The Etruscan World (Routledge Worlds)

• Luciano Agostiniani –

/ s / is joined by ç for / š /, while at Caere the sign for / š / is  (“four-stroke sigma”); and
fi nally, at Veii (but also at Caere) / s / is represented by a cross mark  (also ), while 
represents / š /.
In diagram:

/s/ /š/

Tarquinia  ç

Caere 

Veii (and Caere) 

For the rendering of / f / there is evidence in the southern area, at fi rst, of the use of a
digamma,  or , which is replaced (but only in the late sixth century bc) by a unique
sign, f, taken from one of the Italic alphabets. For the northern area archaic evidence is
lacking, and the only sign that we fi nd in use is f.

TEXT TYPES

If we consider what kind of texts comprise the Etruscan epigraphic corpus,^4 it is easy
to see that all those that were lost, predictably, were the documents of “normal” use in
writing in the Etruscan world: papyri, parchments, waxed tablets, all the linen books
with a single exception, and most of the lead plaques. Their loss is largely due to the
perishable nature of the supports, or because of their reuse, in the case of metals such as
bronze or lead. Hence the almost total absence from the corpus of texts representative of
certain kinds of writing, such as literary texts, archival documents – legal texts, annals
and other historical texts, letters, dictionaries, grammars.
In fact, the so-called “long texts” of the Etruscan corpus, i.e. that select handful of fewer
than ten texts that exceed 30/40 words, on which rests much of what we know about the
language, belong to one of these categories, especially that of archival documents. If they
have come down to us, it is due to fortuitous and exceptional circumstances: for example,
the occasional use of non-perishable material, such as clay in the case of the “Tablet of
Capua”; or the fact that the document was transcribed on non-perishable medium (stone
in the case of the “Cippus of Perugia,” bronze in the case of the “Tabula Cortonensis”); or a
“recycling” such as that to which we owe the preservation of the manuscript of the “Liber
linteus” (see below); or pure chance, for texts using materials that are typically reused,
such as lead or gold (so the “Magliano Lead Plaque,” the “S. Marinella Plaque,” the “Pyrgi
Plaques”).
The longest extant Etruscan text is the “Manuscript of Zagreb,”^5 the only non-
epigraphic document in the Etruscan corpus. This is a “liber linteus,” i.e. a manuscript
written with a brush on a linen cloth, dating to the third-second century bc. It ended
up, it is not known how, in Egypt, where it was re-cut horizontally into long strips used
as bandages to wrap a mummy. It was originally divided into twelve rectangular panels,
each with 34 lines of writing. The cloth was folded “accordion-fashion” along the lines
of the vertical panels: these functioned like the pages of a book. Only some of the strips