ETRUSCAN LANGUAGE

language spoken by the ancient Etruscan people of Etruria (now largely Tuscany and sections of Lazio and Umbria) in Italy, who were early neighbours of the Romans. Etruscan does not seem to be an Indo-European language, although it was apparently influenced in its latest formative developments by that language family. The Etruscan language is known mainly from epigraphic records dating from the 7th century BC to the first years of the Christian Era. There are some 10,000 of these inscriptions, mainly brief and repetitious epitaphs or dedicatory formulas. However, there are some exceptions to the general brevity of the inscriptions, found in a variety of places. One example includes a text of 281 lines written on strips of linen cloth. These had originally been a book, which, however, was cut into strips and used in Egypt as a wrapping for a mummy. Another example is a bronze model of a sheep's liver found at Piacenza and probably representing the Etruscan microcosm in a form used for instruction in divination; it has 45 words on it. Despite many attempts at decipherment and some claims of success, the Etruscan records still defy translation. For some words, however, the grammatical category has been established, and for fewer still, a meaning has been assigned. The fact that Etruscan writing has an alphabet derived from one of the Greek alphabets is important because sound values can then be assigned with some degree of precision to each symbol. A marked tendency to make all vowels in a word similar or identical is characteristic: Greek Klutaimestra, which if transliterated directly into Etruscan would be cluthemestha, actually occurs as cluthumustha and clutmsta. Greek Alexandros appears as elchsntre. The consonant cluster of elchsntre, while extreme, is not untypical of Etruscan spelling; words thus written have led some to suggest that a very economical spelling system may have been used that was far removed from the reality of pronunciation. In earliest times Etruscan had no word division or punctuation. In about the 6th century BC a system of dots, consisting of four, three, or two dots inscribed vertically, was introduced to mark word boundaries and, in some instances, to indicate syllables and abbreviations. language isolate spoken by close neighbours of the ancient Romans. The Romans called the Etrustcans Etrusci or Tusci; in Greek they were called Tyrsenoi or Tyrrhenoi; in Umbrian and Italic language their name can be found in the adjective turskum. The Etruscans' name for themselves was rasna or rasna. The Etruscans lived in Italy in the region of modern Tuscany, in an area bounded by the Arno River on the north, the Tiber River on the southeast, and the Tyrrhenian Sea on the west. At one time they controlled most of an area extending south from Milan through Marzabotto and Sarsina to the Adriatic Sea north of Ancona, and to the southwest their rule extended as far as Capua, Naples, and Pompeii. For the history of the Etruscans and Etruria, see Ancient Italic peoples. Additional reading The following sources provide accurate and reliable information on Etruscan: M. Pallottino, Etruscologia, 6th ed. (1968; Eng. trans., The Etruscans, 1955), the standard work; A.J. Pfiffig, Die etruskische Sprache (1969), an excellent and complete statement of what is known about the Etruscan language; and Murray Fowler and R.G. Wolfe, Materials for the Study of the Etruscan Language, 2 vol. (1965), which contains the inscriptions with indexes of several kinds for easy referencethere is no grammatical information included. Murray Fowler