CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

THE SCIENCE OF THE ETRUSCANS

Armando Cherici

T

yrrhenia is the country, and Tyrrhenians are the so-called Etruscans. A sage wrote
their history, and said that the demiurge, the creator god of all things, granted
12,000 years to his creatures, and distributed them into twelve seats (Gk. oikoi, “houses”).
In the fi rst millennium he created the heavens and the earth. In the second he created the
visible fi rmament, calling it heaven. In the third the sea and all waters of the earth. In
the fourth all the great lights: the Sun, Moon, stars. In the fi fth all living things: birds,
reptiles, quadrupeds in the air, on the earth, in the water. In the sixth he created man; to
man remain 6,000 years.
This looks like a passage from the fi rst book of the Bible, but it is actually the entry
“Turrenia” in the Suda (Fr. 7.706 J), an encyclopedia of the ancient world compiled in
Byzantium between the tenth and eleventh centuries of our era. Accordingly, the Etruscan
cosmogony must have been closely related to that attested in priestly circles in Jerusalem
around the sixth century bc (Genesis 1, 1–2, 4), including the equation that one divine
day = 1,000 human years (Psalms 90.4; 2 Peter 3.8). The topic is of considerable interest:
for the seventh century bc, imports from the Phoenician and Cypriot regions are well
documented, and through cultural contact this borrowing may be plausible,^1 but – if
the entry in the Suda is credible and we are clearly dealing with external infl uence –
Etruria would have accepted a cosmogonic system of thought quite different from that
of the other two “classic” cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, the Greek and Roman,
cultures adjacent to the Etruscans, and with which it substantially shared its pantheon.
The questions remain open and require directed study; here, I would simply like to
indicate that what is reported in the Suda is not entirely foreign to the Etruscan culture,
having indeed certain elements that are unique to it, as well as other elements most likely
from other sources: the doctrine of a defi nite time, granted to the life of the individual
man, or to a civilization as a whole (Censorinus, De natali die 14.6), and the 12 “houses”
(oikoi), reminiscent of the 16 sedes (“seats”) into which the Etruscan templum is divided
(Pliny, Nat.Hist. 2.60.142; Martianus Capella 1.45–46).^2
Let us now proceed to the topic of our chapter. What is a cosmogony? It is man’s fi rst
attempt to explain the origin and nature of himself, as well as the universe and the world