— 
ETRURIA CAPTA. 167 
profess to exhaust the syllabary or any department of Etruscan 
philology, but to communicate what I know to those who with more 
abundant leisure and facilities may be able to reduce to scientific 
exactness of proportion the stones of a new edifice, which with 
alphabet is extant. It was discovered in a tomb at Bomarzo by Mr. Dennis, inscribed round 
the foot of a cup, and probably had been a present for a child. The letters ran from left to 
right, and are as follows ” :— 
8SLOVYSDM \NMLIOB3FECA 
Reversing this we obtain: 
ACEF3BOILMN AMDSYVOLS8 
Here, also, B represents square 8; the N is similar to that of the preceding alphabet; the T 
carries the perpendicular beyond the horizontal or diagonal; the Zis like the Greek ¥ ; and 
the Fis inverted. There is also a new character something like the figure 3. 
The correspondences are: 
Caere. ABCDEFISOIKL(M)MOPNPSTVTOL 
Bomarzo. A-C-EF3BOl-Lm DSYV 
NAM OLs 
I confess that ABCDEF in succession might easily carry conviction to the mind even of the 
critical student that the powers of the Etruscan alphabet were those of the Latin. I there- 
fore ask the reader to return to this note after having studied the inscriptions in the text. Mr. 
VanderSmissen suggests the likelihood of the Etruscans in the later period of their history’ 
adovting the Greek and Roman alphabets and a complete vowel system. Of this, however, I 
have no evidence. I incline rather to the belief that they did not adopt the Roman alphabet 
until they adopted the Latin language. The monuments plainly indicate that the Etruscan 
scribes assimilated the forms of their characters to those of the Roman letters, but without in 
the least affecting their phonetic values. As for the order of writing it is just possible that 
inscriptions reading from right to left may have been modelled on the Roman. But the various. 
inscriptions which I have classed with the Etruscan, namely, Celtiberian, Pictish, Phrygian, 
Hittite, Indian, Siberian, &c., exhibit little consistency of order, reading generally indeed from 
right to left, but often from left to right and boustrophedon. 
To return to the supposed alphabets, I read that of Bomarzo thus: 
ANC HE 3 ByOl Em NAM Dey iv On s 
er ze in ag tila mai su mi ka bano ta ne ku be ma go la 
Basque: erre zein gatillu mai su imi ka bana tanka bu makilla 
burn who vase tablet fire placing by within strike let the stick 
Let the stick strike him who burns the tablet (inscription) of the vase by putting 
fire into it. 
Here it will be observed that I read 3 as if it were ||. This I do on the authority chiefly of 
the Siberian inscriptions, which use jj, \ ; 5 ; and 3 for ti, te, &e. The corresponding Caere 
character is I. The only word which is not modern Basque is bana, and this I take to be a 
form of barrena, within. M. Van Eys derives tanta, tankatu from the Provencal tancar. It 
cannot, however, be other than the Japanese tatakw, the Choctaw timik-lih, the Iroquois 
tekkentoks, and the Aztec tzotzona, all meaning to beat, strike, thump, knock. Although mai 
now means a table, it must originally have designated a space upon any object on which sub- 
jects might be portrayed or characters written. The Japanese hi-mei denotes an inscription on 
a monument. 
The Caere alphabet is: 
ABCDEFI801IKLMMQDOPNPSTVTOL 
ir aul zi dune ge te la mai utz su mi no ma mi ta ka ta ne ku be ku mago 
