Alessandro Morandi the Etruscan Language : New Acquisitions
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Alessandro Morandi The Etruscan language : new acquisitions Światowit : rocznik poświęcony archeologii przeddziejowej i badaniom pierwotnej kultury polskiej i słowiańskiej 7 (48)/A, 31-40 2006/2008 ŚWIATOWIT • TOM vII (XLvIII) • fASC . A • 2006-2008 ALESSANDRO MORANDI (UNIVERSIT DI ROMA “L A SAPIENZA ”) the etRUScAn lAngUAge : n eW AcqUISItIonS (P l. 1 6-19) In the last twenty years many Etruscan inscrip - in the first person, in the well-known archaic, Etruscan, tions have been found, bringing the total number of doc- greek and Latin tradition of the speaking object. Nor is umented exempla to well over 10.000, even if we restrict there any difficulty in linking capi with the Latin capio and ourselves to those of a certain linguistic importance. The the greek kapto in the dual sense o f “contain” and “take”. variety of supports is striking: lead tablets, such as that of The stele of Saturnia, discovered in 1984 but edit - Pech Maho 1; cippi, of which there is an exceptionally beau - ed in 1999, again has the verb zinece/tinece , already familiar tiful, though fragmentary, one from Tragliatella, between from other monumental inscriptions, probably meaning Cerve teri and veio 2; and the important stele of Saturnia 3, “had done”; in the sense that the figures mentioned in the which has a fairly long text. We now even have the bronze- funeral text took upon themselves to have this commemo - plated lead weight of a balance, the so-called aequipondium rative stele erected on behalf of Larth Laucies, their father. of Cerveteri 4. Each of these documents supplies important The verb in question is also known from the Rhaetian in elements for our knowledge of Etruscan. Take, for example, the transitive sense of “make an offering” in a votive context. the cippus at Tragliatella ( Fig. 1a, b ), which has given us This is a fact of great importance, confirming Etruscan- a verb with a thel – base, which inevitably recalls the greek Rhaetian kinship. But there is more: the past participle on thelo , ethelo ; and here we return to the old but still-lively the stele, thamequ is not, unfortunately, semantically ascer - debate on Etruscan’s linguistic kinship with the other lan - tainable with any certainty, but it certainly refers to an ac- guages of the classical world (and the Etruscans wanted to tion conferring honour of the person concerned in the epi - be, and were, an integral part of the classical world; to taph. The late german linguist h. Rix related the ending realise that one need only stroll round the necropoles of – qu to that which appears in Etruscan past participles of Cerveteri and Tarquinia, or visit any of the main Etruscan the type zinaku “done, performed” 6. This should settle the museums in Rome, Tarquinia and florence). New finds in question of the Etruscan-Rhaetian identity, as Rhaetian also the field of inscribed pottery allowed Agostiniani to dispel had absolutely similar verb forms, a particular case in point some of our embarrassing ignorance with his deciphering being the verb eluku “offered”. Explaining this similarity on of the recurrent sequence ei minipi cap i 5 (there are about a historical-linguistic-archaeological level has led to open ten cases of it with minor variants): this can only mean “do disagreement between those who have studied the ethno - no t take me”, to be understood as the inscribed vase speak ing genesis of the Italian peninsula. for one group, a genuine 1 g. COLONNA, L’iscrizione etrusca del piombo di Linguadoca , 1994 (reprint), here abbreviated to POKORNy. for typographi - Scienze dell’Antichità 2, 1988 (1989), p. 547-555; M. CRISTO - cal reasons greek characters are transcribed as follows: theta with fANI, St. Etr. (Rivista di Epigrafia Etrusca) 57, 1991, p. 285-287. th , phi with ph , and khi with kh . This article uses the following abbreviations: AgOSTINIANI = 2 A. MORANDI, A proposito di due epigrafi etrusche ceretane , Rev. L. AgOSTINIANI, Tabula Cortonensis , Rome 2000; CIE = Belge Phil . histoire 73, 1995, p. 105-125. Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum ; MORANDI = A. MORAN - 3 A. MAggIANI, Nuovi etnici e toponimi etruschi , in Incontro di DI, A proposito di etrusco tamera , Rev. Belge Phil. histoire 76, studi in memoria di Massimo Pallottino , Pisa-Rome 1999, p. 47- 1998, p. 135-142; PALLOTTINO = M. PALLOTTINO, 61, tabs. I-II. Etruscologia (7th ed.), Milan, 1985; St. Etr.= Studi Etruschi ; RIX 4 M. CRISTOfANI, , quaderni di = h. RIX, La seconda metà del nuovo testo di Cortona , in La Due testi dell’Italia preromana Archeologia Etrusco-Italica 25, 1996, pp. 39-54; MORANDI, Tabula Cortonensis, Quaderni di Archeologia Etrusco-Italica 28, p. 135-142, in particular. 2002, p. 77-86; TLE = M. PALLOTTINO, Testimonia Linguae 5 Etruscae , Milan 1968 (2nd ed.). for references to Indo-Euro pean L. AgOSTINIANI, La sequenza eiminipicapi e la negazione in I have mainly drawn on the work of Pokorny: J. POKORNy, etrusco , Archivio glottologico Italiano 69, 1984, p. 84-117. Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch , I-II, Tübingen-Basel, 6 h. RIX, Rätisch und Etruskisch , Innsbruck, 1998, p. 22-24. 31 ALESSANDRO MORANDI Etruscan form almost in the heart of Europe (the territory ana (once known as the “Tegola [tile] di Capua”) are much of the Rhaetians certainly extended beyond the Austria- more accessible in some passages. The new texts give the Italy divide) confirmed the theory that the origins of the impression that each discovery leads endlessly to new words. Etruscans were in northern Europe. for the other group, Evidently it is a language whose rich lexis we know only in Pallottino above all 7, the Etruscan-Rhaetian kinship meant part, even though each new inscription adds to our store. only that the Etruscans had expanded northwards, and this Of the tablet of Tarquinia we can say only that it is was confirmed by the relative lateness of Rhaetian epi- a text commemorating actions by a member of the family of graphs. The latter view was supported by historiographic the Clevsinas, as is indicated by the puzzling adjective with tradition, which regarded the Rhaetians as simply Etrus- funeral connections rutzss , and svaleni “during his life”; cans who had fled from the plain of Padania after the Celtic hence, I would not follow Pallottino in describing it as invasions in the early vI century, “ prisco Tarquinio Romae a “legal text”, a term that has been much used – and misused regnante ” (Livy, v, 34). But, though it was given scant cred - – for some years now. Unfortunately we only have half of it in the past, protohistorical archaeologists are reconsider - each line as the document was damaged long ago. The per - ing the possibility that, while the Etruscans certainly did son who gave his name to the text, a Ceisinies, belonged penetrate the territory of the Adige valley and even further to one of the most distinguished families in the city of north, nevertheless the Rhaetians had longstanding settle - Tarquinia, as is clear from the imposing hypogeum “dei ments in areas remote from the territories traditionally re- Ceisinies” 10 ; there is a reference to his nomen gentilicium in garded as theirs. Thus, we should look afresh at the “north - two epigraphs of notable importance, one containing the ern” theory. linguistically valuable term tamera “tomb”, which was, un- The new epigraphic documents that I want to con - fortunately, long misunderstood by Etruscologists to the sider here – inevitably, for want of time, limiting myself detriment of Etruscan studies in general ( tamera , although to the most important – are, with the year of their dis- it had been correctly interpreted by nineteenth-century covery, the aequipondium of Cerveteri, 1996, the Tabula Italian antiquarians, was later translated as a term used in Cortonensis 8, 2000, with additional reference to the tablet connection with magistrates, and related by many scholars of Tarquinia, 1985 ( Fig. 2a, b) , and the Pech Maho lead 9, to the Anatolian dammara !). In the 1980’s I offered a re- 1988 ( Fig. 3 ). The last two are, unfortunately, more or less interpretation of the longer of the two epitaphs on the incomprehensible, as their brevity is accompanied by con - tomb, after retrieving a hitherto-unknown old drawing 11 . siderable lacunae. As I have said, the inscription on the Tarquinian tablet con - It should be mentioned first of all that these new tains a new, incomprehensible word, rutzss , indicative of documents have shown us just how much we still do not how difficult Etruscan is. Oddly, at around the same time as know of Etruscan, at the level both of grammar and of lexis; the edition of the tablet an inscription in a Tarquinian each new discovery thus adds difficulty to difficulty, par - hypogeum was discovered and published, where the word ticularly when the texts are non-religious in character, con - recurs in the form rutz , which was not understood, either cerning contracts and regulations to be respected between by the original editor or by Rix, who read ruz 12 . the parties in relation to the possession of some land or At the same time that Pallottino provided a com - burial area, or of valuable pieces of property such as a boat. mentary on the Tarquinian tablet, he also dealt with a small Clearly, it is a “spoken” language, and in these cases the in- bronze base from the collections of Manchester Museum 13 . scriptions are completely impenetrable, such as the notable The relatively late inscription contains a dedication to the case of the Cippus of Perugia, CIE 4538. In comparison, god hercules, Hercles in the text, with some familiar terms ritual-religious texts, thanks to their repetitiveness and sche- in the dedications, but with varying declinations, munis , matic formulae, the zagreb Mummy and the Tabula Ca pu- truta , ala , alpnina , luths , inpa .