ETRURIA CAPTA. 



151! 



bers of this family tippear. Besides the unmistakably Hittite hier- 

 oglyphics in Asia Minor, I find the Phrygian and Lycian inscrip- 

 tions, figured in the works of Texier and others, to be Turanian.. 

 The same error, which has hid the Etruscan from view, has made 

 these unintelligible. As at present read, witli Gi'eek and Phoenician 

 phonetic values, they have no relations with any known tongue;, 

 and we have no right to suppose any family of language lost.^® The 

 bilingual Lycian inscriptions afibrd much help in determining the 

 values of the characters, which exhibit Indian analogies. Although 

 the aboriginal populations of Greece, including Macedonia and 

 Thrace, were Turanian, I am not aware of any inscriptions in the old 

 Turanian letters between Asia Minor and Italy. But, in tlie latter 

 peninsula, it may almost be assumed that inscriptions, which are not 

 written in Greek or Roman, are in Turanian characters. Such, 

 most certainly, is the case with the Etruscan remains. The Etruscan 

 letters are reproduced in Spain in the so-called Celt-Iberian inscrip- 

 tions, along with forms which recall the variations of Asia Minor 

 and Hindostan. Of these, however, I have hardly made a study. ^* 

 Nor are they the last specimens of old Turanian literature in the 

 west. That supposed solitary example of Pictish writing in Scot- 

 land, the ISTewton Stone, an accurate copy of which I owe to the 

 kindness of President Wilson of University College, is an aberrant,, 

 but easily recognizable, type of the same wide spread writing.^^ I 

 have not had time nor opportunity to compare the forms presented in. 

 the Sinaitic inscriptions, and in the aboriginal alphabets of northern 



13 As accessible to the general reader I reter to the samples of Phrygian and Lycian inscrip- 

 tions Contained in Professor Rawliuson's Herodotus, Appendix Book I, Essay XI. , which will 

 "be found to bear out my statement. Indeed Professor Rawlinson in treating of the Lycians 

 (12, vi.) note 8, says : " The roots, however, are for the most part curiously unlike those in any 

 other Indo-European language." In tlie first Lycian inscription there given I read the middle 

 word of the first line which has been rendered erafazeya, as Sidara Parmene aur, which is 

 Basque for Sidara or Sidari, son of Parmene. Independently adapted from the old hieroglyphic 

 system, which long lingered in Asia Minor, although generally on the model of the Greek 

 alphabets, the cursive Hittite writing, while presenting everywhere many resemblances, also 

 exhibits variations that call for careful study and comparison. 



1* Since this papei was .submitted I have received from the Rev. Wentworth Webster, of 

 Bechienia, in the Basses Pyrenees, copies of Celtiberian inscriptions, which, with sliglit varia- 

 tions of a few characters and with one or two new words, one of which I have since found in 

 the Cippus of Perusia, accord with the Etruscan. Two of them belong to the period of Roman 

 occupation in Spain. 



15 Not only the Newton Stone, but many inscriptions hitherto read as the work and memorials 

 of obscure Norsemen, are Pictish records, and establish beyond question the Iberic character 

 of that early British population. 



