Brinton.] O i t [Oct. 18, 



the Libyans ; but it rnust be remembered that the Libj-ans un- 

 doubtedly did at that time venture out into the Atlantic as far as 

 the Canary islands and peopled them — a greater distance from 

 land than the passage of the Mediterranean requires. 



1 can not pursue this jiarallel in other directions, for lack of 

 material. We know something about the Etruscan religion ; but 

 Christianity and Moharamedanism have effaced every vestige of 

 the ancient cult of the Berbers. The architecture of the Etrus- 

 cans was wonderful, but beyond the fact that the ancient Lib}-- 

 ans vvere builders of megalithic monuments and of dwellings of 

 cut stone,* little has come down to us regarding their knowledge 

 of this art, 



§ 4. The Etruscan Language. 



One of the ablest of ancient historians, Dionysius of Halicar- 

 nassus, asserted that the Etruscan language was sui generis, 

 without atfinit}^ with any other. Such seems to have been also 

 the most recent verdict of modern linguistic research. Dr. C. 

 Pauli, one of the best authorities on it now living, pronounces 

 all attempts to trace its relationship to be failures ;f and Den- 

 nis, the learned English Etruscologist, states his opinion that it 

 is as isolated as the Basque.| Dr. Pauli, indeed, decries all at- 

 tempts to trace, in the present state of our knowledge, its affini- 

 ties, and himself sets the example of studying it from its own 

 monuments alone. 



These monuments are not insignificant. We have preserved to 

 lis, more or less complete, over six thousand inscriptions in the 

 Etruscan alphabet and language, a few of them bilingual, usually 

 with the Latin. We know the value of the Etruscan letters, and up 

 to a certain point the phonetics of the tongue. Some words have 

 been preserved to us in Greek and Latin writers with their mean- 

 ings, and the sense of others can be approximately made out 

 from their recurrence in a great many inscriptions of a certain 



* Tliere is evidence from Latin writers that the Tuariks, one of the purest blonder! of 

 the Berber tribes, constructed dwellings of cut stone before the advent of the Roman le- 

 gions. For the extracts showing this, see an article by N. Bibasco, on the Kabyles, in 

 the Revue des Deux Mundes, Dec, 18C5. 



tin his suggestive essay, Die wahre mid diefalsche Mcthndc bri der Entzifferung der Etrus- 

 kischen Inschriften, printed in the Mtdalische Studien for 18s5. 



I The Cities and Cemeteries of Elruria. Introduction. 



