ETRURIA CAPTA. 145 
_widely known than the Eugubine Tables, I propose to commence my 
story of decipherment with them. 
THE ETRUSCAN CHARACTERS. 
The radical mistake of all who have sought to read the Etruscan 
inscriptions has been their acceptance of the assertion, hardly ever 
called in question, that the phonetic values of the characters are 
those of the Roman, Greek, or Pheenician letters, with which they 
correspond in form. Thus, we are treated to such combinations as 
Siathlarnthu avils mealchlsc, and others much more barbarous, which 
mean nothing in any language on the face of the earth. For this 
radical error classical writers are not responsible, for the words 
given as Etruscan by Varro, Festus, Hesychius, and others, bear no 
resemblance to the uncouth forms of Etruscan as now read.” The 
fault lies with the thirty or more complete bilingual inscriptions, 
some of which, whether accidentally or through ignorance on the 
part of the writer of the Latin letters, may easily be made to 
coincide. Of these, the most misleading is the first in Lanzi’s 
Saggio, which reads in Latin Lart. Cati Cavlias, and, in correspond- 
ing Etruscan, LZ. Cae. Cauliam. If there be a real correspondence of 
phonetic characters, such as this example would seem to indicate, 
between the Etruscan and the Latin, the work of decipherment has 
been proved an impossibility by the labours of nearly three cen- 
turies.? I shall show shortly that there is no real coincidence of 
phonetic values, and that the apparent coincidences in form of 
character are partly accidental and partly the result of ignorance or 
a desire to assimilate on the part of the engraver of the Roman 
letters. 
It is now generally agreed that the Etruscans were a Turanian 
people ; the representations of their physical features, their arts and 
customs, tending all in that direction* Now, while European 
2 These are referred to on page 154. 
3«*B naturale limmaginare che gl’ingegnosi Toscani abbiano preso cura d’illustrare il loro 
antico suolo, ma un forestiero viha fatto le piu grandi fatiche, cioé l'inglese Tommaso Demstero. 
Prima di lui perd l’aretino Attilio Alessi aveva posto la mano a questa messe, formato un 
alfabeto etrusvo, e riportate delle iscrizioni fino dal secolo XVI.” Pignotti, Storia della 
Toscana, lib. I., p. 88. 
4 By Turanian I mean ueither Indo-European nor Semitic. Apart from the intruding Turks 
and the Tartars of southern Russia, the existing Turanian populations of Europe are the 
Ugrians, (Finns, Lapps, Esths, Magyars, etc.,) and the Basques. The Lydian origin of the 
Etruscans, in spite of the objections of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, has been generally accepted 
