Four small articles on the Etruscan Language

by Thanchvil Cilnei

Getting acquainted with the Etruscan Language

I. The Etruscan Texts

Except for the Liber Linteus of Zagreb, the Etruscan language is only known to us through inscriptions on walls (of tombs), on sarcophagi,  urns, stelai, bases of statues, vases, little images, lamps, mirrors, gold plates, dice, the bronze model of a sheep's liver and some more. Thesetexts date are from several areas of Etruria and date from several periods. The oldest Etruscan inscriptions date from about 700 BC, the youngest ones date from about 20 AD. In this long period of Etruscan inscriptions, the development of the Etruscan language can be distinguished quite easily. A clear period of change in the Etruscan language, according to what the inscriptions have shown us, is the period between 490 and 460 BC. In this time, all vocals in the second syllable of Etruscan words vanish: Menerva becomes Menrva, Aranth becomes Arnth and so on. The texts from before 490-460 BC are called archaice, the texts from after that period are called recent. An other development is that ai became ei and that this -ei (at the ending of a word) became -e. Further changes have been few. Stability and homegenity are two very distinctive features of the Etruscan language. Some have supposed that these two features show that this homogenity was artificial and that the Etruscan language, which has come down to us, was a standardized language, but this is no common opinion. Three large areas can be pointed out where most of the inscriptions have been found: Etruria itself, Campania and Northern Italy. In Campania, the area around Naples, the Etruscan language arrived with its speakers around 600 BC. We are dealing with two Campanian areas, colonized by Etruscans here, one area around Capua, probably colonized from Southern Etruria, the other area around Sorrento, colonized from overseas by people from Central Etruria. In Northern Italy, we have Etruscan inscriptions from the Po-valley, i.e. from Ravenna until Milan, and in Liguria. The borders of Etruria itself are clearly known: the Tiber river to the South and East, the Arno to the North, the Tyrrhenian Sea to the West. Large centers of Etruscan culture were: Caere, Vei and Falerii, then Vulci, Tarquinia, Volsinii and Orvieto (of which the Etruscan name is not known) in the South, Rusellae, Vetulonia and Populonia near the shore and in the North Volaterrae and Faesulae. In the East there were Arretium, Cortona, Clusium and far out near the Umbrian border, Perusia. Also outside of the Etruscan realm, to the East, near Rimini, Etruscan inscriptions have been found. In reading the texts on the inscriptions, these must be separated into two groups: the ones from Southern and Nothern Etruria. These distinctions, North and South, are about differences in script and writing, but also about differences in language, but these are quite few. The distinction line between North and South Etruria, according to script and language differences, has been made from Vulci to Volsinii. There are no big differences in dialects; only in Perusia some major differences have been found, probably caused by a strong Umbrian, i.e. non-Etruscan element in the population of that area, which is so close to Umbria. The number of preserved Etruscan texts is quite large: about 10,000. Ninety percent of these are tomb inscriptions. The largest part of these consist of nothing more than the name of the deceased person buried in the tomb and some regular formulas. Massimo Pallottino edited the most important Etruscan inscription texts together in his work Testimonia Linguae Etruscae (TLE), which saw its first and second edition in 1968, about 900 texts. The largest texts preserved in Etruscan inscriptions are the following: The Tile of Capua consist of 60 lines of text, but only about half of it can be read. It has been interpreted als a ritual calendar. The Cippus of Perugia is a smaller text with its 46 lines, but it has been preserved very well. The cippus is the text of a kind of contract between two families. The Round Lead Plaque of Magliano is somewhat smaller than the cippus. The text is dealing with sacrifice offerings. The Little Bronze Plaque of Santa Marinella is about the same size as the Lead Plaque of Magliano, it seems to be dealing with offerings too, although this is not certain; the item is heavily damaged. The Gold Plaques of Pyrgi are quite important: two of them have a text in Etruscan and the third has a text in Phoenician, the language of the Carthaginians, which is quite well known and translatable. The third plaque gives about the same text as the two Etruscan ones, only in a shorter version. The Liber Linteus of Zagreb is a ritual calendar, written on linen, a kind of linen book, cut into ribbons to serve as a series of bindings to wrap a mummy in. The text of the Liber Linteus is the longest Etruscan text preserved to this day. It's a very young Etruscan text, dating from the 1st century BC, but it is almost surely copied from other, older texts. We know this, because the scribe or scribes sometimes copied the archaic spelling. Especially from these larger texts, like the Liber Linteus, it shows how little is still know of the Etruscan language: the larger the text, the more difficult it gets to translate it. There simply is so many that we still don't understand of it completely, that it isn't worth while to guess or give a summary of all the guessing attempts in translation that have been made before. But also when we are dealing with the shorter inscriptions, our knowledge is limited. Our first and foremost problem is the translation of Etruscan words. Would we know a great deal more of the meaning of Etruscan words, then it would be easier to read the texts, for the Etruscan grammar and syntax are fairly well known or clear to us. The history of research into the Etruscan language reaches back to the 16th century, when it was compared to Hebrew. More often linguists have tried to compare Etruscan to other ancient, but known and deciphered languages: the Bask language, Caucasian languages, Finnish-Ugrian, even to the Dravidian languages in Southern India (of which the Tamil language is the most well known). Of course comparison has been made to Indo-european languages: Latin, Osco-Umbrian, Greek, Armenian, Albanian. Recently it has been suggested, that Etruscan could be a form of the Hittite language, the Indo-european language belonging to the biblical Hittites who dwelled in Asia Minor. All these researches have resolved nothing. The Etruscan language seems to have become isolated, i.e. its  relative languages have gone without leaving behind a scriptural heritage, except perhaps for the Lemnian language, of which only one inscription (the famous Lemnian Stele) is known. The Stele of Lemnos This event dealing with the Etruscan language having become isolated is not very special; from the lingual relatives the Bask language must have had, nothing is known either. So, the 'etymological' method, which tries to compare the Etruscan language with other known languages, can't be used in a proper way. This, by the way, doesn't keep linguists from trying to do so, of course. An other way to get something out of the Etruscan language is the 'combinatory' method, i.e. by using ones healthy common sense in dealing with words that seem intranslatable and of course in using everything that is already known: what an inscription was for, what can be expected to be read in an inscription in this and that period, in this and that area, and so on. The greatest expectation of archaeologists and linguists to get to know more about the Etruscan language comes from finding more and more new  reading (i.e. inscription) material. The most important bilingual text, in fact the only substantial bilingual text, the Gold Plaques of Pyrgi, were not found until 1964. It must be possible for us to find a very substantial Etruscan-Latin bilingual inscription...!

II. Getting to write Etruscan: the Alphabet

Learning to write Etruscan-the alphabet The Etruscan alphabet was used from campania in the South of Italy onto the Alps region and was adopted by the Umbrians, the Oscs, the Veneti, probably also by the Latini, including the Romans, who took over the letter C to indicate the "k"-sound. Even the German rune signs are probably partly adopted from the Etruscan alphabet. The Etruscan Alphabet The oldest inscriptions concearning the Etruscan alphabet date shortly after 700 B.C. from Southern Etruria. However, some alphabets rely on an even older system. The alphabet on an ivory wax tablet from Marsiliana d'Albegna dates 675 or 650 B.C. Here we find a letter B and a letter D, which are not found in any other inscriptions, for the Etruscan language didn't have a sound "b" and "d" and therefore no use for these letters. Etruscan had no "g" either, the letter used for a sound familiar to "g" was C, which, as we saw already, was written to denounce a "k"-sound. Also the sound "o" was unknown to Etruscan. The sound "k" was not always written the same way. In the North, the Etruscans were used to write only a K for this sound, while in the South more letters were used: C preceding an I or E Q preceding U and O K elsewhere See f.e.: kacenas, cenqunas Q preceding U and O, elsewhere K, was used in the Greek written language as well. This use of different letters for the "k"-sound preceding different vowels probably came from the Greek names of those letters: K = KAppa, Q = KOppa and C for the rest of the letter combinations (i.e. before I and E), perhaps because of the Hebrew name of the letter used (i.e. Gimel) instead of the Greek name "Gamma". As time passed by, the C would be commonly used in Southern Etruria and Northern Etruria would take over this use even later (around 250 B.C.). By the end of the 3rd century B.C., the letter C would be used for all "k"-sounds in Etruria and, later on, in the Latin of the Romans (whereas the K as a letter would stay on to exist in names like Karthago next to Carthago and Kaeso next to Caeso) In general, the South influenced the North in Etruria; the Southerns tended to have a larger prestige in the Etruscan world. There are five letters in Etruscan for the "s"-sound, whereas the Etruscan language only knew two "s"-sounds. The letters Sameg (transcribed as an S with a cross on top) and X (transcribed as an S with a dot on top of it) only seldom appear in inscriptions. Two other S-letters, the Sigma (= "s") and the San ("S'") provide this dilemma to modern readers, that they were used the other way round in the South and in the North, like this: South: sethre --- North: s'ethre; Sethre is a first name in Etruscan South: s'uthi --- North: suthi; this word means "grave" Linguists do not know why this was done and what is the cause of this phaenomenon. And in Caere, yet another s-letter was used, the (as transcribed) S apostrophe, written by the Caeretans as a Greek sigma with four strokes. The letter Z was used in Etruscan for the sound "ts", which supposedly was pronounced as one sound. The letters th, ph and kh are, just like in Greek, all used to denounce one sound: t/h, p/h and k/h Next: Learning to write etruscan-the origin of writing To be continued

II. Getting to write Etruscan: the Alphabet

Learning to write Etruscan-the origin of writing As far as the origin of the Etruscan alphabet is concearned,linguists have strongly thought of the Greeks, especially the inhabitants of the Greek island Euboea, who founded the city of Cumae (in Campania) and Pithekoussa (the island of Ischia). They used the western Greek alphabet, which differs from the eastern Greek alphabet mainly by three letters, added by the western Greek people to the, more known to us, eastern Greek or Ionian letters. In Ionian Greek, phi= p+h, chi= k+s and psi=k+h. This last mentioned system was adopted by the Etruscans; the letter chi was seldom used, but from this system, the Romans derived X=ks, so the letter that became the letter X known today for the sound "ks". However, the sameg -s and the san -s are more difficult matters: the sameg was not known to Greek and the san was not known to western Greek. Therefore, it is believed that there have been other influences as well, for example from Corinth, where a Dorian dialect was spoken. Another problem is the f. The Etruscans added a letter for the f, all the way at the end of the alphabet, in the shape of an 8. The Greeks didn't know this one. A letter sign like 8 appeared in Lydia, Asia Minor. Some have concluded that this was an argument to seek the origin of the Etruscans definitely in Asia Minor, particularly in Lydia, where the Etruscans, according to the legend, were told to have originated from. Out of the question, however, is that the Etruscans or their ancestors, could have taken the letter 8 with them on their journey from Asia Minor to Italy. Why? On eof the reasons is that, if the Etruscans had brought their alphabet, more or less, from Asia Minor, it would have had more letters from the eastern Greek/Ionian alphabet than it actually had. It is not quite probable that they or their ancestors brought any form of writing or alphabet with them on their trek from anywhere to Italy, for the chronology of the development of their writing shows that this development took place in Italy altogether. This development started with the adoptation of the alphabet from the Greeks who had come to Italy, more precisely after these Greeks had come to Italy. The sign 8 is also found in Southern Semitic writings. How the 8 became part of the Etruscan alphabet is, therefore, not yet entirely clear. The Etruscans could have picked it up at several places and from several peoples. In Southern Etruria, at first Fh or hF was used instead of 8 for the sound that was supposed to be written ith that letter. This was also the case in Rome: out of Fh and hF the letter F was got. An F (N.B. name of this letter is "digamma" or double gamma) is a very thickly pronounced w (like the L with a stroke in its leg in Polish). Later, the letter v came into use instead of F and F, in Latin, was used for the sound "f". Next episode: The direction of writing and interpunction.