Mysterious Origin of the Etruscan Language And It's Culture
Emerging from nothing in a few decades, the brilliant Etruscan culture intrigues researchers. The origin of these people has not been defined. Its language is still not understood. The Etruscans remain for us this mysterious people, enemy of the Romans who lent them magic powers.
Lydian emigrants?
When Etruscans appeared in Italy in the 8th century BC, their brilliant civilization is clearly ahead of that of the Italic peoples. They are artists but also excellent navigators: they trade with the Phoenicians, the Egyptians and the Greeks, master the technique of iron while their neighbors hardly get out of the Bronze Age. Where do they come from ? For a long time, tradition accepted the version given by Herodotus in his The Histories, written in the 5th century BC : it explains their immigration by a famine which would have ravaged their region of origin, Lydia, in Asia Minor.
Just before the Christian era, however, a historian living in Rome, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, wrote a Roman Archeology where he questioned for the first time the Eastern origin of the Etruscans. He lists the fundamental differences between Etruscans and Lydians, particularly with regard to language. For him, the Etruscans are Italics (for us, Villanovans), who have evolved faster than their neighbors thanks to contact with foreign navigators. The debate is therefore open between "orientalists", supporters of a Lydian origin, and "autochthonists", supporters of a local evolution of the population. It is still not closed today.
Orientalists and autochthonists
The “orientalists” note the sudden change in funeral rite between Villanovans, who practice cremation, and Etruscans, who dig elongated graves where the corpse is buried. They put forward the oriental aspect of the way of life, religion and Etruscan art, in forms as in techniques. Finally, a stele found on the island of Lemnos, opposite the coasts of Lydia, bears inscriptions in a language which strongly resembles that of the Etruscans, which would provide evidence of the passage of the Lydians during their journey to Italy.
The “autochthonists” refute these arguments. They explain the oriental influences by the numerous contacts of the Etruscans with the Syrian, Egyptian and Phoenician merchants. They point out that it cannot be excluded that the funeral rite has evolved in a short time, following a decision by the clergy for example. With regard to the Lemnos stele, their explanation is as follows: the language used there, just like the Etruscan language, are the last descendants, isolated, of a pre-Indo-European language spoken formerly in the greatest part of the Mediterranean basin.
A language that remains to be deciphered
Etruscan is not an Indo-European language. If we can read it - its alphabet is very close to the Greek alphabet - we understand neither the structure of the sentences, nor the grammar, nor the meaning of the words. It seems that no kinship exists between the Etruscan and the languages spoken at the same time such as Hebrew, Greek, Caucasian, Egyptian, Aramaic, Hittite, etc. The various methods of deciphering which have largely proven themselves, such as comparative linguistics or the combinatory method (which analyzes the language itself by relying on the frequency of words or on the repetition of ready-made formulas) fail in the face of 'Etruscan. However, researchers have many written documents: more than 9,000 funeral inscriptions, ten texts of 100 to 300 words, and a long text found by chance on the strips which were used to swaddle an Egyptian mummy!
In search of an Etruscan-Latin text
Despite this abundance of sources, our knowledge remains poor. The proper names borrowed from the Greek (Agamemnon, Patroclus, Achilles) made it possible to reconstruct the phonetics. We know the first six digits through dices on which they appear in full, but we do not know in what order to classify them. We were able to locate around thirty words concerning family, nature, furniture and calendar, but this is not enough to understand an entire text. Linguists and archaeologists therefore remain attached to the same hope: one day to find a bilingual Etruscan-Latin text, the two languages having coexisted in the same place for almost four centuries.
The first ages of Italy
In the second millennium BC, while in the eastern Mediterranean flourish brilliant civilizations (Egypt, Crete, Greece), the West barely leaves prehistoric times. Lazio is populated by Ligurians who did not discover the bronze technique until shortly before the year 1000. Their country bears the name of Italy: the “land of herds”.
At the start of the 1st millennium, the Ligurian country was invaded by Indo-Europeans close to the Celts, who came from the Balkans. The invaders became the Italics: Umbrians, Osci, Samnites, Romans, Albins, Sabins ... In the 8th century BC, the Etruscans appear in Umbria. They know iron. In 775, the Greeks settled in southern Italy. When, according to legend, Romulus and Remus found Rome, the Etruscans pursued a policy of expansion and, in the sixth century, they occupied Rome. They are then defeated and invaded in turn, but they retain their customs and their language until the first century of the Christian era.
