The Etruscan World (Routledge Worlds)

• Daniele F. Maras –

it is given in words and not by means of numeral marks, and in some calendar dates as
expressed in the Liber Linteus from Zagreb or on the Tabula from Capua. From these sources
we can list the following numeral words (listed in the probable order from 7 to 10):

semφ, cezp, nurφ, sar

Obviously it is even more diffi cult to establish the correct sequence of these numbers,
though we can be almost certain that sar has the meaning “ten.”
Possible help comes from late literary information about the name of the month of
October, which in Etruscan sounded Xosfer, probably to be read *Chosfer and compared
with number cezp, whose meaning can be inferred as “eight.”
Finally, a hypothesis has recently been proposed by Giulio Giannecchini for the number
“twelve,” which is probably represented by the Etruscan word snuiaφ/snuiuφ, occurring in
some passages of the Liber Linteus and in the fi nal sentence of the minor golden tablet of
Pyrgi:^13 vacal tmial avilχval amuce pulumχva snuiaφ, to be translated approximately as “the
(number of) ritual(s) (vacal) of the years of the temple was (testifi ed by) twelve bullae.”^14
The names of tens are expressed by the suffi x -alχ added to the names of units with
some phonetic adaptation: cealχ, “thirty,” from ci; śealχ, “forty,” from śa; muvalχ, “fi fty,”
from maχ^15. An exception is the name for “twenty,” zaθrum (perhaps relating in some way
to zal), which differs from the others just as Latin viginti from triginta, or Greek 
to ).
Much remains to be said about the numbers above ten, which use an additive and
subtractive system similar to that in Latin: so ci sar is “thirteen” and huθ sar is “sixteen,”
but to say “seventeen,” “eighteen” and “nineteen” respectively the subtractive forms ci-
em-zaθrumis, esl-em-zaθrumis and θun-em-zaθrumis were used (literally like Latin tres-,
duo- and unum-de-viginti).^16 About the higher numbers there can only be hypotheses,
founded upon the presence of certain words where we expect numerals: for example in
the sequence masu naper on the Cippus from Perugia (where naper is an unit of length,
see below) the word masu is perhaps a number,^17 and since it seems to appear again in
the sequence masuvem maniχiur on a long and obscure Archaic inscription from Caere, it
could be a possible candidate for “one hundred” (and the latter sequence could be centum-
de-mille, thus “900”?)^18 (Fig. 23.2).

DIVISIONS

Once we have described the Etruscan numeral system and the available evidence for the
value of every known number, we can go further in exploring what kinds of divisions are
attested in Etruscan culture by the sources at our disposal.

Divisions of time

In his work De die natali (“On the day of birth”), Censorinus provides some information
about the contents of the Etruscan Libri Rituales, which also dealt with the fi xed length
of the life of men, towns and peoples (17.5–6).
Censorinus tells us that, according to Etruscan theory, the length of each saeculum
(approximately one century) was determined by the oldest person alive at the time of
the end of the preceding saeculum, to start with the foundation of a town or a people:^19