THE ETRUSCAN MYSTERY - THEIR ORIGINS - THE PELASGIANS

Arutiunov: most probably Etruscan was related to Hurri-Urartic and migrated
from Asia Minor.

IDEA: In fact the Lydian, being a descendant language from Luwian, was a
blend of Hatti Caucasian and Anatolian Indoeuropean.

There were no voiced stops in Etruscan: no /b/, /d/, or /g/; when these
occured in foreign words they were usually written P, T and K.
Etruscan distinguished between aspirated and unaspirated unvoiced stops: /p/
from /ph/, /c/ from /ch/, /t/ from /th/,like some other
languages of the time, including Greek.

The Sumerians did not distinguish between voiced and voiceless stops like
/b/ and /p/, /d/ and /t/, or /g/ and /k/.

LINEAR A language: The phonetics is also surprisingly close to Etruscan (no
difference between voiced and voiceless consonants,
between l and r and hesitation between l and d) - this mutation was common
among many Mediterranean languages and sometimes was
borrowed into Latin.

There were no voiced stops in Etruscan: no [b], [d], or [g], so common in
Indo-European tongues; when these sounds occured in
foreign words they were usually written P, T and K. Etruscan distinguished
between aspirated and unaspirated unvoiced stops:
[p] from [ph], [c] from [ch], [t] from [th], which was common only in Greek
or Iranian languages but not in Italic.

Florentin dialect of Tuscany: mutho, poho, saffa from Italian: muto, poco,
sapa.

The language which is conventionally called Prehellenic A is not attested
but can be supposed through the study of the tracks it left in
Greek. A number of words and of toponym, such as Corinthos or Knossos are
not explained through Greek, and does not even appear to
be Indo-European, what allows us to suppose they belong to another tongue
which would have been spoken in Greece (and in Southern
Italy as well) before the coming of the Greeks. This linguistic layer seems
to be relatively coherent, with few dialectal variations,
what would suggest it was quite recent. The nature of the relationships
between this hypothetical language and the neighboring tongues
is unclear but it seems to share a few words with Etruscan.

spur (town, city) - Sparte (Greek placename); huth (four) - Uttena
(Tetrapolis); netsvis (haruspice) - nedus (viscera); puia (wife) -
opu (I marry); purth (magistrate) - prutanis (magistrate); Corithus
(placename in Etruria) - Corinthos in Greece;
Curtun (placename) - Gurton in Greece; Tarkhuna (placename, named after a
god) - Tarkhuw (to hold a funerary office);
tamera (kind of priest) - themeros (holy, sacred); mutu (thyme) - mnthos
(mint); tepa (hill) - Thbai or Thebes (placename).

The definite proof of the oriental origin of the Etruscans is that a hero
of great significance is Tarchon. He is clearly
the Stormgod Tarhun, the highest god of the Luwians and Hittites. In any
case Tarchon had the power to ward off lightnings;
the Anatolian Tarhunt was the god of lightning.

It is, unfortunately, impossible to really compare and phonology of the two
languages, since prehellenic words have been assimilated into
the Greek phonetic system. The similarities in vocabulary are, however,
striking and clearly suggest that at least one of the languages
spoken in Greece prior to the coming of the Greeks was somehow related to
Etruscan.

On Etruscan only are known some 250 words and the most basic elements of
grammar. We can understand most short writings but longer
texts are beyond our understanding. Moreover, Etruscan seems to be an
isolate. The only tongues that it is known to related to are the
neighboring Rhaetic, of which we know almost nothing, and Lemnian, spoken on
a small Aegean island, still very badly understood.
Many attempts have been made to decipher Etruscan or to link it to better
known language families but, so far, none has given satisfying
results. We can only say that Etruscan shows intriguing similarities to
Indo-European languages, without belonging to that family.

IDEA: similar would happen to an unkown IE language with half of its
vocabulary coming of a Hurrian substrate...

Indo-European is generally considered as a better candidate for Etruscan,
even if this hypothesis is far from being accepted by all
scholars. It has long been remarked that the Etruscan nominal morphology
resembled the Indo-european one

The Position of Etruscan in the Western Mediterranean ancient linguistic
landscape (Perrotin):

Georgiev has described it as a descendent of Hittite, but this theory has
not been accepted by Italian etruscologists. Adrados and
Woudhuizen have tried to link it to Lycian (an Anatolian language spoken
during the hellenistic period and generally considered
as a descendent of Luwian). Sergent considers Adrados' arguments as
“powerful”. Faucouneau has also supposed a genetic link
between Lycian and Etruscan: he considers as archaic Indo-European tongues.
He would view them as survivors of a old linguistic
layer - called Proto-Indo-european - corresponding to the diffusion of
agrarian economy in Europe around 6000 B.C and which
would have been replaced after 4000 B.C by Indo-European stricto-sensu.

Linguistically Lydian is the most deviating of the Anatolian languages.
Oettinger (1978) argues that Lydian belonged to the
Palaic-Luwian group (which remained after Hittite had left the group). From
this group Lydian would have branched off first.

In a few centuries after their arrival to Asai Minor, the Hittites acquired
vocabulary, which since then was just 20% Indo-European.
All religious terms, personal names and place names, even many phonetic and
morphological peculiarities of Hittite became completely
non-Indo-European.

West Anatolia would have been occupied by non-IE peoples, but later
migrations of Anatolians would carry there future Carian,
Lycian, Lydian, etc.

IDEA: So an IE language that only keeps a fifht of the common IE words, what
would become if blended again with a non-IE language ?

A co-incidence or relic is the name Shakalasha from the Egyptian list. An
ancient city in later region of Lycia was called Sagalassa.
In the sixth century BC it was occupied by Lycians, descendants of
Indo-European Luwians, but in the 13th century, when Egypt was
full of fear of Sea Peoples, it was surely a city of some other people, not
Hittite - Egyptians never mention Hittites as one of the Sea Peoples.
Lycians just settled on these lands, but preserved names of towns as well as
the name of the very country - Lukka in Hittite sources.

IDEA: by that ressembles so much to Indoeuropean the Etrusc ?

Steinbauer observes that the Etruscan shows most connections (loanwords)
with Lydian.

The most stricking case is the word "tamara" which means "priest" which is
similar at hititte word
for priest: "damara", which might have an Hurrite origin. Or "erect" in
etruscan is "thuv" where in Lydian was "tuve". Even has words
that would lead to an old IE branch: apa/father, ati/mother, avil/year,
usil/sun, etnam/and, lein/die, nefts/nephew, vers/fire, tin/day,
spet/drink, etc.

There is a relative consensus among scholars that Etruscan shares a sizable
of case and verbal endings with Indo-European. This is
particularly visible for case endings, as all Etruscan nominal endings (with
the exception of the plural marker -r) seem to have cognates
in Indo-European.

The Etruscan pronominal system - at least the part of it we understand - is
relatively close to the Indo-European one, each Etruscan
pronoun having an apparent cognate in Indo-European. It is possible - if
rare - for a pronoun to be borrowed (for instance "they" in
modern English) but it is highly unlikely for a whole set of pronoun.

Contrary to what is generally believed, there are real convergences in
vocabulary between Etruscan and Indo-European tongues.

clan (son) / *kwl- (descendent)
sekh, sec (daughter) / Thracian sukis (girl) / IE *su- (to engender)
prumaths (grandson) / Irish maq- (son)
neftsh (grandson) / Latin nepos (grandson)
lautn (family, gens) / Proto-Indo-European *leudh (people)
tamna (horse) / Latin domo (I tame)
tur (to give) / Proto-Indo-European don/r- (to give)
tmia (holy building) / Latin domus (house)
avil (year) / Proto-Indo-European *aiw (long period of time)
arac (hawk) / haras (eagle)
math- (mead, inebriating drink) / medhu (honey, mead)

IDEA: More possible IE words: vers- fire; vinum wine; usil sun; tuthi
community (Umbrian tota); tin- day; ta (demonstrative) this;
puth- cup, vase, well? (Lat. puteus, puteal); mi (pronoun) I, me; lup-
(verb) to die; leu- lion; etnam and; eleivana of oil; cupe cup
(Lat. cupa); an ( pronoun) he, she.

IDEA: Even numerals seem a blend Hurrian "kig" in Etruscan "three" (ci) with
ressembling IE numerals
(thu, huth, sha, semph, nurph for 2, 4, 6, 7, 9).

The next words are numerals from one to teen: mi, erku, erekh, chorkh, hing,
vech, evthn, uth, inn, tasn; are Indoeuropean ?

...............................................................................
PART 2

Genetic map of Italy points clearly to a different gene pool type in Toscana
that might represent a foreign population.
Secondary points also are interesting: Sicily, South Italy, Alps and
Liguria-Piedmont. (Alberto Piazza).

A glance at the map makes it probable that these people came by sea, not
from the north, from the Urnfield culture (which are mostly
Indo-European peoples).-Proto-Villanova is characterized by the transition
to cremation. This is also indeed found often in
Asia Minor.

If the Etruscans were in Tuscany already when the Indo-Europeans entered
Italy, they would have taken Tuscany
just like the whole rest of Italy.

Nel IX secolo si formano in Etruria i primi centri protourbani
"villanoviani" (Tarquinia, Cerveteri, Veio ecc.).

Nearly every major Etruscan city of historical times has yielded Villanovan
remains, they diposite the ashes
in urns along grave goods. Cremation with ashes in a biconical vessel is
commonly found as a holdover from the Proto-Villanovan;
the inhumation also appeared and during the Orientalizing period eventually
became the prevailing rite, except in northern Etruria,
where cremation persisted to the 1st century BC.

The Latins practiced commonly the inceneration of the deceased (as usual
among IE), but since the Empire they
changed towards inhumation.

-1000: first iron in Italy with the Villanova Culture (Italics ?), around
-900 the area is attested to be Etruscan. Their rites are Mediterranean:
they were buried in fossae, after some centuries in tumulus and with ritual
sacrifices.

-800/-450 Etruscans in Toscana, Alps and Corsica.

The Etruscan civilization existed in Etruria in the northern part of what is
now Italy prior to the formation of the Roman Republic.
Etruscans were a non-Indo-European people who inhabited northern and central
Italy before 800 BC. Herodotus records the legend that
they came from Lydia, which has support from non-Greek inscriptions found on
the island of Lemnos that appear to be in a language
related to Etruscan, and have been dated to the sixth century BC.

The Greeks called the Etruscans Tyrsenoi, a name they also used for people
in the north-west of Asia Minor.

IDEA: And this name seems related with the own name that the Etruscans used
for themselves: Rasenas (Ty + Rsena or Ty + Rhena);
also Lycians showed a tendence to save vocals: the Greeks named them
Termilians, but they named to themselves Trmmil.

According to the Victory Stela found near Thebes, the Sea Peoples destroyed
the Hittite kingdom, and consisted of the following peoples
or clans: Shardana [Sardinians], Lukka [Lycians], Meshwesh [Meoinians ?],
Teresh [Tyrrhenians], Ekwesh [Acheans...] and Shekelesh
[Siculs]. Palestines and the future Phoenicians.
The Teresh and Lukka were probably from western Anatolia, and may correspond
to the ancestors of the later Lydians and Lycians,
respectively. However, the Teresh may also have been the people later known
to the Greeks as the Tyrsenoi, the Etruscans, and already
familiar to the Hittites as the Taruisa, which latter is suspiciously
similar to the Greek Troia.

After the names of Priamos and Paris had been interpreted as Luwian, in any
case Anatolian, and with the recent find of the Luwian
seal in the city of Troy, it was believed that the Trojans spoke Luwian.

In regard to Crete, writers agree that in ancient times it had good laws,
and rendered the best of the Greeks its emulators, and in particular
the Lacedaemonians, as is shown, for instance, by Plato and also by Ephorus,
who in his Europe has described its constitution. But later
it changed very much for the worse; for after the Tyrrhenians, who more than
any other people ravaged Our Sea [the Mediterranean],
the Cretans succeeded to the business of piracy [...]. (Strabo).

Strabo: "The Tyrrheni, then, are called among the Romans "Etrusci" and
"Tusci" [from there Toscana]. The Greeks, however, so the story
goes, named them thus after Tyrrhenus, the son of Atys, who sent forth
colonists hither from Lydia: At a time of famine and dearth of
crops, Atys, one of the descendants of Heracles and Omphale, having only two
children, by a casting of lots detained one of them,
Lydus, and, assembling the greater part of the people with the other,
Tyrrhenus, sent them forth. And when Tyrrhenus came, he
not only called the country Tyrrhenia after himself, but also put Tarco in
charge as "coloniser," and founded twelve cities; Tarco,
I say, after whom the city of Tarquinia is named, who, on account of his
sagacity from boyhood, is said by the myth-tellers to
have been born with grey hair. Now at first the Tyrrheni, since they were
subject to the orders of only one ruler, were very
strong..."

Nor must we forget that the Etruscans declared consanguinity with Sardis on
the ground of an early colonisation of Etruria by the
Lydians (Tacitus, ANN., IV, 55).

And the Lydians themselves say that the games which are now in use among
them and among the Hellenes were also their invention.
These they say were invented among them at the same time as they colonised
Tyrsenia, and this is the account they give of them:
-In the reign of Atys the son of Manes their king there came to be a
grievous dearth over the whole of Lydia; and the Lydians for a
time continued to endure it, but afterwards, as it did not cease, they
sought for remedies; and one devised one thing and another of them
devised another thing. And then were discovered, they say, the ways of
playing with the dice and the knucklebones and the ball, and all
the other games excepting draughts (for the discovery of this last is not
claimed by the Lydians). These games they invented as a resource
against the famine, and thus they used to do:-on one of the days they would
play games all the time in order that they might not feel the
want of food, and on the next they ceased from their games and had food: and
thus they went on for eighteen years. As however the evil
did not slacken but pressed upon them ever more and more, therefore their
king divided the whole Lydian people into two parts, and he
appointed by lot one part to remain and the other to go forth from the land;
and the king appointed himself to be over that one of the parts
which had the lot to stay in the land, and his son to be over that which was
departing; and the name of his son was Tyrsenos. So the one
party of them, having obtained the lot to go forth from the land, went down
to the sea at Smyrna and built ships for themselves, wherein
they placed all the movable goods which they had and sailed away to seek for
means of living and a land to dwell in; until after passing
by many nations they came at last to the land of the Ombricans, and there
they founded cities and dwell up to the present time:
and changing their name they were called after the king’s son who led them
out from home, not Lydians but Tyrsenians, taking
the name from him. (Herodotus).

IDEA: The Lydians themselves recognized that the Etruscans were their
descendants, keeping also some details.

And Euripides too, in his Archelaus, says: 'Danaus, the father of fifty
daughters, on coming
into Argos, took up his abode in the city of Inachus, and throughout Greece
he laid down a law that all people hitherto named Pelasgians
were to be called Danaans'. And again, Anticleides says that they were the
first to settle the regions round about Lemnos and Imbros,
and indeed that some of these sailed away to Italy with Tyrrhenus the son of
Atys. And the compilers of the histories of The Land of
Atthis give accounts of the Pelasgi, believing that the Pelasgi were in fact
at Athens too, although the Pelasgi were by the Attic people
called 'Pelargi', the compilers add, because they were wanderers and, like
birds, resorted to those places whither chance led them.
(Strabo).

IDEA: There was a joint or almost consecutive colonization of Etruria by
Pelasgian and Lydian elements, so Etrusc from which
of these cultures is debt ? As Etrusc does not ressembles Epiro-Macedonian
(the Pelasgian de facto), it is to suppose that it
was originated from Lydian.

Strabo: "Among the Greeks, however, this city [Caere, one of the twenty
cities founded by Tyrrhenus] was in good repute both for
bravery and for righteousness; for it not only abstained from all piracy [as
was usual among the Sea Peoples], but also set up at Pytho
what is called "the treasury of the Agyllaei"; for what is now Caerea was
formerly called Agylla, and is said to have been founded by
Pelasgi who had come from Thessaly. But when those Lydians whose name was
changed to Tyrrheni marched against the Agyllaei,
one of them approached the wall and inquired what the name of the city was,
and when one of the Thessalians on the wall, instead of
replying to the inquiry, saluted him with a 'Chaere' ".

PELASGIANS were not TYRRHENIANS, and had not related languages: they were
not able to understood even a salutation.

The Lydians, on the other hand, are expressly stated to have had nothing in
common with the Pelasgians (Dion. i. 30).

Proto-Villanovia = Pelasgians with bronze, Villanova = Anatolian Etruscans
with iron ??

Strabo, Geography book 6: All of it is rugged and mountainous, since it
embraces a large portion of the Apennine Mountains;
and it is thought to have admitted Arcadians [Pelasgians] as colonists.

IDEA: It would point that first was a Pelasgian colonization, and that the
Etruscan could be a blend of Pelasgian
[Linear B Greek or Epiro-Macedonian possibly] and Lydian [Anatolian
Indoeuropean plus Hatti].

Herodotus: "therefore their king divided the whole Lydian people into two
parts, and he appointed by lot one part to remain and
the other to go forth from the land; and the king appointed himself to be
over that one of the parts which had the lot to stay in the land,
and his son to be over that which was departing; and the name of his son was
Tyrsenos. So the one party of
them, having obtained the lot to go forth from the land, went down to the
sea at Smyrna and built ships for
themselves, wherein they placed all the movable goods which they had and
sailed away to seek for means of
living and a land to dwell in; until after passing by many nations they came
at last to the land of the
Ombricans [Umbrians], and there they founded cities and dwell up to the
present time: and changing their name they
were called after the king’s son who led them out from home, not Lydians but
Tyrsenians, taking the name from him."

Next to this comes the seventh region, in which is Etruria, a district which
begins at the river Macra, and has often changed its name.
At an early period the Umbri were expelled from it by the Pelasgi; and these
again by the Lydians, who from a king of theirs were named
Tyrrheni, but afterwards, from the rites observed in their sacrifices, were
called, in the Greek language , Tusci (Pliny).