ETRUSCAN LANGUAGE. From the days of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who declared that Etruscan was like no other lan guage, to the present time, many attempts of various kinds, none completely successful, have been made to decipher the monu ments still extant of this difficult language. Scholars now base their labours on the internal study of the language and employ the principle of combination and chronology to elucidate less known details by established details, gaining some definite results.
There survive (1) a certain number of words pre served by Latin and Greek authors (see Skutsch bibl.) such as aisar = deos (Etr. ais = deity), ister = actor, whence the Latin histrio; (2) about 8,5oo inscriptions from the 7th century B.C. to the time of Augustus, nearly all of which have been collected in the Corpus, 90% of which are only proper names. The longest inscriptions are (a) the tablet of S. Maria di Capua (300 words) and the Cippus Perusianus (12o) ; (3) A liturgical text of about 1,500 words written in the wrappings of the famous mummy of the Museum of Agram (Zagreb). External evidence dates this in the 2nd century B.C. It should be remembered that Etruscan was used after the date of this material and that according to Ammian (xxiii., 5, Io) the soothsayers used it as a liturgical language up to the date of the 4th century A.D.
The alphabet closely resembled the Central and Greek alphabets of the Boeotian type specially and shows that Etruscan only possessed surd occlusives which tended to become spirants, as is shown by the variations in the records both of pure Etruscan words as sec and sex, lart and lare, acsi and axsi and in words borrowed from the Greek such as a rvpeba (acc.) and sporta, 0piaµf3os and triumpus, so that to the influence of an Etruscan substratum, scholars have attributed the change from c to h in the speech of Florence, e.g., hasa for case, polio for poco. In Etruscan f weakened to h as flastntru and hastntru, cafatia and cahatia. Then the short interior vowels are lately re duced and often disappear, perhaps with an initial accent. Mene laos is written Menle; Heracles, hercle; Achilleus, axle; Clutaime stre, Clutmsta. The Latin loan word pronopes becomes prumes.
Etruscan-Latin bilingual texts are rare, very short, do not always agree and are of very little help. The few definite features are as follows. In names borrowed from Greek, Etruscan distinguished gender by the terminating e for the masculine (hercle, axle, etc.) and ai, ei for the feminine (Elinai, -ei, Heeleene, eersipnai, -ei, Persephone). In certain true Etruscan names the feminine is sometimes in i, tare, fem. larei, or in ia, irne, fern. arnOia or in •, lautni (freed man), fern. lautniea. These variations may depend on the form of the root as in the case-end ings. The nominative is the normal form of the root. The genitive is in s or .f with roots ending in a vowel (seere and seeres), in ug, with roots ending in a consonant as velOur, velOurus: Oinxvil, and eanxvilug. The most characteristic genitive is in t and in dicates filiation, thus arne, arnecl, son of Arruns. It may even be added to another genitive, to form a genitive or filiative of the second degree, as velOur gives vdeurug son of Veleur and veleurugla, the son of the son of Veleur. The dative is sometimes in g identical with the genitive as Mi (this) Oupleag (to Thupel tha) alpan (as a gift) turce (he gave). The more usual form is in Si as aulegi (to Aulus) metelig (Metellus) ve(lus) (of Vel) Vesial (of Vesia) clengi (to the son) = To Aulus Metellus son of Vel and Vesia. The word for son is clan in the nominative, cleng, genitive and clengi, dative. It is not known whether an accusative existed. The plural is in ar: clan = son; clenar = sons; ais= deity; aisar = deities.
As to the verb, all that is definite is that the 3rd person singular of the perfect tense was in ce: amce = has been; turce = has given; tece = has raised; lupuce = has lived. Sometimes this ending is missing as avils xxxvi lupu = lived 35 years.
The order of the numbers on the dice found at Toscanella is open to question but it is regarded as probable that max =I; zal= 2 ;
ci = 5 and
It is known that 7, 8, 9 are cezp, seme, muv, but their exact identification is not settled. Tens were formed by adding -a/x; thus, from ci = 5, we get cealx, celx = so, and from cezp we get cezpalx.
The number of words definitely known by bilingual inscrip tions or as contained in concordances is so limited that it is still impossible to decipher accurately any part of a lengthy text such as that on the Zagreb rolls. The following words are known: usil = sun; tiv = moon; alpan = offering; fleres = statue; zamaeiman = golden brooch; hineial = soul; lautn= family; ril, avil= age or year; ati = mother; puia = wife; sec, sex= daughter; 6ura = brother; nefts = grandson—borrowed from Latin nepos, mi = this; -m, -c = and. The syntax is known only through very simple phrases such as: pumpui larOi puia larOal clevsinas avelegla sex sentinal eanxvilus = Larthi Pompeia, wife of Larth Clevsinas son of Aulus, daughter of Tanaquilla Sentinei; or trepi Oanxvil vipenas arnOal arneialigla puia = Tanaquilla Trebia, wife of Arruns Vipena, son of Arruns.
Origins.—Opinion is still divided as to the Lydian origin of the Etruscans as recounted by Herodotus. Some regard them as indigenous in Italy on the ground that, apart from archaeological evidence, it is impossible, on the linguistic material available, to identify the affinities of Etruscan with any other form of speech. Others point to the use by Lydian and that in the Caucasian languages of the genitive in 1, to the plural in ar found in Cau casian speech, to the copula -c found in Lydian (see AsIANIc LANGUAGES), to the presence in Lycian and Etruscan of an important number of nominal suffixes, and to the discovery in Lemnos of an inscription in a language closely allied to Etruscan. F. de Saussure (Recueil, p. 573) assigned as Asianic origin to the ending
in T vpartvos and V. Thomsen ranged Etruscan with the Caucasian group.
These views are not necessarily contradictory. It may be surmised that the first migration of Etruscans (Tu[r]sci) moved from Asia Minor at an early date to Greece (Pelasgians) and were soon separated from the other branch (Turseni) of the same stock who remained in Asia Minor whence they spread much later. This hypothesis explains the existence and the paucity of contacts between Etruscan and Asianic languages. Until a lengthy bilingual text has been discovered, we depend on the internal study of the language, a slow, difficult but relatively sure method. In 1928 Prof. Alfredo Trombetti read before the Inter national Congress of Languages at The Hague his discoveries in connection with the dicipherment of Etruscan inscriptions.
the Reports of the congress and Anthropos, parts
(1928).
(E. BEN.)
