(DISSERTATION)
Gerhard Meiser
The Etruscan language -outside the IE family
(Język etruski -poza rodzin± indoeuropejsk±)
The title of my lecture is containing an allusion, that the Etruscan language - as a language not belonging to the Indo-European language family - was an astonishing and unexpected phenomenon. All over Europe today we speak IE languages - Slavic, Romanic or Germanic etc. In ancient epochs the situation was very similar. Only on the periphery we can find some non IE languages - Basque in the Pirineans, Ugro-Finnish in Finland and Russia. The Hungarians, whose language does not belong to the IE family, had arrived to Europe in the middle ages and took over spaces earlier inhabited by Slavs. It seems quite unexpected that in the completely Latinized ancient Italy, only a few kilometres from Rome, under the walls of the city of Veio, would develop an area of a totally different language and quite specific culture - the land of the Etruscan nation.
The Etruscans are a different nation. This was confirmed by ancient Greek and Roman writers. The view of the debauched life of the Etruscans, for example, was an eternal cultural stereotype, motivated by the position of the women in the society - Etruscan women were more independent than in Rome or in Greece. This specific feature of the Etruscan culture we can see in existing Etruscan texts, in grave inscriptions: very often, but not always, we can find beside the name and surname of the father, also the surname (sometimes even the name) of the mother, which can not be found on other ancient grave inscriptions. It was a big surprise for Greek and Italian writers that wives participated in banquets - something that was impossible to think for Greek wives - Etruscan wives reclined on the same sofa alongside men - proof of this are paintings and Etruscan sculptures.
(Image: http://www.netaxs.com/~salvucci)
Immorality - although apparent only - is of course always a grateful theme for slander, even in literature. We can admit, that this is a peculiarity of Etruscan culture, which can not be mixed up with the rather patriarchal image of the ancient IE cultures, and has roots in different pra-Indoeuropean grounds. Even it could be said, that the Etruscans had a matriarchal society. This statement is an exaggeration though, because grave inscriptions themselves show, that the father's line in the family was a decisive line in the inheritance laws and so on.
On the other hand, according to the Romans, the Etruscan nation was very religious - the Etruscan priests were carefully investigating the will of gods to predict the future. They were observing the flight of the birds, lightning strikes, entrails of animals dedicated as offerings etc. The Roman senate employed a collegium of Etruscan priests to do this. When Christianity came in the 4th century CE (Common Era), this practice ceased. These specialists had to assess all unusual events which could be linked with the will of Gods. Svetonius, a Roman writer from 2nd c CE, tells us an example, that just before the death of the emperor Augustus, lightning strike hit the statue of Julius Caesar, and broke away from the inscription "CAESAR" - the letter "C", so it left only "AESAR". Etruscan priests were asked, what does it mean, and they said: "After 100 days, because "C" means number 100, the emperor will be taken to aisar - to "gods", because aisar in Etruscan language means "gods". And this happened: after 100 days, Augustus died and became God - according to the rituals. Such examples are very rare, where the Latin and Greek texts give the same meaning to an Etruscan word - here we can find word: ais "god" and plural aesar "gods" - we can test the meaning of this word in the Etruscan texts.
My main concern is the distinction of the Etruscan language. This language does not belong to the IE family. For many academics this is not very obvious, but I'll come back later to this problem. For the understanding of which family - IE or some other - does this language belong, the interpretation of Etruscan texts did not help much. The Etruscan language and texts must be understood by themselves - and to show the way to do this, without speculation - will be the purpose of the first part of this article.
1. The Etruscan language exists only in epigraphic texts written or painted on walls, sarcophagi, ash holders, on earthenware vessels, metal plates or stone tablets. Only one exception is a book from linen, the so called "Liber Linteus Zagrebiensis" (now kept in Museum of Archeology in Zagreb). This book, preserved possibly one third of it, includes 12 columns of the remains of a liturgical calendar of an unknown city, with regulations, in which day, for which god, one needs to give offering and what pray is necessary to pronounce. This is the most extensive Etruscan text.
The inscriptions on the contrary are very short. Their number is around 9000. They exist in "Etruria proper", limited from north by river Arno, from east and south by river Tiber, and from west by the "Etruscan Sea", or Tyrrhenian Sea (Tyrrhenoí, is an old Greek name for Etruscans). "Etruria proper" belongs to "Etruscan region", Toscania, from Florence to Umbria and Latium regions (north of Rome). Apart of this, the Etruscans established colonies on north of Apennines - Etruscan cities were Bologna, Adria (north of Venice) or Mantua. Etruscan colonies were located on south in Campania - in city Capua and few smaller places - and also on island Corsica. In all this regions we have Etruscan inscriptions. Etruscans have never had any united political state - organization which like at Greeks relied on individual big cities, very often in conflicts with each other, what made for Romans in the 4th and 3rd c BCE (Before the Common Era) very easy task to conquer the whole Etruscan region.
2. Etruscans have been the first in western Europe, who - at the end of 8th c BCE - learnt to write from the Greeks. The first Greeks who colonized Italy, have been the inhabitants of the town Chalkis, located on the island of Eubea. In the first half of the 8th c they founded colonies on island Ischia in the bay of Naples, carrying with themselves they native alphabet. This alphabet in scientific nomenclature, belonging to the so called "red" group, is different from the so called "blue" one, which we know as "normal" Greek alphabet. So for example letter "X", in normal Greek alphabet (also in related Russian) denotes [ch], but in "red" alphabets denotes [ks]. This phonetic value the Etruscans adopted from the Greeks, and later the Romans from the Etruscans. On this way the same letter in western European alphabets means "iks", and in Cyrillic alphabets "chi".
Small digression: I said, the Romans (and indirectly also we) did not adopt our alphabet straight from the Greeks, but intermediary via the Etruscans. How do we know this?
We need to understand the process how one nation is borrowing writing from the others. The problem of introduction of an alphabet (alphabetization) is that different languages have different phonologic systems. An alphabet, more or less easy to adopt for one language, is not that easy for an other. Good example is the Polish alphabet. When Polish people adopted the Latin alphabet in the middle ages, they were short of letters for phonemes that in Latin were not existing, for example vowels /ę/, /±/ or consonants /sz/, /z/, /c/ etc. On other hand the Latin alphabet has few letters not used in Polish like Q, V, X. Of course there is a long time in adequate adaptations, unless there is a direct succession.
In the beginning of the alphabetization, pupils in Etruscan schools started to learn the Greek alphabet with pure Greek pronunciation, which was probably unfavourable for them. Because the Etruscan language is different from European languages, there is no phonologic difference between voiced and voiceless consonants, like between /p/, /t/, /k/ and /b/, /d/, /g/; The Etruscans knew - at least in those periods - only voiceless consonants /p/, /t/, /k/. There was no need for Greek letters beta (
), delta (
), gamma (
), or /b/, /d/, /g/. "" and "" have been thought in schools for hundreds of years, because by the 7th and 6th c they have been preserved in the alphabet. But these letters were never used in Etruscan texts. After couple of Etruscan school reforms in the 6th c BCE, these letters have been taken away from the alphabet - from this time they are not existing any more in the Etruscan alphabet.
Different is the story with the letter gamma, or /g/. Not knowing this phoneme in their language, Etruscan teachers got an idea to use this letter as "K" ("C"), but only before frontal vowels /e/, /i/, on the contrary before /a/ they write "K", and before /u/ letter "Q" (vowel /o/ in Etruscan is not existing). Example for this rule is the text:
We can not understand this text well, but this is the illustration for this rule. The Romans adopted this, as seen on the oldest Latin inscriptions, like:
For Romans letter gamma, the third letter of Greek alphabet, had value /k/ (which we pronounce as [ts]). And so the Greek alphabet is starting with "Alpha, Beta, Gamma", but our Latin with "ABC" - this is a straight Etruscan influence. From 4th c BCE it was created a very different letter to mark the consonant [g] - our letter "G".
The alphabetization quickly took over the whole Etruria. From the 7th c BCE we find inscriptions from all Etruscan locations. Effectively, this new cultural method fascinated the people. Following this, there have been found lots of personal materials for exercising the alphabets, very often of symbolic shapes: not only alphabets, but for example ink chamber from Caere (today Cerveteri) from the beginning of the 7th c, on which we can see not only alphabet, but also examples of didactical exercises, how to learn to write a letter. Even today we are using this method:
Every Etruscan city had it's own peculiarity, and because of that peculiarity they developed different letter forms and different orthographic traditions. Despite of this, the reading of Etruscan texts never imposed problems, except the situation when the sample is in very bad condition or simply the Etruscan writer had such a bad handwriting, so even his contemporaries had difficulties to read. Apart of this, whole Etruscan texts are readable for us, but we can not always understand them.
First Etruscan texts are originating from more than 700 BCE. Tradition on the contrary is disappearing during the emperor August in the beginning of our era - from this epoch we find the last inscriptions. Maybe Etruscan language was still used in families and known to a few specialists already interested in Etruscans. Last ones who used this language were possibly the priests from the previously mentioned collegium. But from government use the Etruscan language has gone in the 1st c BCE - this was because Romans were giving special Roman laws to free Italian cities in 89 BCE, after so called "bellum sociale", that means after the war between Romans and the allies. To follow the Roman laws - and rules - and to take advantage from it, it was necessary to use the official language, that means Latin. And so the coloured linguistic map of the old inhabitants of Italy, on which we recognize the names of some pre-differentiated languages - Latin, Etruscan, Greek, Faliscan, Umbrian, Oscan, Sabine, Messapian etc. - in the first century BCE suddenly becomes one coloured - everywhere Latin took over, only Greek survived long enough due to it's cultural and technological prestige.
3. How can we understand and make interpretation of 9000 texts? How come we have ability to reconstruct the meaning of information contained in them?
When we have a language which we don't know, namely a dead language, to understand this language, it is useful to have a bilingual text. For example the old Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered via a bilingual text. In Etruscan we can find a few bilingual texts, although these texts are quite simple and with minimal value. A classical example is a grave inscription form Perugia:
Etruscan text says: Pupli (name) Velimna (surname), son of father Aule (name of the father) and mother Cahati (her surname). Latin text is applying the same formula, and is adding the first name of the deceased Violens.
Very interesting from lexical point of view is the text from Clusium (presently Chiusi):
In Latin "Quintus (name) Scribonius (surname), son of father Gaius". Here is interesting that this person has got different names depending of the situation: for his related Etruscans he was Vel - an old Etruscan name - but for Roman administration he was Quintus. His name he translates from Etruscan, we know verb 
- means "write", 
means "writer" or "man who is writing", like in Latin Scribonius.
The information value of bilingual texts is - you can see - inconspicuous, they number is minimal - maybe 20 or 30 from 9000.
Also minimal information value we have in the so called Etruscan words occurring in Greek or Latin texts, translated and commented trough ancient authors. Best such a word is the Etruscan ais "God" already mentioned. In voice, there is also preserved a peace of Etruscan calendar, for example: Aclius "June", Celius "September", Xosfer "November" - these expressions we can find also in the linen book "Liber Linteus". Description of one of the rituals is beginning as (LL VIII 3): 
20 (zathrumi¶) 4 (huthi¶)* September (celi) you need to carry (¶ucri) and kill (thezeri) offering animal (
) for God Neptune (nethunsl).
(*Note of the translator: 6?)
Lots of this can be wrong. Greek author Hesiod is passing down an Etruscan word kapra and he translates it as aiks, or "goat", obviously he was mixing the Etruscan language with Latin or a related language as Sabinian.
4. The etymologic method - this is searching for similar words in different languages, preferably in known ones, and looking for similarity in the meanings. You can not exclude that the Etruscan language can be close to the IE languages, or some language outside our IE family. To prove the similarity of the Etruscan language with similar IE languages, you must find similarity of structural - material rules. Until now no one proved the existence of this similarity.
Etruscans borrowed some words from the neighboring languages (for example vinum "wine", putlum "goblet" from Latin: vinum, poculum), and Romans taking from Etruscans, curiously from sphere of theatre like Latin words: persona "mask" (and what goes with it - "roll" in dramatization), histrio "actor", subulo "flute" are all of Etruscan origin. Moreover Livius is telling as, that the theatre art is coming to Romans via the Etruscans (s. 7,2,4).
This means that the Etruscan language is isolated in the linguistic maps, and knowledge of different languages is of no value for understanding the Etruscan texts.
5. In deciphering an unknown code - and the Etruscan language is in some sense an unknown code - useful method is the application of combinatorics: which elements of the language - on level of not understanding - are different combinations and contexts. Quickly can be shown, that the Etruscan language is changing the word endings. Such texts are:
From this text we can isolate suffix -al, of function which we don't know. By comparison with bilingual texts (compare. 3) we know that these texts have the structure of grave inscriptions, which can be generalized as: name of the deceased (he/she) (1) + surname (2) + name of the father (3). Suffix -al often (not exclusively) is appearing on the third position (3) of the formula - position of the same suffix - matching the word in the first position (1). Because on first position we have names, we can conclude that the word on third position is a name as well - evidently not of the deceased but of his/her father. Conclusion: ending -al can mean relation between daughter or son on one and father on other side: daughter/son of "this and this". From grammar point of view this can be explained in different ways: maybe this is an object case (genitive) or ablative - or also adjective possessive or diminutive, like in Russian language, for example Aleksiej Siergiejewicz Puszkin: Aleksiej Puszkin, son Siergieja. In Etruscan language ending -al serves as genitive case, because of the transgression also in the position discussed below, for example in dependency of verbal flexion*.
(*Note of the translator: lapsus calami, "rekcji" in original should read "fleksji"?)
Here is not possible to discuss the whole Etruscan grammar. Using combinatoric methods we have easy picture of Etruscan inflection, first of all nominal (the most difficult task is the verbal flexion).
6. In this moment the Etruscan language is very abstract. We know a lot of language elements, distribution, general functions, endings and roots etc. But we are far away to analyze even a short text..
Big advantage is that the Etruscan culture belongs to the ancient Italic cultures like: Romans, other inhabitants of Latium, Sabinians, Umbrians, Oscans and others. We know very well the Roman culture. This is close to the Etruscan. We have some patterns of communications between these nations.
Good examples are the grave inscriptions. I almost always come back to the cemetery subject, because 80% of our sources are coming from cemeteries. Walking through cemeteries, we can see that the structure of signs of Polish and German graves are similar. Names, Christian name and date of his/her death. Sometimes you have reason why he/she passed away. Very often you have inscription of: "Peace to his soul". Sometimes we can see old poems. In south Bavaria there are small village names on graves. In Germany and Poland all these grave signs are similar.
In conclusion, the Etruscan texts have generally the same structure like texts in other languages known to us, under one condition - the context is similar.
From the Etruscan texts we do not expect deep philosophical sentences about life and death, no prayers, no curses in case if somebody devastated the grave - just, like in whole of central Italy, only names of the deceased, father's name, sometimes cognomen, and this is specific for Etruscans, they often give mother's name, for example:
"Laris (name) Pinies (surname), son of Larth (name of the father) and Apunej (mother's surname)...", and also brother's name Vel here is as well mother's name Thanchvil:
After the word avils we have a number how old was the deceased. Word avils means probably "year" / "season". The word clan (Ta1.21) often we find after the father's name or mother's name, if the deceased was male. In females we have the word sex, example:
"Larthi Spantui, daughter of Larthiego Spantuego". But here we have a name of a second man - Arnth Partunu. He can not be a grandfather, because his name would be Arnth Spantu, so he must be her husband. This is how we know that the word puia means "wife".
7. How do we know that someone is a man or woman? First: the inflection in names and surnames of females are different. Second: on expensive ashtrays and sarcophagi very often we can see sculpture showing the deceased person, laying on sofa and drinking or eating. And even if the face and whole body is severely damaged, one more "tip" exists - necklaces on woman's necks.
This information which contains only names and surnames are found on 90% of grave inscriptions. Very rarely can we read more about the person, e.g. about somebody's political carrier, number of children and grandchildren, once was found information that someone wrote a book: (Ta1.17) 
- means books () of medical investigation of the liver (
) in victims.
Etruscology is assuring that 80% of Etruscan texts can be understood, but the series of grave inscriptions is so long, nearly endless - only from Clusium there is more than 2500 - the structure of the texts is almost reminiscent of that of the phone books. The question is: can this be a language document? This is a disappointment.
These boring texts have one big advantage: using such a big material we can study quite complicated "nominal inflections". The Etruscan grammar like the Latin grammar has different declinations: from arnth genitive case is arnthal, from laris - larisal, but genitive from vel goes to velus, from masculine pronoun remzna - remznas, but from female remznei- remznal etc. These inscriptions can be very interesting sources for historians, who are researching life of cities. For example Etruscan women after marriage did never loose their names. An Etruscan woman was always buried next to her husband. We know which family contacts have existed in cities. Which family was aristocratic family, land owners, and which one belonged to peasants or slaves. We can see how families climbed on the social ladder: the grandfather was still a slave (without any citizen's privileges and duties) from Greece, the grandson was already able to build an expensive painted burial chamber - and only the Greek name was indicating his non Etruscan origin.
You can see that Etruscology is an ideal interdisciplinary scientific branch. There is necessary of the cooperation of archaeologists, historians, linguists, history of arts and religion, knowledge of Latin and Greek texts, anthropologists etc.
8. Let's come back to the living word. The first alphabetization of Europe did not start from graves. First texts identify the owner of the given object, or act of offerings of those objects to somebody or to God. From different Italic languages we know, that often the object was addressed as live, for example:
"I am goblet, which belongs to Karkana", compare with Latin:
"I am water jar of Veleli, good girl's good water jar" or could be as well "pretty girl's pretty water jar" or "good jar for good girl" or "pretty jar to pretty girl".
Of course this inscription was not written by Velelia herself, but by her boyfriend, who was giving her this beautiful jar (the meaning of who this object belong to, to the girl or boy, can be read from the name itself; Etruscan, Armenian and Turkish languages do not have grammatical genders, names are differentiated according to the gender only from practical point of view). We really do not know, that 
mlakas, we saw on number of inscriptions means "good to good" or "genitive of good", or "beautiful to beautiful" or "genitive of beautiful"? Greek inscriptions of similar type often contain formula 
"nice, genitive of nice" (here we have almost referring to a nice boy). This formula is appearing on one of the oldest Latin inscriptions, from the same period, called Duenos (duenos, later bonus "good"). The text was found on three small containers for perfumes or for lipstick:
"The one who gave me as the present, swears by all, that one holds it sacred: if the girl is not nice to you, doesn't matter..." (what she was doing we can not understand). Only at the end at second line we can read: "to conciliate her with fluids" (which are in the containers). The last line goes like this: "Good one created me for good purpose for good person, so do not let the bad one to steal me".
Of course we can only to presume about this situation, because this situation is hidden under this text. We don't know the authentic girl, which was not happy with her boyfriend, but his friend gave her something, maybe this was wedding gift. Anyway, all this Etruscan, Latin, Greek texts, coming into Italy in the 7th and 6th c BCE are describing aristocratic youth life. Young people giving presents with comments, elegance and sense of humour. After revolutions in 6th c (we know this from Latin traditions, that Romans killed the last king Tarquinius Superbus, who was from Etruscan descent) this customs of giving gifts disappeared. After 5th c we cannot find any documents of this.
9. I can't talk about all the Etruscan texts we can find. For example tradesmen's inscriptions, e.g. : "I was made by this and this", or "I was painted by this one and this one", example:
"I was painted by Aranth".
In the later period, transcriptions inform about finishing building constructions, or (in last years of the Etruscan tradition) about contracts between families of selling or leasing land properties. Of course if the text is longer, it is much more difficult to understand. Very often we can give a global sentence based on some lexical signals or structure formula of the texts. But we are far away from understanding of every sentence, every word. Very often we have just a basic imagination of the meaning of particular words. The word fler for example is meaning some animal for offering, because the word is in a ritual text - on beginning of liturgy, usually with adjective zivas "alive". Later on, this adjective disappear - because the poor fler is already killed. In this moment we can not say if we are talking about bull, cow or swine etc. but fler is signifying an animal useful for offering. Last possibility is the most probable: gods know what they want and for which occasion they (Gods) can not be satisfied by sacrificed animal which is not precisely described.
After this dissertation, we can understand what is the base for interpretation of Etruscan texts: first you need to analyze as many as possible texts according to their structure: which words are located on which position, and which ones are connected, which are declinations. But of course you must take into account all possible already known information.
Second step is to confirm the context, global information of the text: what this can mean roughly. Or do we have lexical or structural signs that we can easily understand? Does the text have structural similarity to others, before analysis? What can we deduct from archaeological context?
Third task is to divide the global information to single parts of text - words. How important is every word for global information? Are the meanings of words matching with same words but in different texts? If some word means this-and-this, then different words must have very similar meaning etc. These conditional meanings are not very pleasant, because they work like castle built from cards: one card collapses and everything else will collapse. Apart of this we can well distinguish texts, which we can understand from the beginning to end - these texts are very short, but numerous - from those texts which we can understand to some degree or those, which we completely do not understand - we have only global hypothesis of the meaning of these contents. The interpretation of the Etruscan texts we can compare to a puzzle: sometimes we can find all parts very easily, then it is possible to create a complete picture, but sometimes there are big holes.
The inscriptions have that feature, that they contain the archeological relation (meaning), for example the item, which was inscripted. That relation can be the first information, what you can expect in the text.
The Etruscan tradition is giving us one more book (which is the oldest one in Europe), found in Egypt. It was already tattered in ancient times, and an Egyptian mummy was wrapped in it's linen bandages - even at that time no one could understand this text, and nobody needed this book. How do we know, what the book contains?
In a strange way the Etruscan numbers have been preserved from 1 to 6 on dices, comp.:
In Etruria (like everywhere in the world) on dice you can see cyphers or dots, but in two examples someone wrote the names of the numbers. By finding the names of numbers in texts together with names of months, already many years ago scholars could recognize, that we are dealing with some calendar, and very often the subsequent words ais "god", aeser "gods" or also 
, is showing that this is a religious calendar. Such calendars we find in different ancient languages, like Umbrian, related to Latin. And so we know, what can be written on this kind of calendars: inscriptions are specific, a date is always dealing with some kind of religious ceremony and offering sacrifice to some deity. Date is set up and also the reason, e.g.: men coming back from the war full of sins (because of the killings), or mention of a fire in the village what can be the sign of the anger of Gods. Later on, there is a mention of an offering (like recipe in the kitchen book): some suitable animal(s), apart of wine or milk, water or some cakes. Later on, we have a short story what to do with these gifts, for example first introduce these animals to god, next kill this animal, then put this meat to fire on altar. All these things are connected to prayers. All these texts are belonging to the same ancient culture of mid Italy, because the structure of this prayers are similar to Latin, Umbrian and probably also to Etruscan traditions. The essential text is more or less as following: "God, we give you the offerings and beg you: have the kindness for our town and citizens, take care of the people and animals." Sometimes this sentence is added: "If mistakes have been done, take them as done unknowingly."
At long and very complicated texts, we can use for interpretation the data from different languages, belonging to the same common culture. This does not quite mean, that we can understand every word. Typical Etruscan prayer for example is:
We can understand the first 5 words of the line: "Deity (flere) Neptune, for you (un) I give (
) nice (word we already know)" - or "good offering". The rest of the line is not understandable, but we know that word fa¶ei is signifying some gift. Word 
on the beginning of the second line is an adjective, corresponding to Neptune, because we know from different prayer, what was already referred to many gods, that instead of we have plural 
. Moreover sacnicleri, spureri means "for temple, for towns". The second line must mean: "You should be grateful for the temple and for the city!". Unfortunately we don't know the meaning of words hatec repinec. The expression 
has got the same extension of the word like ¶pureri "for city" (ending -c means "and" or "as well"). Word 
must be, in sure sense comparative to home or from similar category - we can call it - political. This is what we can say - the rest is a puzzle: like the ending as ¶pureri "for the city" (ending -c means "and" or "as well"). Word means something like "government", or "local community" or some part of this (for example army) - but in this moment we are not sure.
With this I finish my inference to the theme of interpretation of Etruscan texts. I would like to demonstrate, how can we understand - and where is the limit of our knowledge.
10. Can we connect the Etruscan language with some other languages of the world? Maybe we can find an answer about Etruscan origin?
In ancient times there was a different opinion about this subject. Herodotus, the Greek historian from the 5th c BCE thought, that the Etruscans migrated from Anatolia (more precisely from Lycia), because of famine and arrived to Italy to settle the lands previously inhabited by Umbrians, taking from them three hundred cities (Her. I 94).
Second theory comes from Dionysus of Halicarnassus, who was living during emperor Augustus. With this theory Etruscans did not come from outside: on the contrary, they are autochtonous on the Italian land (Dion.Hal. I 28,3).
This two theories are very actual today. In the meantime there have been found two languages, which are maybe related to Etruscan. These new discoveries are creating more problems, than solving them. Because one language is Rhaetian, which was used in times BCE in Tyrol and Alpine Italy (located between Innsbruck and Trydent). We have number of short inscriptions, it could be recognized with word creation and inflections very similar to Etruscan. We can find few words which are already known from the Etruscans.
The same we can say for the second language, related to the Etruscan, the ancient language of the isle of Lemnos in the Aegean Sea, in only few sentences, little longer but presented in very bad condition.
Which way to interpret these facts? Are those three languages, remnants of the European language before IE migration? Or part of pre-Etruscan people who migrated from Italy to Greece or vice versa?
Greeks call the Etruscans in Italy and the inhabitants of island Lemnos the same name Tyrrhenoí or Tursenoí. Morphologic analysis of this name, created by suffix -eno- from root turs- is showing an "eastern" origin. Because only there, in northern parts of the Aegean Sea we have this names of inhabitants or peoples. From city Abydos for example was created a name for it's citizens Abydenoí. That means Herodotus was maybe right - as it often happened. He said, that the Etruscans came from east. But the problem to answer the question remains, how did the Rhaetian language arrive to the valley of the Alps.
The Etruscan language in one sense is a test for general linguists and Indoeuropeists: how useful our theoretical knowledge and our experience is for interpretation of the ancient texts in ancient Italy. This is why Etruscology is difficult, and why lots of academics and dilettantes try to solve this puzzle. I wished to show on this presentation, what possibility we have in this matter and to show couple of pictures from the passing world, with all it's exotics - when children start to write and read "ci ca cu ce, vi va vu ve" and when boys give presents to girls - this is not entirely alien for us.
(For Etruscan texts quoted, see "Bibliography").
Small Etruscan bibliography
Texts:
- ET - Etruskische Texte. Editio minor, ed. H. Rix., Bd. I: Einleitung, Konkordanz, Indices. Bd. II: Texte. ScriptOralia 23/24. Tübingen (Gunter Narr Verlag) 1991.
- CIE - Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum, Vol I. ? III. Leipzig 1893-1921, Firenze 1970, Roma 1982, 1987.
- TLE - M. Pallottino, Testimonia Linguae Etruscae, Firenze 1954, 1968.
Basic literature:
- L. Banti, Il Mondo degli Etruschi, Roma (Biblioteca di Storia Patria) 1969.
- M. Cristofani (Ed.), Gli Etruschi, Firenze 1984.
- Tłumaczenie niemieckie: M. Cristofani [Hrsg.], Die Etrusker, Stuttgart-Zürich (Belser Verlag) 1985.
- J. Heurgon, La vie quotidienne chez les Étrusques, Paris 1961
- M. Pallottino, Etruskologia, Milano 1984.
- A.J. Pfiffig, Einfuehrung in die Etruskologie [Wstęp do etruskologii]. Probleme, Methoden, Ergebnisse, Darmstadt (WBG) 1984.
- H. Rix, L'etrusco tra l'Italia e il mondo mediterraneo, L'Italia e il Mediterraneo. Atti del convegno della Societŕ di Glottologia. Fisciano-Amalfi-Raito, 4-6 nov. 1993, a cura di Addolorata Landi, Pisa 1996.
- M. Torelli, Storia degli Etruschi, Roma-Bari (Ed. Laterza) 1981.
Gerhard Meiser,
Uniwersytet im. Marcina Lutra
(University of Martin Luther)
Halle/Saale (Niemcy/Germany)
This is a lecture from March this year in Katowice.
(Note of the translator: published in School-annals 'Postscriptum' Nr. 21, pp. 19-47, spring 1997).
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