Tyrrhenians ( Attic Greek : Τυῤῥηνοί Turrhēnoi ) or Tyrsenians ( Ionic : Τυρσηνοί Tursēnoi ; Doric : Τυρσανοί Tursānoi ) was the name used by the ancient Greeks authors to refer, in a generic sense, to non-Greek people , in particular pirates.
157-625: While ancient sources have been interpreted in a variety of ways, the Greeks always called the Etruscans Tyrsenoi, although not all Tyrsenians were Etruscans. Furthermore the languages of Etruscan, Rhaetian and Lemnian cultures have been grouped together as the Tyrsenian languages , based on their strong similarities. The names are believed to be exonyms , only known to have been used by authors of Ancient Greek , though their origin
314-532: A 26-letter alphabet, which makes an early appearance incised for decoration on a small bucchero terracotta lidded vase in the shape of a cockerel at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ca. 650–600 BC. The full complement of 26 has been termed the model alphabet. The Etruscans did not use four letters of it, mainly because Etruscan did not have the voiced stops b , d and g ; the o was also not used. They innovated one letter for f ( 𐌚 ). Writing
471-571: A Mediterranean language", a hypothesis that goes back to an article by Paul Kretschmer in Glotta from 1934. Literary and historical texts in the Etruscan language have not survived, and the language itself is only partially understood by modern scholars. This makes modern understanding of their society and culture heavily dependent on much later and generally disapproving Roman and Greek sources. These ancient writers differed in their theories about
628-481: A bilingual text in Etruscan and Phoenician engraved on three gold leaves, one for the Phoenician and two for the Etruscan. The Etruscan language portion has 16 lines and 37 words. The date is roughly 500 BC. The tablets were found in 1964 by Massimo Pallottino during an excavation at the ancient Etruscan port of Pyrgi , now Santa Severa . The only new Etruscan word that could be extracted from close analysis of
785-544: A bit longer, and that a survival into the late 1st century AD and beyond "cannot wholly be dismissed", especially given the revelation of Oscan writing in Pompeii 's walls. Despite the apparent extinction of Etruscan, it appears that Etruscan religious rites continued much later, continuing to use the Etruscan names of deities and possibly with some liturgical usage of the language. In late Republican and early Augustan times, various Latin sources including Cicero noted
942-497: A common religion. Political unity in Etruscan society was the city-state, which was probably the referent of methlum , "district". Etruscan texts name quite a number of magistrates , without much of a hint as to their function: The camthi , the parnich , the purth , the tamera , the macstrev , and so on. The people were the mech . The princely tombs were not of individuals. The inscription evidence shows that families were interred there over long periods, marking
1099-542: A continuity of culture from the last phase of the Bronze Age (13th–11th century BC) to the Iron Age (10th–9th century BC). This is evidence that the Etruscan civilization, which emerged around 900 BC, was built by people whose ancestors had inhabited that region for at least the previous 200 years. Based on this cultural continuity, there is now a consensus among archeologists that Proto-Etruscan culture developed, during
1256-411: A cross-linguistically common phonological system, with four phonemic vowels and an apparent contrast between aspirated and unaspirated stops . The records of the language suggest that phonetic change took place over time, with the loss and then re-establishment of word-internal vowels, possibly due to the effect of Etruscan's word-initial stress . Etruscan religion was influenced by that of
1413-593: A few dozen Etruscan words and names were borrowed by the Romans, some of which remain in modern languages, among which are possibly voltur 'vulture', tuba 'trumpet', vagina 'sheath', populus 'people'. Inscriptions have been found in northwest and west-central Italy, in the region that even now bears the name of the Etruscan civilization , Tuscany (from Latin tuscī 'Etruscans'), as well as in modern Latium north of Rome, in today's Umbria west of
1570-461: A few dozen purported loanwords . Attested from 700 BC to AD 50, the relation of Etruscan to other languages has been a source of long-running speculation and study, with it mostly being referred to as one of the Tyrsenian languages , at times as an isolate , and a number of other less well-known hypotheses. The consensus among linguists and Etruscologists is that Etruscan was a Pre-Indo-European and Paleo-European language , closely related to
1727-756: A few lexical correspondences are documented, at least partly due to the scant number of Raetic and Lemnian texts. On the other hand, the Tyrsenian family, or Common Tyrrhenic, is often considered to be Paleo-European and to predate the arrival of Indo-European languages in southern Europe. Several scholars believe that the Lemnian language could have arrived in the Aegean Sea during the Late Bronze Age , when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from Sicily , Sardinia and various parts of
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#17327662838911884-652: A language with strong structural resemblances to the language of the Etruscans. The discovery of these inscriptions in modern times has led to the suggestion of a " Tyrrhenian language group " comprising Etruscan, Lemnian, and the Raetic spoken in the Alps . However, the 1st-century BC historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus , a Greek living in Rome, dismissed many of the ancient theories of other Greek historians and postulated that
2041-567: A leader was chosen to represent the league. There were two other Etruscan leagues (" Lega dei popoli "): that of Campania , the main city of which was Capua , and the Po Valley city-states in northern Italy, which included Bologna , Spina and Adria . Those who subscribe to a Latin foundation of Rome followed by an Etruscan invasion typically speak of an Etruscan "influence" on Roman culture – that is, cultural objects which were adopted by Rome from neighboring Etruria. The prevailing view
2198-416: A linguistic relationship of Etruscan with Anatolian and to Dionysius of Halicarnassus , who decidedly argues against an Etruscan-Lydian relationship. Furthermore, there is no archaeological evidence from material culture of such a cultural shift and of an eastern origins of the Etruscans, in modern times, all the evidence gathered so far by etruscologists points to an indigenous origin of the Etruscans. Just as
2355-504: A means of acquiring valuable resources, such as land, prestige, goods, and slaves. It is likely that individuals taken in battle would be ransomed back to their families and clans at high cost. Prisoners could also potentially be sacrificed on tombs to honor fallen leaders of Etruscan society, not unlike the sacrifices made by Achilles for Patrocles . The range of Etruscan civilization is marked by its cities . They were entirely assimilated by Italic, Celtic , or Roman ethnic groups, but
2512-425: A monogamous society that emphasized pairing. Similarly, the behavior of some wealthy women is not uniquely Etruscan. The apparent promiscuous revelry has a spiritual explanation. Swaddling and Bonfante (among others) explain that depictions of the nude embrace, or symplegma, "had the power to ward off evil", as did baring the breast, which was adopted by western culture as an apotropaic device , appearing finally on
2669-399: A rare case from this early period of a female (Venalia) dedicating the votive. A speculum is a circular or oval hand-mirror used predominantly by Etruscan women. Speculum is Latin; the Etruscan word is malena or malstria . Specula were cast in bronze as one piece or with a tang into which a wooden, bone, or ivory handle fitted. The reflecting surface was created by polishing
2826-447: A recess of the holy islands. The Homeric hymn to Dionysus has Tyrsenian pirates seizing Dionysus: Presently there came swiftly over the sparkling sea Tyrsenian pirates on a well-decked ship – a miserable doom led them on. After Herodotus' Histories a party of Lydians, wretched by a persistent famine, decided to migrate. Led by Tyrsenos, son of Atys, king of Lydia, they sailed to the west coast of central Italy where they settled in
2983-519: A relationship or at least evidence of close contact between the Anatolian languages and the Etruscan language and adherents of the latter school of thought point to the legend of Lydian origin of the Etruscans referred to by Herodotus and Livy 's statement that the Rhaetians were Etruscans driven into the mountains by the invading Gauls . Critics of the theory point to the very scanty evidence of
3140-501: A stem from the Etruscan Rasna (𐌛𐌀𐌔𐌍𐌀), the people. Evidence of inscriptions as Tular Rasnal (𐌕𐌖𐌋𐌀𐌛 𐌛𐌀𐌔𐌍𐌀𐌋), "boundary of the people", or Mechlum Rasnal (𐌌𐌄𐌙𐌋 𐌛𐌀𐌔𐌍𐌀𐌋). "community of the people", attest to its autonym usage. The Tyrsenian etymology however remains unknown. In Attic Greek , the Etruscans were known as Tyrrhenians ( Τυρρηνοί , Tyrrhēnoi , earlier Τυρσηνοί Tyrsēnoi ), from which
3297-601: A symbolic motif: Apollo , Zeus , Culsans , Athena , Hermes , griffin , gorgon , male sphinx , hippocamp , bull, snake, eagle, or other creatures which had symbolic significance. Wallace et al. include the following categories, based on the uses to which they were put, on their site: abecedaria (alphabets), artisans' texts, boundary markers, construction texts, dedications, didaskalia (instructional texts), funerary texts, legal texts, other/unclear texts, prohibitions, proprietary texts (indicating ownership), religious texts, tesserae hospitales (tokens that establish "the claim of
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#17327662838913454-457: A very limited value for a realistic representation of the Etruscan population. It was only from the end of the 4th century BC that evidence of physiognomic portraits began to be found in Etruscan art and Etruscan portraiture became more realistic. There have been numerous biological studies on the Etruscan origins, the oldest of which dates back to the 1950s when research was still based on blood tests of modern samples, and DNA analysis (including
3611-481: Is arguably bolstered by the fact that he was the first ancient writer to report the endonym of the Etruscans: Rasenna. The Romans, however, give them other names: from the country they once inhabited, named Etruria, they call them Etruscans, and from their knowledge of the ceremonies relating to divine worship, in which they excel others, they now call them, rather inaccurately, Tusci, but formerly, with
3768-519: Is believed that the Etruscan government style changed from total monarchy to oligarchic republic (as the Roman Republic) in the 6th century BC. The government was viewed as being a central authority, ruling over all tribal and clan organizations. It retained the power of life and death; in fact, the gorgon , an ancient symbol of that power, appears as a motif in Etruscan decoration. The adherents to this state power were united by
3925-457: Is considered to have possibly been able to read Etruscan, and authored the Tyrrhenika , a (now lost) treatise on Etruscan history ; a separate dedication made by Claudius implies a knowledge from "diverse Etruscan sources", but it is unclear if any were fluent speakers of Etruscan. Plautia Urgulanilla , the emperor's first wife, had Etruscan roots. Etruscan had some influence on Latin, as
4082-538: Is more plausibly traceable to cultural exchange than to migration. Several archaeologists specializing in Prehistory and Protohistory , who have analyzed Bronze Age and Iron Age remains that were excavated in the territory of historical Etruria have pointed out that no evidence has been found, related either to material culture or to social practices , that can support a migration theory. The most marked and radical change that has been archaeologically attested in
4239-631: Is named, according to Strabo . In Pindar , the Tyrsenoi appear allied with the Carthaginians as a threat to Magna Graecia : I entreat you, son of Cronus , grant that the battle-shouts of the Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians stay quietly at home, now that they have seen their arrogance bring lamentation to their ships off Cumae . The name is also attested in a fragment by Sophocles . The name becomes increasingly associated with
4396-420: Is one explanation of the Etruscan "impossible" consonant clusters. Some of the consonants, especially resonants , however, may have been syllabic, accounting for some of the clusters (see below under Consonants ). In other cases, the scribe sometimes inserted a vowel: Greek Hēraklēs became Hercle by syncopation and then was expanded to Herecele . Pallottino regarded this variation in vowels as "instability in
4553-434: Is published in its own fascicle by diverse Etruscan scholars. A cista is a bronze container of circular, ovoid, or more rarely rectangular shape used by women for the storage of sundries. They are ornate, often with feet and lids to which figurines may be attached. The internal and external surfaces bear carefully crafted scenes usually from mythology, usually intaglio, or rarely part intaglio, part cameo . Cistae date from
4710-647: Is that Etruscan, and therefore all the languages of the Tyrrhenian family, is neither Indo-European nor Semitic, and may be a Pre–Indo-European and Paleo-European language. At present the major consensus is that Etruscan's only kinship is with the Raetic and Lemnian languages. The idea of a relation between the language of the Minoan Linear A scripts was taken into consideration as the main hypothesis by Michael Ventris before he discovered that, in fact,
4867-443: Is that Rome was founded by Latins who later merged with Etruscans. In this interpretation, Etruscan cultural objects are considered influences rather than part of a heritage. Rome was probably a small settlement until the arrival of the Etruscans, who constructed the first elements of its urban infrastructure such as the drainage system. The main criterion for deciding whether an object originated at Rome and traveled by influence to
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5024-462: Is thought to have died out, Ammianus Marcellinus reports that Julian the Apostate , the last pagan Emperor, apparently had Etruscan soothsayers accompany him on his military campaigns with books on war, lightning and celestial events, but the language of these books is unknown. According to Zosimus , when Rome was faced with destruction by Alaric in 408 AD, the protection of nearby Etruscan towns
5181-648: Is uncertain and apparently not Greek. They have been connected to τύρσις ( túrsis ), also a "Mediterranean" loan into Greek, meaning " tower ". Direct connections with Tuscī , the Latin exonym for the Etruscans , from * Turs-ci , have also been attempted. The French linguist Françoise Bader has alternatively hypothesized that Tyrsenoi – Tyrrhenoi derives from the Proto-Indo-European root *trh₂- meaning "to cross". The first Greek author to mention
5338-568: The Anatolian branch . More recently, Robert S. P. Beekes argued in 2002 that the people later known as the Lydians and Etruscans had originally lived in northwest Anatolia , with a coastline to the Sea of Marmara , whence they were driven by the Phrygians circa 1200 BC, leaving a remnant known in antiquity as the Tyrsenoi . A segment of this people moved south-west to Lydia , becoming known as
5495-608: The Gauls , and as a result may have lost many – though not all – of its earlier records. Later history relates that some Etruscans lived in the Vicus Tuscus , the "Etruscan quarter", and that there was an Etruscan line of kings (albeit ones descended from a Greek, Demaratus of Corinth ) that succeeded kings of Latin and Sabine origin. Etruscophile historians would argue that this, together with evidence for institutions, religious elements and other cultural elements, proves that Rome
5652-708: The Italian Peninsula . According to the logographer Hellanicus of Lesbos , there was a Pelasgian migration from Thessaly in Greece to the Italian peninsula, as part of which the Pelasgians colonized the area he called Tyrrhenia, and they then came to be called Tyrrhenians. There is some evidence suggesting a link between the island of Lemnos and the Tyrrhenians. The Lemnos Stele bears inscriptions in
5809-568: The Lydians , while others sailed away to take refuge in Italy, where they became known as Etruscans. This account draws on the well-known story by Herodotus (I, 94) of the Lydian origin of the Etruscans or Tyrrhenians, famously rejected by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (book I), partly on the authority of Xanthus, a Lydian historian, who had no knowledge of the story, and partly on what he judged to be
5966-651: The Neolithic and the "most likely separation time between Tuscany and Western Anatolia falls around 7,600 years ago", at the time of the migrations of Early European Farmers (EEF) from Anatolia to Europe in the early Neolithic. The ancient Etruscan samples had mitochondrial DNA haplogroups (mtDNA) JT (subclades of J and T ) and U5 , with a minority of mtDNA H1b . An earlier mtDNA study published in 2004, based on about 28 samples of individuals, who lived from 600 to 100 BC, in Veneto , Etruria, and Campania, stated that
6123-482: The Palatine Hill according to Etruscan ritual; that is, they began with a pomerium or sacred ditch. Then, they proceeded to the walls. Romulus was required to kill Remus when the latter jumped over the wall, breaking its magic spell (see also under Pons Sublicius ). The name of Rome is attested in Etruscan in the form Ruma-χ meaning 'Roman', a form that mirrors other attested ethnonyms in that language with
6280-603: The Prehistory , Etruscan age, Roman age , Renaissance , and Present-day, and concluded that the Etruscans appear as a local population, intermediate between the prehistoric and the other samples, placing in the temporal network between the Eneolithic Age and the Roman Age. A couple of mitochondrial DNA studies, published in 2013 in the journals PLOS One and American Journal of Physical Anthropology , based on Etruscan samples from Tuscany and Latium, concluded that
6437-492: The Raetic language that was spoken in the Alps , and to the Lemnian language , attested in a few inscriptions on Lemnos . The Etruscan alphabet is similar to the Greek one. Therefore, linguists have been able to read the inscriptions in the sense of knowing roughly how they would have been pronounced, but have not yet understood their meaning. A comparison between the Etruscan and Greek alphabets reveals how accurately
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6594-605: The Roman Kingdom became the Roman Republic . Its culture flourished in three confederacies of cities: that of Etruria (Tuscany, Latium and Umbria), that of the Po Valley with the eastern Alps , and that of Campania . The league in northern Italy is mentioned in Livy . The reduction in Etruscan territory was gradual, but after 500 BC, the political balance of power on the Italian peninsula shifted away from
6751-545: The Roman Republic of the fourth and third centuries BC in Etruscan contexts. They may bear various short inscriptions concerning the manufacturer or owner or subject matter. The writing may be Latin, Etruscan, or both. Excavations at Praeneste , an Etruscan city which became Roman, turned up about 118 cistae, one of which has been termed "the Praeneste cista" or "the Ficoroni cista" by art analysts, with special reference to
6908-684: The Tiber , in the Po Valley to the north of Etruria, and in Campania . This range may indicate a maximum Italian homeland where the language was at one time spoken. Outside Italy, inscriptions have been found in Corsica , Gallia Narbonensis , Greece , the Balkans . But by far the greatest concentration is in Italy. In 1998, Helmut Rix put forward the view that Etruscan is related to other extinct languages such as Raetic , spoken in ancient times in
7065-847: The Turks (four haplotypes in common), and the Tuscans (two haplotypes in common). While, the modern populations with the shortest genetic distance from the ancient Etruscans, based solely on mtDNA and FST, were Tuscans followed by the Turks, other populations from the Mediterranean and the Cornish after. This study was much criticized by other geneticists, because "data represent severely damaged or partly contaminated mtDNA sequences" and "any comparison with modern population data must be considered quite hazardous", and archaeologists, who argued that
7222-564: The University of Utrecht . Alinei's proposal has been rejected by Etruscan experts such as Giulio M. Facchetti, Finno-Ugric experts such as Angela Marcantonio, and by Hungarian historical linguists such as Bela Brogyanyi. Another proposal, pursued mainly by a few linguists from the former Soviet Union, suggested a relationship with Northeast Caucasian (or Nakh-Daghestanian) languages. None of these theories has been accepted nor enjoys consensus. The Latin script owes its existence to
7379-480: The Villanovan period to about 100 BC, when presumably the cemeteries were abandoned in favor of Roman ones. Some of the major cemeteries are as follows: One example of an early (pre-fifth century BC) votive inscription is on a bucchero oinochoe (wine vase): ṃiṇi mulvaṇịce venalia ṡlarinaṡ. en mipi kapi ṃi(r) ṇuṇai = "Venalia Ṡlarinaṡ gave me. Do not touch me (?), I (am) nunai (an offering?)." This seems to be
7536-496: The eastern Alps , and Lemnian , to which other scholars added Camunic language , spoken in the Central Alps . Rix's Tyrsenian language family has gained widespread acceptance among scholars, being confirmed by Stefan Schumacher, Norbert Oettinger, Carlo De Simone , and Simona Marchesini. Common features between Etruscan, Raetic, and Lemnian have been found in morphology , phonology , and syntax , but only
7693-531: The "Aramaic" spoken by Noah and his descendants, founders of the Etruscan city Viterbo . The 19th century saw numerous attempts to reclassify Etruscan. Ideas of Semitic origins found supporters until this time. In 1858, the last attempt was made by Johann Gustav Stickel , Jena University in his Das Etruskische durch Erklärung von Inschriften und Namen als semitische Sprache erwiesen . A reviewer concluded that Stickel brought forward every possible argument which would speak for that hypothesis, but he proved
7850-407: The "Pelasgians", and even then, some did so in a way that suggests they were meant only as generic, descriptive labels for "non-Greek" and "indigenous ancestors of Greeks", respectively. The 5th-century BC historians Herodotus , and Thucydides and the 1st-century BC historian Strabo , did seem to suggest that the Tyrrhenians were originally Pelasgians who migrated to Italy from Lydia by way of
8007-539: The (Alpine) Noricans are the Raeti and Vindelici . All are divided into a number of states. The Raeti are believed to be people of Tuscan race driven out by the Gauls , their leader was named Raetus. The question of the origins of the Etruscans has long been a subject of interest and debate among historians. In modern times, all the evidence gathered so far by prehistoric and protohistoric archaeologists, anthropologists, and etruscologists points to an autochthonous origin of
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#17327662838918164-443: The 2nd century BC, still alive in the first century BC, and surviving in at least one location in the beginning of the first century AD; however, the replacement of Etruscan by Latin likely occurred earlier in southern regions closer to Rome. In southern Etruria , the first Etruscan site to be Latinized was Veii , when it was destroyed and repopulated by Romans in 396 BC. Caere ( Cerveteri ), another southern Etruscan town on
8321-561: The 3rd century BC. According to legend, there was a period between 600 BC and 500 BC in which an alliance was formed among twelve Etruscan settlements, known today as the Etruscan League , Etruscan Federation , or Dodecapolis ( ‹See Tfd› Greek : Δωδεκάπολις ). According to a legend, the Etruscan League of twelve cities was founded by Tarchon and his brother Tyrrhenus . Tarchon lent his name to
8478-474: The 4th-century AD Latin writer Maurus Servius Honoratus , a fourth set of Etruscan books existed, dealing with animal gods, but it is unlikely that any scholar living in that era could have read Etruscan. However, only one book (as opposed to inscription), the Liber Linteus , survived, and only because the linen on which it was written was used as mummy wrappings. By 30 BC, Livy noted that Etruscan
8635-609: The 8th to the 6th centuries, putting the homeland of the Etruscans in Italy and the Alps , particularly because of their relation to the Alpine Rhaetian population. Another hypothesis connecting the Tyrrhenians and the Etruscans posits that the Etruscans derive at least partially from a 12th century BC invasion from the Aegean and Anatolia imposing itself over the Villanovan culture , with some scholars claiming
8792-594: The British scholar Isaac Taylor brought up the idea of a genetic relationship between Etruscan and Hungarian , of which also Jules Martha would approve in his exhaustive study La langue étrusque (1913). In 1911, the French orientalist Baron Carra de Vaux suggested a connection between Etruscan and the Altaic languages . The Hungarian connection was revived by Mario Alinei , emeritus professor of Italian languages at
8949-708: The Early Iron Age Latins , and that the Etruscan language, and therefore the other languages of the Tyrrhenian family, may be a surviving language of the ones that were widespread in Europe from at least the Neolithic period before the arrival of the Indo-European languages, as already argued by German geneticist Johannes Krause who concluded that it is likely that the Etruscan language (as well as Basque , Paleo-Sardinian and Minoan ) "developed on
9106-664: The Eastern Mediterranean or Anatolia" and "there are indications that the evidence of DNA can support the theory that Etruscan people are autochthonous in central Italy". In his 2021 book, A Short History of Humanity , German geneticist Johannes Krause , co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Jena , concludes that it is likely that the Etruscan language (as well as Basque , Paleo-Sardinian , and Minoan ) "developed on
9263-508: The Etruscan alphabet, which was adapted for Latin in the form of the Old Italic script . The Etruscan alphabet employs a Euboean variant of the Greek alphabet using the letter digamma and was in all probability transmitted through Pithecusae and Cumae , two Euboean settlements in southern Italy. This system is ultimately derived from West Semitic scripts . The Etruscans recognized
9420-545: The Etruscan apogee from the second half of the sixth to the first centuries BC. The two main theories of manufacture are native Etruscan and Greek. The materials are mainly dark red carnelian , with agate and sard entering usage from the third to the first centuries BC, along with purely gold finger rings with a hollow engraved bezel setting . The engravings, mainly cameo, but sometimes intaglio, depict scarabs at first and then scenes from Greek mythology, often with heroic personages called out in Etruscan. The gold setting of
9577-537: The Etruscan individuals the ancestral component Steppe was present in the same percentages found in the previously analyzed Iron Age Latins, and in the Etruscan DNA was completely absent a signal of recent admixture with Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean. Both Etruscans and Latins joined firmly the European cluster, west of modern Italians. The Etruscans were a mixture of WHG, EEF, and Steppe ancestry; 75% of
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#17327662838919734-466: The Etruscan language found its modern origin in a book by a Renaissance Dominican friar, Annio da Viterbo , a cabalist and orientalist now remembered mainly for literary forgeries. In 1498, Annio published his antiquarian miscellany titled Antiquitatum variarum (in 17 volumes) where he put together a theory in which both the Hebrew and Etruscan languages were said to originate from a single source,
9891-439: The Etruscan male individuals were found to belong to haplogroup R1b (R1b M269) , especially its clade R1b-P312 and its derivative R1b-L2 , whose direct ancestor is R1b-U152 , while the most common mitochondrial DNA haplogroup among the Etruscans was H . The conclusions of the 2021 study are in line with a 2019 study previously published in the journal Science that analyzed the remains of eleven Iron Age individuals from
10048-480: The Etruscan political system, authority resided in its individual small cities, and probably in its prominent individual families. At the height of Etruscan power, elite Etruscan families grew very rich through trade with the Celts to the north and the Greeks to the south, and they filled their large family tombs with imported luxuries. According to Dionysius the Etruscans called themselves Rasenna (Greek Ῥασέννα),
10205-531: The Etruscans had no significant heterogeneity, and that all mitochondrial lineages observed among the Etruscan samples appear typically European or West Asian , but only a few haplotypes were shared with modern populations. Allele sharing between the Etruscans and modern populations is highest among Germans (seven haplotypes in common), the Cornish from the South West of Britain (five haplotypes in common),
10362-728: The Etruscans in favor of the rising Roman Republic . The earliest known examples of Etruscan writing are inscriptions found in southern Etruria that date to around 700 BC. The Etruscans developed a system of writing derived from the Euboean alphabet , which was used in the Magna Graecia (coastal areas located in Southern Italy ). The Etruscan language remains only partly understood, making modern understanding of their society and culture heavily dependent on much later and generally disapproving Roman and Greek sources. In
10519-490: The Etruscans preserved the Greek alphabet. The Etruscan alphabet contains letters that have since been dropped from the Greek alphabet, such as the digamma , sampi and qoppa . Grammatically, the language is agglutinating , with nouns and verbs showing suffixed inflectional endings and some gradation of vowels . Nouns show five cases , singular and plural numbers , with a gender distinction between animate and inanimate in pronouns . Etruscan appears to have had
10676-435: The Etruscans to ally themselves with Carthage , whose interests also collided with the Greeks. Around 540 BC, the Battle of Alalia led to a new distribution of power in the western Mediterranean. Though the battle had no clear winner, Carthage managed to expand its sphere of influence at the expense of the Greeks, and Etruria saw itself relegated to the northern Tyrrhenian Sea with full ownership of Corsica . From
10833-501: The Etruscans were an indigenous population, showing that Etruscan mtDNA appears to fall very close to a Neolithic population from Central Europe ( Germany , Austria , Hungary ) and to other Tuscan populations, strongly suggesting that the Etruscan civilization developed locally from the Villanovan culture , as already supported by archaeological evidence and anthropological research, and that genetic links between Tuscany and western Anatolia date back to at least 5,000 years ago during
10990-399: The Etruscans were indigenous people who had always lived in Etruria and were different from both the Pelasgians and the Lydians. Dionysius noted that the 5th-century historian Xanthus of Lydia , who was originally from Sardis and was regarded as an important source and authority for the history of Lydia, never suggested a Lydian origin of the Etruscans and never named Tyrrhenus as a ruler of
11147-407: The Etruscans, or descended to the Romans from the Etruscans, is date. Many, if not most, of the Etruscan cities were older than Rome. If one finds that a given feature was there first, it cannot have originated at Rome. A second criterion is the opinion of the ancient sources. These would indicate that certain institutions and customs came directly from the Etruscans. Rome is located on the edge of what
11304-502: The Etruscans. There is no archaeological or linguistic evidence of a migration of the Lydians or Pelasgians into Etruria. Modern etruscologists and archeologists, such as Massimo Pallottino (1947), have shown that early historians' assumptions and assertions on the subject were groundless. In 2000, the etruscologist Dominique Briquel explained in detail why he believes that ancient Greek narratives on Etruscan origins should not even count as historical documents. He argues that
11461-447: The Greek island of Lemnos . They all described Lemnos as having been settled by Pelasgians, whom Thucydides identified as "belonging to the Tyrrhenians" ( τὸ δὲ πλεῖστον Πελασγικόν, τῶν καὶ Λῆμνόν ποτε καὶ Ἀθήνας Τυρσηνῶν ). As Strabo and Herodotus told it, the migration to Lemnos was led by Tyrrhenus / Tyrsenos, the son of Atys (who was king of Lydia). Strabo added that the Pelasgians of Lemnos and Imbros then followed Tyrrhenus to
11618-563: The Greeks , and many of the few surviving Etruscan-language artifacts are of votive or religious significance. Etruscan was written in an alphabet derived from the Greek alphabet ; this alphabet was the source of the Latin alphabet , as well as other alphabets in Italy and probably beyond. The Etruscan language is also believed to be the source of certain important cultural words of Western Europe such as military and person , which do not have obvious Indo-European roots. Etruscan literacy
11775-441: The Greeks and the Eastern Mediterranean and not to mass migrations. The facial features (the profile, almond-shaped eyes, large nose) in the frescoes and sculptures, and the depiction of reddish-brown men and light-skinned women, influenced by archaic Greek art, followed the artistic traditions from the Eastern Mediterranean, that had spread even among the Greeks themselves, and to a lesser extent also to other several civilizations in
11932-471: The Italian peninsula. Scholars such as Norbert Oettinger, Michel Gras and Carlo De Simone think that Lemnian is the testimony of an Etruscan commercial settlement on the island that took place before 700 BC, not related to the Sea Peoples. A 2021 archeogenetic analysis of Etruscan individuals, who lived between 800 BC and 1 BC, concluded that the Etruscans were autochthonous and genetically similar to
12089-598: The Latin author Aulus Gellius mentions Etruscan alongside the Gaulish language in an anecdote. Freeman notes that although Gaulish was clearly still alive during Gellius' time, his testimony may not indicate that Etruscan was still alive because the phrase could indicate a meaning of the sort of "it's all Greek (incomprehensible) to me". At the time of its extinction, only a few educated Romans with antiquarian interests, such as Marcus Terentius Varro , could read Etruscan. The Roman emperor Claudius (10 BC – AD 54)
12246-574: The Latins, bringing the alphabet from Anatolia. For historical, archaeological, genetic, and linguistic reasons, a relationship between Etruscan and the Indo-European Anatolian languages (Lydian or Luwian) and the idea that the Etruscans initially colonized the Latins, bringing the alphabet from Anatolia, have not been accepted, since the account by Herodotus is no longer considered reliable. The interest in Etruscan antiquities and
12403-426: The Latins. The 7th-century BC Homeric Hymn to Dionysus referred to them as pirates. Unlike later Greek authors, these authors did not suggest that Etruscans had migrated to Italy from the east, and did not associate them with the Pelasgians. It was only in the 5th century BC, when the Etruscan civilization had been established for several centuries, that Greek writers started associating the name "Tyrrhenians" with
12560-422: The Lydians. For this reason, therefore, I am persuaded that the Pelasgians are a different people from the Tyrrhenians. And I do not believe, either, that the Tyrrhenians were a colony of the Lydians; for they do not use the same language as the latter, nor can it be alleged that, though they no longer speak a similar tongue, they still retain some other indications of their mother country. For they neither worship
12717-462: The M314 derived allele also found in a Middle Bronze Age individual from Croatia (1631–1531 BC). While the four samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to haplogroups U5a1 , H , T2b32 , K1a4 . Among the older studies, only based on mitochondrial DNA, a mtDNA study, published in 2018 in the journal American Journal of Physical Anthropology , compared both ancient and modern samples from Tuscany, from
12874-581: The Near East are attested only centuries later, when Etruscan civilization was already flourishing and Etruscan ethnogenesis was well established. The first of these attested contacts relate to the Greek colonies in Southern Italy and Phoenician-Punic colonies in Sardinia , and the consequent orientalizing period . One of the most common mistakes for a long time, even among some scholars of
13031-455: The Romans derived the names Tyrrhēnī , Tyrrhēnia (Etruria), and Mare Tyrrhēnum ( Tyrrhenian Sea ). The ancient Romans referred to the Etruscans as the Tuscī or Etruscī (singular Tuscus ). Their Roman name is the origin of the terms " Toscana ", which refers to their heartland, and " Etruria ", which can refer to their wider region. The term Tusci is thought by linguists to have been
13188-478: The Tyrrhenians is the 8th-century BC Greek poet Hesiod , in his work, the Theogony . He merely described them as residing in central Italy alongside the Latins. And Circe the daughter of Helios, Hyperion's son, loved steadfast Odysseus and bore Agrius and Latinus who was faultless and strong; also she brought forth Telegonus by the will of golden Aphrodite. And they ruled over the famous Tyrsenians, very far off in
13345-537: The Umbrian word for "Etruscan", based on an inscription on an ancient bronze tablet from a nearby region. The inscription contains the phrase turskum ... nomen , literally "the Tuscan name". Based on a knowledge of Umbrian grammar, linguists can infer that the base form of the word turskum is *Tursci, which would, through metathesis and a word-initial epenthesis , be likely to lead to the form, E-trus-ci . As for
13502-582: The analysis of ancient samples) was not yet possible. It is only in very recent years, with the development of archaeogenetics , that comprehensive studies containing the whole genome sequencing of Etruscan samples have been published, including autosomal DNA and Y-DNA , autosomal DNA being the "most valuable to understand what really happened in an individual's history", as stated by geneticist David Reich , whereas previously studies were based only on mitochondrial DNA analysis, which contains less and limited information. An archeogenetic study focusing on
13659-476: The ancient Greek civilization. Etruscan expansion was focused both to the north beyond the Apennine Mountains and into Campania. Some small towns in the sixth century BC disappeared during this time, ostensibly subsumed by greater, more powerful neighbors. However, it is certain that the political structure of the Etruscan culture was similar to, albeit more aristocratic than, Magna Graecia in
13816-430: The ancient story of the Etruscans' 'Lydian origins' was a deliberate, politically motivated fabrication, and that ancient Greeks inferred a connection between the Tyrrhenians and the Pelasgians solely on the basis of certain Greek and local traditions and on the mere fact that there had been trade between the Etruscans and Greeks. He noted that, even if these stories include historical facts suggesting contact, such contact
13973-574: The archaeological evidence is against the idea that the Rhaetians are descended from the Etruscans who fled from northern Italy because of the Gallic invasions, as the Rhaetians are archaeologically attested in their Alpine sites long before. Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that "there was a time when the Latins, the Umbrians, the Ausonians and many others were all called Tyrrhenians by the Greeks,
14130-537: The area is the adoption, starting in about the 12th century BC, of the funeral rite of incineration in terracotta urns, which is a Continental European practice, derived from the Urnfield culture ; there is nothing about it that suggests an ethnic contribution from Asia Minor or the Near East . A 2012 survey of the previous 30 years' archaeological findings, based on excavations of the major Etruscan cities, showed
14287-727: The areas around Rome, of which four were Etruscan individuals, one buried in Veio Grotta Gramiccia from the Villanovan era (900-800 BC) and three buried in La Mattonara Necropolis near Civitavecchia from the Orientalizing period (700-600 BC). The study concluded that Etruscans (900–600 BC) and the Latins (900–500 BC) from Latium vetus were genetically similar, with genetic differences between
14444-676: The bezel bears a border design, such as cabling. Etruscan-minted coins can be dated between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC. Use of the 'Chalcidian' standard, based on the silver unit of 5.8 grams, indicates that this custom, like the alphabet, came from Greece. Roman coinage later supplanted Etruscan, but the basic Roman coin, the sesterce , is believed to have been based on the 2.5-denomination Etruscan coin. Etruscan coins have turned up in caches or individually in tombs and in excavations seemingly at random, and concentrated, of course, in Etruria . Etruscan coins were in gold, silver, and bronze,
14601-896: The central and western Mediterranean up to the Iberian Peninsula . Actually, many of the tombs of the Late Orientalizing and Archaic periods, such as the Tomb of the Augurs , the Tomb of the Triclinium or the Tomb of the Leopards , as well as other tombs from the archaic period in the Monterozzi necropolis in Tarquinia , were painted by Greek painters or, in any case, foreigner artists. These images have, therefore,
14758-522: The cities of Latium and Campania weakened, and the area was taken over by Romans and Samnites . In the 4th century BC, Etruria saw a Gallic invasion end its influence over the Po Valley and the Adriatic coast . Meanwhile, Rome had started annexing Etruscan cities. This led to the loss of the northern Etruscan provinces. During the Roman–Etruscan Wars , Etruria was conquered by Rome in
14915-507: The city of Tarchna , or Tarquinnii, as it was known by the Romans. Tyrrhenus gave his name to the Tyrrhenians , the alternative name for the Etruscans. Although there is no consensus on which cities were in the league, the following list may be close to the mark: Arretium , Caisra , Clevsin , Curtun , Perusna , Pupluna , Veii , Tarchna , Vetluna , Volterra , Velzna , and Velch . Some modern authors include Rusellae . The league
15072-519: The classification of Etruscan remained problematic for historical linguists, though it was almost universally agreed upon that Etruscan was a language unlike any other in Europe. Before it gained currency as one of the Tyrrhenian languages, Etruscan was commonly treated as a language isolate . Over the centuries many hypotheses on the Etruscan language have been developed, most of which have not been accepted or have been considered highly speculative since they were published. The major consensus among scholars
15229-520: The coast 45 kilometers from Rome, appears to have shifted to Latin in the late 2nd century BC. In Tarquinia and Vulci , Latin inscriptions coexisted with Etruscan inscriptions in wall paintings and grave markers for centuries, from the 3rd century BC until the early 1st century BC, after which Etruscan is replaced by the exclusive use of Latin. In northern Etruria, Etruscan inscriptions continue after they disappear in southern Etruria. At Clusium ( Chiusi ), tomb markings show mixed Latin and Etruscan in
15386-484: The continent in the course of the Neolithic Revolution ". The Etruscan civilization begins with the early Iron Age Villanovan culture , regarded as the oldest phase, that occupied a large area of northern and central Italy during the Iron Age. The Etruscans themselves dated the origin of the Etruscan nation to a date corresponding to the 11th or 10th century BC. The Villanovan culture emerges with
15543-448: The continent in the course of the Neolithic Revolution ". The lack of recent Anatolian-related admixture and Iranian-related ancestry among the Etruscans, who genetically joined firmly to the European cluster, might also suggest that the presence of a handful of inscriptions found at Lemnos, in a language related to Etruscan and Raetic, "could represent population movements departing from the Italian peninsula". For many hundreds of years
15700-414: The depiction of a fasces on the grave stele of Avele Feluske, who is shown as a warrior wielding the fasces. The most telling Etruscan feature is the word populus , which appears as an Etruscan deity, Fufluns . The historical Etruscans had achieved a state system of society, with remnants of the chiefdom and tribal forms. Rome was in a sense the first Italic state, but it began as an Etruscan one. It
15857-516: The different languages, laws, and religions of the two peoples. In 2006, Frederik Woudhuizen went further on Herodotus' traces, suggesting that Etruscan belongs to the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family, specifically to Luwian . Woudhuizen revived a conjecture to the effect that the Tyrsenians came from Anatolia , including Lydia , whence they were driven by the Cimmerians in
16014-578: The earliest Greek cities to be founded in Sicily, that is, in the tenth generation after the Trojan war; for before that time men were so afraid of the bands of Tyrrhenian pirates and the savagery of the barbarians in this region that they would not so much as sail thither for trafficking. In the 6th and 5th centuries BC, the name referred specifically to the Etruscans for whom the Tyrrhenian Sea
16171-412: The early Iron Age, 750–675 BC, leaving some colonists on Lemnos . He makes a number of comparisons of Etruscan to Luwian and asserts that Etruscan is modified Luwian. He accounts for the non-Luwian features as a Mysian influence: "deviations from Luwian [...] may plausibly be ascribed to the dialect of the indigenous population of Mysia." According to Woudhuizen, the Etruscans were initially colonizing
16328-399: The esteemed reputation of Etruscan soothsayers . An episode where lightning struck an inscription with the name Caesar, turning it into Aesar, was interpreted to have been a premonition of the deification of Caesar because of the resemblance to Etruscan aisar , meaning 'gods', although this indicates knowledge of a single word and not the language. Centuries later and long after Etruscan
16485-554: The examined Etruscans and Latins found to be insignificant. The Etruscan individuals and contemporary Latins were distinguished from preceding populations of Italy by the presence of c. 30% steppe ancestry . Their DNA was a mixture of two-thirds Copper Age ancestry ( EEF + WHG ; Etruscans ~66–72%, Latins ~62–75%), and one-third Steppe-related ancestry (Etruscans ~27–33%, Latins ~24–37%). The only sample of Y-DNA extracted belonged to haplogroup J-M12 (J2b-L283) , found in an individual dated 700-600 BC, and carried exactly
16642-523: The figureheads of sailing ships as a nude female upper torso. It is also possible that Greek and Roman attitudes to the Etruscans were based on a misunderstanding of the place of women within their society. In both Greece and the earliest Republican Rome, respectable women were confined to the house and mixed-sex socialising did not occur. Thus, the freedom of women within Etruscan society could have been misunderstood as implying their sexual availability. A number of Etruscan tombs carry funerary inscriptions in
16799-399: The first half of the 1st century BC, with cases where two subsequent generations are inscribed in Latin and then the third, youngest generation, surprisingly, is transcribed in Etruscan. At Perugia , monolingual monumental inscriptions in Etruscan are still seen in the first half of the 1st century BC, while the period of bilingual inscriptions appears to have stretched from the 3rd century to
16956-464: The first half of the 5th century BC, the new political situation meant the beginning of the Etruscan decline after losing their southern provinces. In 480 BC, Etruria's ally Carthage was defeated by a coalition of Magna Graecia cities led by Syracuse, Sicily . A few years later, in 474 BC, Syracuse's tyrant Hiero defeated the Etruscans at the Battle of Cumae . Etruria's influence over
17113-459: The flat side. A higher percentage of tin in the mirror improved its ability to reflect. The other side was convex and featured intaglio or cameo scenes from mythology. The piece was generally ornate. About 2,300 specula are known from collections all over the world. As they were popular plunderables, the provenance of only a minority is known. An estimated time window is 530–100 BC. Most probably came from tombs. Many bear inscriptions naming
17270-536: The form "X son of (father) and (mother)", indicating the importance of the mother's side of the family. The Etruscans, like the contemporary cultures of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome , had a significant military tradition. In addition to marking the rank and power of certain individuals, warfare was a considerable economic advantage to Etruscan civilization. Like many ancient societies, the Etruscans conducted campaigns during summer months, raiding neighboring areas, attempting to gain territory and combating piracy as
17427-622: The generic Pelasgians . Herodotus places them in Crestonia in Thrace , as neighbours of the Pelasgians . Similarly, Thucydides mentions them together with the Pelasgians and associates them with Lemnian pirates and with the pre-Greek population of Attica . Lemnos remained relatively free of Greek influence until Hellenistic times, and the Lemnos stele of the 6th century BC
17584-568: The generic Latin title Etrusca Disciplina . The Libri Haruspicini dealt with divination by reading entrails from a sacrificed animal, while the Libri Fulgurales expounded the art of divination by observing lightning . A third set, the Libri Rituales , might have provided a key to Etruscan civilization: its wider scope embraced Etruscan standards of social and political life, as well as ritual practices. According to
17741-507: The gold and silver usually having been struck on one side only. The coins often bore a denomination, sometimes a minting authority name, and a cameo motif. Gold denominations were in units of silver; silver, in units of bronze. Full or abbreviated names are mainly Pupluna ( Populonia ), Vatl or Veltuna ( Vetulonia ), Velathri ( Volaterrae ), Velzu or Velznani (Volsinii) and Cha for Chamars ( Camars ). Insignia are mainly heads of mythological characters or depictions of mythological beasts arranged in
17898-493: The golden crown, the sceptre, the toga palmata (a special robe), the sella curulis ( curule chair ), and above all the primary symbol of state power: the fasces . The latter was a bundle of whipping rods surrounding a double-bladed axe , carried by the king's lictors . An example of the fasces are the remains of bronze rods and the axe from a tomb in Etruscan Vetulonia . This allowed archaeologists to identify
18055-433: The growth of the aristocratic family as a fixed institution, parallel to the gens at Rome and perhaps even its model. The Etruscans could have used any model of the eastern Mediterranean. That the growth of this class is related to the new acquisition of wealth through trade is unquestioned. The wealthiest cities were located near the coast. At the center of the society was the married couple, tusurthir . The Etruscans were
18212-550: The introduction, for example, of writing, of a new way of banqueting, of a heroic funerary ideology, that is, a new aristocratic way of life, such as to profoundly change the physiognomy of Etruscan society. Thus, thanks to the growing number of contacts with the Greeks, the Etruscans entered what is called the Orientalizing phase . In this phase, there was a heavy influence in Greece, most of Italy and some areas of Spain, from
18369-520: The language behind the later Linear B script was Mycenean , a Greek dialect . It has been proposed to possibly be part of a wider Paleo-European "Aegean" language family, which would also include Minoan , Eteocretan (possibly descended from Minoan) and Eteocypriot . This has been proposed by Giulio Mauro Facchetti, a researcher who has dealt with both Etruscan and Minoan, and supported by S. Yatsemirsky, referring to some similarities between Etruscan and Lemnian on one hand, and Minoan and Eteocretan on
18526-730: The language disappeared. In addition to being the source of the Roman and early Oscan and Umbrian alphabets, it has been suggested that it passed northward into Veneto and from there through Raetia into the Germanic lands, where it became the Elder Futhark alphabet, the oldest form of the runes . The corpus of Etruscan inscriptions is edited in the Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum (CIE) and Thesaurus Linguae Etruscae (TLE). The Pyrgi Tablets are
18683-515: The last phase of the Bronze Age, from the indigenous Proto-Villanovan culture , and that the subsequent Iron Age Villanovan culture is most accurately described as an early phase of the Etruscan civilization. It is possible that there were contacts between northern-central Italy and the Mycenaean world at the end of the Bronze Age. However contacts between the inhabitants of Etruria and inhabitants of Greece , Aegean Sea Islands, Asia Minor, and
18840-523: The late 1st century BC. The isolated last bilinguals are found at three northern sites. Inscriptions in Arezzo include one dated to 40 BC followed by two with slightly later dates, while in Volterra there is one dated to just after 40 BC and a final one dated to 10–20 AD; coins with written Etruscan near Saena have also been dated to 15 BC. Freeman notes that in rural areas the language may have survived
18997-402: The main source of Etruscan portables, provenance unknown, in collections throughout the world. Their incalculable value has created a brisk black market in Etruscan objets d'art – and equally brisk law enforcement effort, as it is illegal to remove any objects from Etruscan tombs without authorization from the Italian government. The magnitude of the task involved in cataloguing them means that
19154-423: The most advanced areas of the eastern Mediterranean and the ancient Near East . Also directly Phoenician, or otherwise Near Eastern, craftsmen, merchants and artists contributed to the spread in southern Europe of Near Eastern cultural and artistic motifs. The last three phases of Etruscan civilization are called, respectively, Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic, which roughly correspond to the homonymous phases of
19311-625: The names survive from inscriptions and their ruins are of aesthetic and historic interest in most of the cities of central Italy. Etruscan cities flourished over most of Italy during the Roman Iron Age , marking the farthest extent of Etruscan civilization. They were gradually assimilated first by Italics in the south, then by Celts in the north and finally in Etruria itself by the growing Roman Republic. Etruscan language Etruscan ( / ɪ ˈ t r ʌ s k ən / ih- TRUSK -ən )
19468-495: The one manufactured by Novios Plutius and given by Dindia Macolnia to her daughter, as the archaic Latin inscription says. All of them are more accurately termed "the Praenestine cistae". Among the most plunderable portables from the Etruscan tombs of Etruria are the finely engraved gemstones set in patterned gold to form circular or ovoid pieces intended to go on finger rings. Around one centimeter in size, they are dated to
19625-403: The opposite of what he had attempted to do. In 1861, Robert Ellis proposed that Etruscan was related to Armenian . Exactly 100 years later, a relationship with Albanian was to be advanced by Zecharia Mayani , a theory regarded today as disproven and discredited. Several theories from the late 19th and early 20th centuries connected Etruscan to Uralic or even Altaic languages . In 1874,
19782-480: The origin of the Etruscan people. Some suggested they were Pelasgians who had migrated there from Greece. Others maintained that they were indigenous to central Italy and were not from Greece. The first Greek author to mention the Etruscans, whom the Ancient Greeks called Tyrrhenians , was the 8th-century BC poet Hesiod , in his work, the Theogony . He mentioned them as residing in central Italy alongside
19939-624: The original meaning of the root, *Turs-, a widely cited hypothesis is that it, like the word Latin turris , means "tower", and comes from the ancient Greek word for tower: τύρσις , likely a loan into Greek. On this hypothesis, the Tusci were called the "people who build towers" or "the tower builders". This proposed etymology is made the more plausible because the Etruscans preferred to build their towns on high precipices reinforced by walls. Alternatively, Giuliano and Larissa Bonfante have speculated that Etruscan houses may have seemed like towers to
20096-513: The origins of the Etruscans; however, the consensus among modern scholars is that the Etruscans were an indigenous population. The earliest evidence of a culture that is identifiably Etruscan dates from about 900 BC. This is the period of the Iron Age Villanovan culture , considered to be the earliest phase of Etruscan civilization, which itself developed from the previous late Bronze Age Proto-Villanovan culture in
20253-481: The other hand, many inscriptions are highly abbreviated and often casually formed, so the identification of individual letters is sometimes difficult. Spelling might vary from city to city, probably reflecting differences of pronunciation. Speech featured a heavy stress on the first syllable of a word, causing syncopation by weakening of the remaining vowels, which then were not represented in writing: Alcsntre for Alexandros , Rasna for Rasena . This speech habit
20410-427: The other. It has also been proposed that this language family is related to the pre-Indo-European languages of Anatolia, based upon place name analysis. The relationship between Etruscan and Minoan, and hypothetical unattested pre-Indo-European languages of Anatolia, is considered unfounded. Some have suggested that Tyrsenian languages may yet be distantly related to early Indo-European languages , such as those of
20567-417: The past, has been to associate the later Orientalizing period of Etruscan civilization with the question of its origins. Orientalization was an artistic and cultural phenomenon that spread among the Greeks themselves, and throughout much of the central and western Mediterranean, not only in Etruria. Orientalizing period in the Etruscans was due, as has been amply demonstrated by archeologists, to contacts with
20724-677: The persons depicted in the scenes, so they are often called picture bilinguals. In 1979, Massimo Pallottino , then president of the Istituto di Studi Etruschi ed Italici initiated the Committee of the Corpus Speculorum Etruscanorum , which resolved to publish all the specula and set editorial standards for doing so. Since then, the committee has grown, acquiring local committees and representatives from most institutions owning Etruscan mirror collections. Each collection
20881-593: The phenomenon of regionalization from the late Bronze Age culture called " Proto-Villanovan ", part of the central European Urnfield culture system . In the last Villanovan phase, called the recent phase (about 770–730 BC), the Etruscans established relations of a certain consistency with the first Greek immigrants in southern Italy (in Pithecusa and then in Cuma ), so much so as to initially absorb techniques and figurative models and soon more properly cultural models, with
21038-476: The quality of vowels" and accounted for the second phase (e.g. Herecele ) as " vowel harmony , i.e., of the assimilation of vowels in neighboring syllables". The writing system had two historical phases: the archaic from the seventh to fifth centuries BC, which used the early Greek alphabet, and the later from the fourth to first centuries BC, which modified some of the letters. In the later period, syncopation increased. The alphabet went on in modified form after
21195-461: The question of Etruscan origins was published in September 2021 in the journal Science Advances and analyzed the autosomal DNA and the uniparental markers (Y-DNA and mtDNA) of 48 Iron Age individuals from Tuscany and Lazio , spanning from 800 to 1 BC, and concluding that the Etruscans were autochthonous (locally indigenous), and they had a genetic profile similar to their Latin neighbors. In
21352-508: The region of the Umbri . They no longer called themselves Lydians, but Tyrrhenians, after the name of the king's son who had led them there. The Tyrrhenians are referred to as pirates by Ephorus of Cyme as reported by Strabo . The pirating actions of the Tyrrhenians would not have allowed the Greeks to found their colonies in Sicily before the 8th century BC. According to Ephorus these were
21509-510: The remoteness of the countries inhabited by these nations making their exact distinctions obscure to those who lived at a distance." It has been hypothesised that the Teresh , who appear among other Sea Peoples in a number of Ancient Egyptian inscriptions from 1200 to 1150 BC, may be the same people as the Tyrsenians. Etruscan civilization The Etruscan civilization ( / ɪ ˈ t r ʌ s k ən / ih- TRUS -kən )
21666-478: The same accuracy as the Greeks, they called them Thyrscoï [an earlier form of Tusci]. Their own name for themselves, however, is the same as that of one of their leaders, Rasenna. Similarly, the 1st-century BC historian Livy , in his Ab Urbe Condita Libri , said that the Rhaetians were Etruscans who had been driven into the mountains by the invading Gauls; and he asserted that the inhabitants of Raetia were of Etruscan origin. The Alpine tribes have also, no doubt,
21823-468: The same gods as the Lydians nor make use of similar laws or institutions, but in these very respects they differ more from the Lydians than from the Pelasgians. Indeed, those probably come nearest to the truth who declare that the nation migrated from nowhere else, but was native to the country, since it is found to be a very ancient nation and to agree with no other either in its language or in its manner of living. The credibility of Dionysius of Halicarnassus
21980-649: The same origin (of the Etruscans), especially the Raetians; who have been rendered so savage by the very nature of the country as to retain nothing of their ancient character save the sound of their speech, and even that is corrupted. The first-century historian Pliny the Elder also put the Etruscans in the context of the Rhaetian people to the north, and wrote in his Natural History (AD 79): Adjoining these
22137-514: The same region, part of the central European Urnfield culture system. Etruscan civilization dominated Italy until it fell to the expanding Rome beginning in the late 4th century BC as a result of the Roman–Etruscan Wars ; Etruscans were granted Roman citizenship in 90 BC, and only in 27 BC the whole Etruscan territory was incorporated into the newly established Roman Empire . The territorial extent of Etruscan civilization reached its maximum around 500 BC, shortly after
22294-463: The same suffix -χ : Velzna-χ '(someone) from Volsinii' and Sveama-χ '(someone) from Sovana '. This in itself, however, is not enough to prove Etruscan origin conclusively. If Tiberius is from θefarie , then Ruma would have been placed on the Thefar ( Tiber ) river. A heavily discussed topic among scholars is who was the founding population of Rome. In 390 BC, the city of Rome was attacked by
22451-466: The simple Latins. The proposed etymology has a long history, Dionysius of Halicarnassus having observed in the first century B. C., "[T]here is no reason that the Greeks should not have called [the Etruscans] by this name, both from their living in towers and from the name of one of their rulers." In his recent Etymological Dictionary of Greek , Robert Beekes claims the Greek word is a "loanword from
22608-420: The south. The mining and commerce of metal, especially copper and iron , led to an enrichment of the Etruscans and to the expansion of their influence in the Italian peninsula and the western Mediterranean Sea . Here, their interests collided with those of the Greeks, especially in the sixth century BC, when Phocaeans of Italy founded colonies along the coast of Sardinia , Spain and Corsica . This led
22765-516: The study was not clear-cut and had not provided evidence that the Etruscans were an intrusive population to the European context. In the collective volume Etruscology published in 2017, British archeologist Phil Perkins, echoing an earlier article of his from 2009, provides an analysis of the state of DNA studies and writes that "none of the DNA studies to date conclusively prove that [the] Etruscans were an intrusive population in Italy that originated in
22922-479: The tablets was the word for 'three', ci . According to Rix and his collaborators, only two unified (though fragmentary) long texts are available in Etruscan: Some additional longer texts are: The main material repository of Etruscan civilization , from the modern perspective, is its tombs, all other public and private buildings having been dismantled and the stone reused centuries ago. The tombs are
23079-413: The total number of tombs is unknown. They are of many types. Especially plentiful are the hypogeal or "underground" chambers or system of chambers cut into tuff and covered by a tumulus . The interior of these tombs represents a habitation of the living stocked with furniture and favorite objects. The walls may display painted murals , the predecessor of wallpaper. Tombs identified as Etruscan date from
23236-413: Was Etruscan territory. When Etruscan settlements turned up south of the border, it was presumed that the Etruscans spread there after the foundation of Rome, but the settlements are now known to have preceded Rome. Etruscan settlements were frequently built on hills – the steeper the better – and surrounded by thick walls. According to Roman mythology , when Romulus and Remus founded Rome, they did so on
23393-512: Was an ancient civilization created by the Etruscans, a people who inhabited Etruria in ancient Italy , with a common language and culture who formed a federation of city-states. After conquering adjacent lands, its territory covered, at its greatest extent, roughly what is now Tuscany , western Umbria , and northern Lazio , as well as what are now the Po Valley , Emilia-Romagna , south-eastern Lombardy , southern Veneto , and western Campania . A large body of literature has flourished on
23550-541: Was attributed to Etruscan pagan priests who claimed to have summoned a raging thunderstorm, and they offered their services "in the ancestral manner" to Rome as well, but the devout Christians of Rome refused the offer, preferring death to help by pagans. Freeman notes that these events may indicate that a limited theological knowledge of Etruscan may have survived among the priestly caste much longer. One 19th-century writer argued in 1892 that Etruscan deities retained an influence on early modern Tuscan folklore. Around 180 AD,
23707-404: Was founded by Etruscans. Under Romulus and Numa Pompilius , the people were said to have been divided into thirty curiae and three tribes . Few Etruscan words entered Latin , but the names of at least two of the tribes – Ramnes and Luceres – seem to be Etruscan. The last kings may have borne the Etruscan title lucumo , while the regalia were traditionally considered of Etruscan origin –
23864-408: Was from right to left except in archaic inscriptions, which occasionally used boustrophedon . An example found at Cerveteri used left to right. In the earliest inscriptions, the words are continuous. From the 6th century BC, they are separated by a dot or a colon, which might also be used to separate syllables. Writing was phonetic; the letters represented the sounds and not conventional spellings. On
24021-455: Was inscribed with a language very similar to Etruscan , which has led to the postulation of a Tyrrhenian language family of Etruscan, Lemnian and Raetic . There is thus evidence that there was indeed at least a linguistic relationship between the Lemnians and the Etruscans. The circumstances of this are disputed; most scholars would ascribe Aegean Tyrrhenians to the Etruscan expansion from
24178-502: Was mostly an economic and religious league, or a loose confederation, similar to the Greek states. During the later imperial times, when Etruria was just one of many regions controlled by Rome, the number of cities in the league increased by three. This is noted on many later grave stones from the 2nd century BC onwards. According to Livy , the twelve city-states met once a year at the Fanum Voltumnae at Volsinii , where
24335-420: Was once widely taught to Roman boys, but had since become replaced by the teaching of Greek, while Varro noted that theatrical works had once been composed in Etruscan. The date of extinction for Etruscan is held by scholarship to have been either in the late first century BC, or the early first century AD. Freeman's analysis of inscriptional evidence would appear to imply that Etruscan was still flourishing in
24492-510: Was the language of the Etruscan civilization in the ancient region of Etruria , in Etruria Padana and Etruria Campana in what is now Italy . Etruscan influenced Latin but was eventually completely superseded by it. The Etruscans left around 13,000 inscriptions that have been found so far, only a small minority of which are of significant length; some bilingual inscriptions with texts also in Latin, Greek , or Phoenician ; and
24649-486: Was widespread over the Mediterranean shores, as evidenced by about 13,000 inscriptions (dedications, epitaphs , etc.), most fairly short, but some of considerable length. They date from about 700 BC. The Etruscans had a rich literature, as noted by Latin authors. Livy and Cicero were both aware that highly specialized Etruscan religious rites were codified in several sets of books written in Etruscan under
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