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(Samples taken from II.gif and VII.gif)The used alphabet is shown in the table above, in traditional Etruscan order. Historically it belongs to the 'mid-later style' (4th-1st century BCE). Lacking the abundance of texts available to students of Greece and Rome, Etruscologists have had to glean as much information as possible from the seven centuries' worth of inscriptions that the Etruscans left on the tablets, boundary markers, hand mirrors, vases, sarcophagi, coins, and other items recovered so far. The Etruscan alphabet and spelling inherited from Greek traders in the 8th century BCE, was strictly phonetic (unlike the English spelling, which is historical).
"The alphabet derives from a Greek alphabet originally learned from the Phoenicians. It was disseminated in Italy by the colonists from the island of Euboea during the 8th century BCE and adapted to Etruscan phonetics; the Latin alphabet was ultimately derived from it. (In its turn the Etruscan alphabet was diffused at the end of the Archaic period [c. 500 BCE] into northern Italy, becoming the model for the alphabets of the Veneti and of various Alpine populations; this happened concurrently with the formation of the Umbrian and the Oscan alphabets in the peninsula.)" (Quoted from: Bibl. [8].)
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FONT ! You can  download all twelve pages of the Book in zipped doc format (only 26kB!), with embedded Etruscan font (for Microsoft Word 97). Please note, that here I did not distinguish the sure reading from uncertain or reconstructed passages, and that some words can be doubtful, and changed in the future! Please use the original gif images from the above table as a reference! For any other use of the Etruscan script, you will need to install the Etruscan Font (15kB)! Instructions are included in the Readme.txt. |
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Did you notice, that some letters are missing from the Etruscan alphabet? For example B, D, G etc. Why? You can find out this, and more about spelling and pronunciation in the:
Development of the Etruscan alphabet.
BACK TO: THE ETRUSCAN LIBER LINTEUS
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