THK ETIJUSCAN QUESTION. 95 



which they find the syllabaiy inadequate to their growing i-eqnire- 

 ments, and are adopting the alphabet of the European nations. But 

 we repeat that syllabism is not peculiar to any one class of languages ; 

 it marks a stage in linguistic development. However, Prof Camp- 

 bell has determined that Etruscan is Turanian, and therefore syllabic. 

 This is the result of his researches in Hittite Palseography, and can- 

 not be doubted, and he sets about forming an Etruscan syllabary. 

 But here a new difficulty meets him in the small number of the 

 Etruscan signs. Simple letters may enter into an almost unlimited 

 number of combinations, but syllables are not so flexible, will not so 

 easily combine, and we require a very much larger number of 

 syllabic signs. Thus the Amharic has thirty-three consonantal signs,' 

 each of which may combine with seven vowel signs, and a separate 

 sign is used to denote each of these combinations, so that in the full 

 Amharic syllabarium there are two hundred and thirty-one different 

 signs. The Persian, though approaching very closely the alphabetic 

 form, has thirty-six distinct characters. But Etruscan has only 

 twenty signs. Here too Prof Campbell's ingenuity does not fail 

 him, and he makes his syllabic signs mean anything, thus : — 

 I = ha he hi ho hu au ou eu oi o u hau. 

 TT = ta te ti da de di at et it ad ed id. 



K = OS ots oz otz u o uts ots uz utz hotz hetz hy hots hits. 

 L — so sa za zo zu us oz, sometimes es ez, also it may denote" cho 

 chu cha, and ja jo ju. 



In other words, the Etruscan syllabic signs represent in each case 

 nearly all the vowel sounds in combination with a lai-ge number of 

 consonants, so that we may make anything we please of these syllabic 

 signs. Prof. Campbell acknowledges this, for he says:— "The 

 povei'ty of the Etruscan syllabary multiplies the equivocal to such 

 an extent that the context, or even a knowledge of the nature of the 

 document in which the words occur, must decide their value." 



The signs of this syllabary may mean anything we may choose to 

 make them mean, only we must know beforehand what we expect 

 them to say before we can make them say it. This is certainly very 

 accommodating, but has it not sti'uck Prof. Campbell that it is an 

 insuperable difficulty in the way of receiving his hypothesis 1 But 

 his syllabary of such a low order is inconsistent, not only with the 

 evident laws of linguistic growth, but with the known facts of 



