and varies in breadth from to...
n variant of the Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
using the letter digamma
Digamma
Digamma is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet which originally stood for the sound /w/ and later remained in use only as a numeral symbol for the number "6"...
and was in all probability transmitted through Pithecusae and Cumae
Cumae
Cumae is an ancient Greek settlement lying to the northwest of Naples in the Italian region of Campania. Cumae was the first Greek colony on the mainland of Italy , and the seat of the Cumaean Sibyl...
, two Euboean settlements in southern Italy. This system is ultimately derived from West Semitic scripts
History of the alphabet
The origins of the alphabet are unknown, but there are several theories as to how it developed. One popular proposal — the Proto-Sinaitic theory — is that the history of the alphabet began in Ancient Egypt, more than a millennium into the history of writing...
.
The Etruscans recognized a 26-letter alphabet, which they used in and of itself for decoration on some objects such as the "rooster ink-stand". This has been termed the model alphabet. 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 occasionally used boustrophedonBoustrophedon
Boustrophedon , is a type of bi-directional text, mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions. Every other line of writing is flipped or reversed, with reversed letters. Rather than going left-to-right as in modern English, or right-to-left as in Arabic and Hebrew, alternate lines in...
. An example found at 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....
used left to right. In the earliest inscriptions, the words are continuous. From the 6th century BC, they are separated by a dot or a colon, which symbol might also be used to 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 the identification of individual letters is sometimes difficult. Spelling might vary from city to city, probably reflecting differences of pronunciation.
Complex consonant clusters
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 resonantsSonorant
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; fricatives and plosives are not sonorants. Vowels are sonorants, as are consonants like and . Other consonants, like or , restrict the airflow enough to cause turbulence, and...
, 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 Hèraclès became Hercle by syncopation and then was expanded to Herecele. Pallottino regarded this variation in vowels as "instability in the quality of vowels" and accounted for the second phase (e.g. Herecele) as "vowel harmony
Vowel harmony
Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
, i.e., of the assimilation of vowels in neighboring syllables ...."
Phases
The writing system had two historical phases: the archaic from the 7th to 5th century BC, which used the early Greek alphabet, and the later from the 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
Raetia
Raetia was a province of the Roman Empire, named after the Rhaetian people. It was bounded on the west by the country of the Helvetii, on the east by Noricum, on the north by Vindelicia, on the west by Cisalpine Gaul and on south by Venetia et Histria...
into the Germanic
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
lands, where it became the Futhark
Runic alphabet
The runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes to write various Germanic languages before the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter...
, a system of runes.
Bilingual texts
Pyrgi Tablets
The Pyrgi Tablets, found in a 1964 excavation of a sanctuary of ancient Pyrgi on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy , are three golden leaves that record a dedication made around 500 BC by Thefarie Velianas, king of Caere, to the Phoenician goddess ʻAshtaret. Pyrgi was the port of the southern Etruscan...
are a bilingual text in Etruscan and Phoenician engraved on three gold leaves, one for the Phoenician and two for the Etruscan. The Etruscan language portion has 16 lines and 37 words. The date is roughly 500 BC.
The tablets were found in 1964 by Massimo Pallottino during an excavation at the ancient Etruscan port of Pyrgi
Pyrgi
Pyrgi was an ancient Etruscan port in Latium, central Italy, to the north-west of Caere. Its location is now occupied by the burgh of Santa Severa....
, now Santa Severa
Santa Severa
Santa Severa is a frazione of the comune of Santa Marinella, in the province of Rome, Lazio, Italy. It is a small sea resort on the Via Aurelia, c. south of Santa Marinella and north of Rome.It takes its name from the 2nd-century Christian martyr...
.
Longer texts
According to Rix and his collaborators only two unified (though fragmentary) texts are available in Etruscan:- The Liber LinteusLiber LinteusThe Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis is the longest Etruscan text and the only extant linen book...
, which was used for mummy wrappings (at Zagreb, Croatia). Roughly 1200 words of readable text, mainly repetitious prayers, yielded about 50 lexical items. - The Tabula CapuanaTabula CapuanaThe Tabula Capuana , now conserved in Berlin, represents the second most extensive surviving Etruscan text, after the linen book the used in Egypt for mummy wrappings, now at Zagreb...
(the inscribed tile from CapuaCapuaCapua is a city and comune in the province of Caserta, Campania, southern Italy, situated 25 km north of Naples, on the northeastern edge of the Campanian plain. Ancient Capua was situated where Santa Maria Capua Vetere is now...
). 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, about 40 legible words having to do with ritual formulae. Dated to about 500 BC.
- The Cippus PerusinusCippus PerusinusThe Cippus Perusinus is a stone tablet discovered on the hill of San Marco, near Perugia, Italy, in 1822. The tablet bears 46 lines of Etruscan text exquisitely carved into it...
, a stone slab (cippus) found at PerugiaPerugiaPerugia is the capital city of the region of Umbria in central Italy, near the River Tiber, and the capital of the province of Perugia. The city is located about north of Rome. It covers a high hilltop and part of the valleys around the area....
. Contains 46 lines, 130 words. - The Tabula CortonensisTabula CortonensisThe Tabula Cortonensis is a 2200-year-old, bronze artifact of Etruscan origin, discovered in Cortona, Italy. It may record for posterity the details of an ancient real estate transaction which took place in the ancient Tuscan city of Cortona, known to the Etruscans as Curtun...
, a bronze tablet from CortonaCortonaCortona is a town and comune in the province of Arezzo, in Tuscany, Italy. It is the main cultural and artistic center of the Val di Chiana after Arezzo.-History:...
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
Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...
, from the modern perspective, was its tombs. Public and private buildings were dismantled and the stone reused centuries ago. The tombs are the main source of portables in collections throughout the world, provenance unknown. The Etruscans' objets d'art are of incalculable value, causing a brisk black market and equally brisk law enforcement effort, as 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 magnitude of the task of cataloguing them. They are of many different types. Especially fruitful are the hypogeal
Hypogeum
Hypogeum or hypogaeum literally means "underground", from Greek hypo and gaia . It usually refers to an underground, non-Christian temple or a tomb...
or "underground" chamber or system of chambers cut into tuff
Tuff
Tuff is a type of rock consisting of consolidated volcanic ash ejected from vents during a volcanic eruption. Tuff is sometimes called tufa, particularly when used as construction material, although tufa also refers to a quite different rock. Rock that contains greater than 50% tuff is considered...
and covered by a tumulus
Tumulus
A tumulus is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, Hügelgrab or kurgans, and can be found throughout much of the world. A tumulus composed largely or entirely of stones is usually referred to as a cairn...
. The interior of the tomb represents a habitation of the living stocked with furniture and favorite objects. The walls may display painted mural
Mural
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
s, the predecessor of wallpaper. Tombs identified as Etruscan date from the Villanovan period to about 100 BC, when presumably the cemeteries were abandoned in favor of Roman ones. Some of the major cemeteries are as follows:
- CaereCaereCaere 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...
or CerveteriCerveteriCerveteri 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....
, a UNESCOUNESCOThe United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
site. Three complete necropolisNecropolisA necropolis is a large cemetery or burial ground, usually including structural tombs. The word comes from the Greek νεκρόπολις - nekropolis, literally meaning "city of the dead"...
es with streets and squares. Many hypogeaHypogeumHypogeum or hypogaeum literally means "underground", from Greek hypo and gaia . It usually refers to an underground, non-Christian temple or a tomb...
are concealed beneath tumuliTumulusA tumulus is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, Hügelgrab or kurgans, and can be found throughout much of the world. A tumulus composed largely or entirely of stones is usually referred to as a cairn...
retained by walls; others are cut into cliffs. The Banditaccia necropolis contains more than 1000 tumuli. Access is through a door.
- TarquiniaTarquiniaTarquinia, formerly Corneto and in Antiquity Tarquinii, is an ancient city in the province of Viterbo, Lazio, Italy.- History :Tarquinii is said to have been already a flourishing city when Demaratus of Corinth brought in Greek workmen...
, Tarquinii or Corneto, a UNESCOUNESCOThe United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
site. Approximately 6000 graves dating from the Villanovan (9th & 8th centuries BC) distributed in necropolisNecropolisA necropolis is a large cemetery or burial ground, usually including structural tombs. The word comes from the Greek νεκρόπολις - nekropolis, literally meaning "city of the dead"...
es, the main one being the Monterozzi hypogeaHypogeumHypogeum or hypogaeum literally means "underground", from Greek hypo and gaia . It usually refers to an underground, non-Christian temple or a tomb...
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, alabasterAlabasterAlabaster is a name applied to varieties of two distinct minerals, when used as a material: gypsum and calcite . The former is the alabaster of the present day; generally, the latter is the alabaster of the ancients...
and nenfro include identificatory and achievemental inscriptions. The Tomb of OrcusTomb of OrcusThe Tomb of Orcus , sometimes called the Tomb of Murina , is a 4th century BC Etruscan hypogeum in Tarquinia, Italy. Discovered in 1868, it displays Hellenistic influences in its remarkable murals, which include the portrait of Velia Velcha, an Etruscan noblewoman, and the only known pictorial...
at the Scatolini necropolis depicts scenes of the Spurinna family with call-outs.
- Inner walls and doors of tombs and sarcophagi.
- Engraved steles (tombstones)
- ossuariesOssuaryAn ossuary is a chest, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce. A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary...
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 fitted. 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.About 2300 specula are known from collections all over the world. As they were popular plunderables, the provenance of only a minority is known. An estimated time window is 530-100 BC. 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
Massimo Pallottino
Massimo Pallottino was an Italian archaeologist specializing in Etruscan civilization and art....
, then president of the Istituto di 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.
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
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...
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
Palestrina
Palestrina is an ancient city and comune with a population of about 18,000, in Lazio, c. 35 km east of Rome...
, an Etruscan city which became 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."
Rings and ringstones
Among the most plunderable portables from the Etruscan tombs of EtruriaEtruria
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...
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 and Greek.
The materials are mainly dark red carnelian
Carnelian
Carnelian is a brownish-red mineral which is commonly used as a semi-precious gemstone. Similar to carnelian is sard, which is generally harder and darker...
with agate
Agate
Agate is a microcrystalline variety of silica, chiefly chalcedony, characterised by its fineness of grain and brightness of color. Although agates may be found in various kinds of rock, they are classically associated with volcanic rocks and can be common in certain metamorphic rocks.-Etymology...
and sard
SARD
is a Japanese tuning company and racing team from Toyota, Aichi, mainly competing in the Super GT series and specialising in Toyota tuning parts.-History:...
entered usage from the 3rd to the 1st centuries BC, along with purely gold finger rings with a hollow engraved bezel
Bezel
Bezel may refer to:* Bezel setting, or bezel, the rim which encompasses and fastens a jewel, watch crystal, lens or other object* The sloping facets of the crown of a cut gem such as in diamond cutting...
. The engravings, mainly cameo, but sometimes intaglio, depict scarab
Dung beetle
Dung beetles are beetles that feed partly or exclusively on feces. All of these species belong to the superfamily Scarabaeoidea; most of them to the subfamilies Scarabaeinae and Aphodiinae of the family Scarabaeidae. This beetle can also be referred to as the scarab beetle. As most species of...
s 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 can be dated between 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 later supplanted Etruscan, but the basic Roman coin, the sesterce, is believed to have been based on the 2.5 denomination Etruscan coin. Etruscan coins have turned up in caches or individually in tombs and in excavations seemingly at random, concentrated, of course, in EtruriaEtruria
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...
.
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
Populonia
Populonia or Populonia Alta today is a frazione of the comune of Piombino . As of 2009 its population was 17...
), Vatl or Veltuna (Vetulonia
Vetulonia
Vetulonia, formerly called Vetulonium , was an ancient town of Etruria, Italy, the site of which is probably occupied by the modern village of Vetulonia, which up to 1887 bore the name of Colonnata and Colonna di Buriano: the site is currently a frazione of the comune of Castiglione della Pescaia,...
), 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
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
, Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
, Janus
Janus
-General:*Janus , the two-faced Roman god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings*Janus , a moon of Saturn*Janus Patera, a shallow volcanic crater on Io, a moon of Jupiter...
, Athena
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
, Hermes
Hermes
Hermes is the great messenger of the gods in Greek mythology and a guide to the Underworld. Hermes was born on Mount Kyllini in Arcadia. An Olympian god, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of the cunning of thieves, of orators and...
, griffin
Griffin
The griffin, griffon, or gryphon is a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle...
, gorgon
Gorgon
In Greek mythology, the Gorgon was a terrifying female creature. The name derives from the Greek word gorgós, which means "dreadful." While descriptions of Gorgons vary across Greek literature, the term commonly refers to any of three sisters who had hair of living, venomous snakes, and a...
, sphinx
Sphinx
A sphinx is a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head or a cat head.The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless...
, hippocamp
Hippocamp
The hippocamp or hippocampus , often called a sea-horse in English, is a mythological creature shared by Phoenician and Greek mythology, though the name by which it is recognised is purely Greek; it became part of Etruscan mythology...
, bull, snake, eagle, or other creatures who had symbolic significance.
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 systemVowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
consisted of four distinct vowels. Vowels "o" and "u" appear to have not been phonetically distinguished based on the nature of the writing system, as only one symbol is used to cover both in loans from Greek (e.g. Greek kōthōn > Etruscan qutun "pitcher").
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
i [i]  |
u [u]  |
|
| Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel... |
e [e]  |
||
| Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
a [ɑ]  |
Table of consonants
| Bilabial | Dental | Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m [m]  |
n [n]  |
||||||
| Plosive | p [p]  |
φ [pʰ]  |
t, d [t]   |
θ [tʰ]  |
c, k, q [k]    |
χ [kʰ]  |
||
| Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :... |
z [ts]  |
|||||||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
f [ɸ]  |
s [s]  |
ś [ʃ]   |
h [h]  |
||||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
l [l]  |
i [j] |
v [w]  |
|||||
| Rhotic Rhotic consonant In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet... |
r [r]  |
|||||||
Voiced stops missing
The Etruscan consonant system primarily distinguished between aspirated and non-aspirated stops. There were no voiced stops and loanwords with them were typically devoiced, e.g. Greek thriambos was borrowed by Etruscan, becoming triumpus and triumphus in Latin.Syllabic theory
Based on standard spellings by Etruscan scribes of words without vowels or with unlikely consonant clusters (e.g. cl 'of this (gen.)' and lautn 'freeman'), it is likely that /m n l r/ were sometimes syllabic sonorantSonorant
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; fricatives and plosives are not sonorants. Vowels are sonorants, as are consonants like and . Other consonants, like or , restrict the airflow enough to cause turbulence, and...
s. Thus cl /kl̩/ and lautn /ˈlɑwtn̩/.
Rix postulates several syllabic consonants, namely /l, r, m, n/ and palatal /lʲ, rʲ, nʲ/ as well as a labiovelar spirant /xʷ/ and some scholars such as Mauro Cristofani
Mauro Cristofani
Mauro Cristofani was a linguist and researcher in Etruscan studies.Cristofani was a student of Massimo Pallottino and would himself teach at the University of Pisa, University of Siena and, his final post, at the University of Naples Federico II...
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. Not all five cases are attested for every word. Nouns merge the nominative and accusative; pronouns do not generally merge these. 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.Unlike the Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
, Etruscan noun endings were more agglutinative, with some nouns bearing two or three agglutinated suffixes. 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. Moreover, Etruscan nouns could bear multiple suffixes from the case paradigm alone: that is, Etruscan exhibited Suffixaufnahme
Suffixaufnahme
Suffixaufnahme is a linguistic phenomenon used in forming a genitive construction, whereby prototypically a genitive noun agrees with its head noun...
. 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." His example is Uni-al-θi, "in the sanctuary of Juno", where -al is a genitive ending and -θi a locative.
Steinbauer says of Etruscan that "there can be more than one marker ... to design a case, and ... the same marker can occur for more than one case."
Nominative
Nominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
/accusative
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
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), Paχa (Bacchus), Turan.
Genitive case
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
:
Pallottino defines two declensions based on whether the genitive ends in -s/-ś or -l. 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, Arnθ/Arnθ-al. After l or r -us instead of -s appears: Vel/Vel-us. Otherwise a vowel might be placed before the ending: Arnθ-al instead of Arnθ-l.
There is a patronymic
Patronymic
A patronym, or patronymic, is a component of a personal name based on the name of one's father, grandfather or an even earlier male ancestor. A component of a name based on the name of one's mother or a female ancestor is a matronymic. Each is a means of conveying lineage.In many areas patronyms...
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
Dative case
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
:
The dative ending is -si:Tita/Tita-si.
Locative case
Locative case
Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
:
The locative ending is -θi: Tarχna/Tarχna-l-θi.
Plural number:
In one case, a plural is given for clan, "son", as clenar, "sons". This shows both umlaut
I-mutation
I-mutation is an important type of sound change, more precisely a category of regressive metaphony, in which a back vowel is fronted, and/or a front vowel is raised, if the following syllable contains /i/, /ī/ or /j/ I-mutation (also known as umlaut, front mutation, i-umlaut, i/j-mutation or...
and an ending -ar. Plurals for cases other than nominative are made by agglutinating the case ending on clenar.
Personal
The first person personal pronoun has a nominative mi ("I") and an accusative mini ("me"). The third person has a personal form an ("he" or "she") and an inanimate in ("it"). The second person is uncertain but some like the Bonfantes have claimed a dative singular une ("to thee") and an accusative singular un ("thee").Demonstrative
The demonstratives, ca and ta, are 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, ceiθi, clθ(i), eclθi; plural caiti, ceiθi.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"; zamaθi/zamθi-c, "gold/golden."
- possession or reference, -na, -ne, -ni: paχa/paχa-na, "Bacchus, Bacchic"; laut/laut-ni, "family/familiar" (in the sense of servant)
- collective, -cva, -chva, -cve, -χve, -ia: sren/sren-cva: "figure/figured"; etera/etera-ia, "slave/servile"
Adverbs
Adverbs are unmarked: etnam, "again"; θui, "now"; θuni, "at first." Most Indo-EuropeanIndo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
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 moodImperative mood
The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
. Tenses were present
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
and past
Past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
. The past tense had an Active voice
Active voice
Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages....
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-EuropeanIndo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
, this form is not marked for aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
, 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
Only a few hundred words of the Etruscan vocabulary are known with some certainty. The exact count depends on whether the different forms and the expressions are included. Below is a table of some of the words grouped by topic.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) (κηρός in Ancient Greek), arena (sand).
At least one word has an apparent Semitic origin: talitha "girl" (Aramaic; could have been transmitted by Phoenicians).
The word pera "house" may be a false cognate
False cognate
False cognates are pairs of words in the same or different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots. That is, they appear to be, or are sometimes considered, cognates, when in fact they are not....
to the Coptic language
Coptic language
Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the current stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the 1st century...
per "house".
The Etruscan numerals
Etruscan numerals
The Etruscan numerals were used by the ancient Etruscans. The system was adapted from the Greek Attic numerals and formed the inspiration for the later Roman numerals.There is very little surviving evidence of these numerals...
are known although debate lingers about which numeral means "four" and which "six" (huθ or śa). Numerals are listed in their own article. Of them, and of the basic words in general, Bonfante (1990) says: "What these numerals show, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is the non-Indo-European nature of the Etruscan language. Basic words like numbers and names of relationships are often similar in the Indo-European languages, for they derive from the same root."
The Etruscan numbers are (Bonfante 2002:96):
- thu
- zal (esal)
- ci
- śa (6?)
- mach
- huth (4?)
- semph (?)
- cezp
- nurph (?)
- śar
See also
- Combinatorial method (linguistics)Combinatorial method (linguistics)The combinatorial method is used to study texts which are written in an unknown language, and to study the language itself, where the unknown language has no obvious or proven well-understood close relatives, and there are few bilingual texts which might otherwise have been used to help understand...
- Corpus Inscriptionum EtruscarumCorpus Inscriptionum EtruscarumThe Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum is a corpus of Etruscan texts, collected by Karl Pauli and his followers since 1885. After the death of Olof August Danielsson in 1933, this collection was passed on to the Uppsala University Library.The CIE serves as a valuable reference index for many Etruscan...
- Etruscan alphabet
- Etruscan civilizationEtruscan civilizationEtruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...
- Etruscan documents
- Liber LinteusLiber LinteusThe Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis is the longest Etruscan text and the only extant linen book...
– An Etruscan linen book that ended as mummy wraps in Egypt. - Tabula CortonensisTabula CortonensisThe Tabula Cortonensis is a 2200-year-old, bronze artifact of Etruscan origin, discovered in Cortona, Italy. It may record for posterity the details of an ancient real estate transaction which took place in the ancient Tuscan city of Cortona, known to the Etruscans as Curtun...
– An Etruscan inscription. - Cippus perusinusCippus PerusinusThe Cippus Perusinus is a stone tablet discovered on the hill of San Marco, near Perugia, Italy, in 1822. The tablet bears 46 lines of Etruscan text exquisitely carved into it...
– An Etruscan inscription. - Pyrgi TabletsPyrgi TabletsThe Pyrgi Tablets, found in a 1964 excavation of a sanctuary of ancient Pyrgi on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy , are three golden leaves that record a dedication made around 500 BC by Thefarie Velianas, king of Caere, to the Phoenician goddess ʻAshtaret. Pyrgi was the port of the southern Etruscan...
– Bilingual Etruscan-Phoenician golden leaves.
- Liber Linteus
- Etruscan mythologyEtruscan mythologyThe Etruscans were a diachronically continuous population, with a distinct language and culture during the period of earliest European writing, in the Mediterranean Iron Age in the second half of the first millennium BC...
- Etruscan numeralsEtruscan numeralsThe Etruscan numerals were used by the ancient Etruscans. The system was adapted from the Greek Attic numerals and formed the inspiration for the later Roman numerals.There is very little surviving evidence of these numerals...
- Lemnian languageLemnian languageThe Lemnian language is a language of the 6th century BC spoken on the island of Lemnos. It is mainly attested by an inscription found on a funerary stele, termed the Lemnos stele, discovered in 1885 near Kaminia. However, fragments of inscriptions on local pottery show that it was spoken there by...
- List of English words of Etruscan origin
- List of Spanish words of Etruscan origin
- Pre-Greek substrate
- Raetic languageRaetic languageRaetic is an extinct language spoken in the ancient region of Raetia in the Eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by a limited number of short inscriptions in two variants of the Etruscan alphabet...
- Robert S. P. BeekesRobert S. P. BeekesRobert Stephen Paul Beekes is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics at the University of Leiden and the author of many books about Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed parent language of most of the European languages and of the languages of Central Asia and India...
- Tyrsenian languagesTyrsenian languagesTyrsenian , named after the Tyrrhenians , is a closely related ancient language family proposed by Helmut Rix , that consists of the extinct Etruscan language of central Italy, the extinct Raetic language of the Alps, and the extinct Lemnian language of the Aegean Sea.-The...
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.
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 by Dieter H. Steinbauer, 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.