 | Etruscan language: Encyclopedia II - Etruscan language - Texts
Etruscan language - Texts
Helmut Rix, Etruskische Texte, works as a kind of incomplete thesaurus, a main key to studying the Etruscan language.
First of all Rix and his collaborators present the only two unified (though fragmentary) texts available in Etruscan: the Liber Linteus used for mummy wrappings (now at Zagreb, Croatia) and the Tabula Capuana (the inscribed tablet from Capua).
All the rest of the recovered inscriptions follow, grouped according to the localities in which they were found: Campania, Latium, Falerii and Ager Faliscus, Veii, Caere, Tarquinia, Ager Tarquinensis, Ager Hortanus, and finally, outside Italy, in Gallia Narbonensis, in Corsica and in North Africa. (Two inscriptions from Sardinia, published in 1935, escaped Rix.)
Less precisely identified inscriptions follow, and finally inscriptions on small movable objects: bronze mirrors and cistae (boxes), on gems and coins.
Archeological inscriptions in Etruscan include inner walls and doors of tombs, engraved stele, ossuaries, mirrors and votive gifts.
Inscriptions are highly abbreviated and often casually formed, so that many individual letters are in doubt among the specialists.
The Pyrgi Tablets are a short bilingual text in Etruscan and Phoenician.
Some surviving Etruscan inscriptions appear on thin gold sheets. A "book" of gold sheets bound with gold rings went on display in May 2003 at the National History Museum in Sofia, Bulgaria. It consists of six bound sheets of 24-carat (100%) gold, with low-reliefs of a horseman, a mermaid, a harp and soldiers, with text. It was claimed to have been discovered about 1940 in a tomb uncovered during digging for a canal along the Strouma river in south-western Bulgaria, kept secretly and anonymously donated by its 87-year-old owner, living in Macedonia. Museum director Bojidar Dimitrov confirmed its authenticity with Bulgarians and experts in London. Bulgarian linguist Vladimir Georgiev is working on a translation of the text.
About 30 single golden sheets with Etruscan inscriptions are known, according to the Sofia museum's curator of archaeology, Elka Penkova.
Other related archives10 BC, 1000 BC, 1498, 1st century, 1st century BC, 200 BC, 4th century, 54, 5th century, 6th century BC, Aegean languages, Anatolia, Anatolian languages, Beekes, Caere, Campania, Capua, Cicero, Cippus perusinus, Claudius, Corsica, Cortona, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Emilia-Romagna, Eteocretan, Eteocypriot, Etruria, Etruscan civilization, Etruscans, Euboean, Falerii, Gallia Narbonensis, Gauls, Greek alphabet, Herodotus, Hungarian, IPA, Indo-European, Italy, Latin, Latin alphabet, Latium, Lemnian, Lemnian language, Lemnos, Lemnos stele, Liber Linteus, Linear A, Livy, Lombardy, Lydia, Mario Alinei, Minoan, Noricans, North Africa, Nostratic, Old Italic alphabet, Parma, Phoenician, Pinturicchio, Pliny, Po, Pope Alexander VI, Pyrgi Tablets, Raetic, Rhaetians, Rhaetic, Roman Republic, Roman emperor, Sardinia, Servius, Sofia, Bulgaria, Strouma, Tabula Capuana, Tabula Cortonensis, Tarquinia, Tuscany, Tyrrhenians, Umbria, Urnfield, Varro, Veii, Veneto, Villanovan, Vindelicans, Zagreb, Croatia, cabalist, carat, digamma, divination, epitaphs, hegemony, inscriptions, language, loanwords, mass comparison, mermaid, orientalist, ossuaries, phonemes, religious cult, votive gifts
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Texts", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
