The Obituary
Etruscan was spoken across Etruria in central Italy by the people who dominated the peninsula before Rome’s rise. A non-Indo-European language with no clear relatives, it was written in an alphabet derived from Greek, which the Romans in turn adapted for Latin. As Rome expanded and Romanised its neighbours, Etruscan retreated through the final centuries BCE, surviving in religious and ceremonial use until the first century CE. Around 13,000 inscriptions remain, but with no living kin the language is still only partly deciphered.
Worth remembering
- Romans borrowed much from the Etruscans — including, by some accounts, the very alphabet that became their own.
- Despite thousands of surviving inscriptions, scholars still cannot fully read it, as it has no living relatives.
Sources
- Etruscan was the language of the Etruscan civilization in ancient Italy, a non-Indo-European isolate gradually replaced by Latin. Wikipedia
- Etruscan survives in around 13,000 inscriptions but remains only partly understood. Encyclopaedia Britannica
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.