ETRURIA CAPTA. 157 



Tables. It possesses no sign whatever to mark independently the 

 short vowels. Indeed, it is doubtful if it has any vowel sign at all, 

 for the simple perpendicular line, or Roman I, rather seems to 

 represent an aspirate, and may give ha, he, hi, ho, hu. It is the 

 Aztec hui or td, a thorn. This vowel sign or aspirate syllable some- 

 times presents difficulty, by appearing with its duplicate II, for these 

 two perjDendicular lines or parallels denote the short sound of t or d 

 in composition, te, ti, de, di, et, ed. In Aztec it is represented by 

 titlan or tlantli, the teeth. In the Hittite inscriptions it is generally 

 perpendicular, but, on the bilingual of Tai-kutimme, it is horizontal. 

 The aspirate syllable appears in composition with a character identi- 

 cal in its simple form with the Roman C, when the compound 

 assumes the shape of K. The C is a weak sibilant, chi, che, zi, ze, is. 

 The combination K gives hitz, ots, uchi. C is the Aztec chichi, 

 which Brasseur de Bourbourg renders powmoTis, mavielles. It occurs 

 frequently in the Hittite inscriptions, alone and in composition. 

 The only other case of combination is in the form B, in which the 

 aspirate or broad vowel is joined to the character resembling the 

 figure 8.'^ This figure 8 is thfe Etruscan 1 in all its powers, la, le, li, 

 lo, lu, al, el, il. With the prefixed I, in the form B, it seems to 

 denote ol, ul. The Aztec has no hieroglyphic for 1, but that for 

 tlalli, a piece of ground, the Basque lurra, is identical in form with 

 the older square form of 8, which is common in Etruscan inscriptions, 

 and has genei"ally been read as h. The Gorean 1 is square or 

 angular ; that of Cyprus is identical with the Etruscan. The 

 Etruscan has only one character for all the powers of r, which is 

 hardly ever initial in Basque words. It is almost identical with 

 the Roman A, but with rounded top, and has been thus read. In 

 the Hittite monuments it presents a rounded form, at once giving 

 the Ijow as its original The Aztec has no r, but, as I have shown 

 in my article on the Aztec and its relations, the peculiar Mexican 

 combination il may represent an original r or 1. The Aztec symbol 

 coinciding is tlaoitolU, the bow, the Koriak ratla}^ In the Lycian 



28 In the Cippus of Perusia this form, which is common in the Eugubine Tables, ia replaced 

 by the horizontally intersected parallelogram, read by Etruscologists as h. Generally the latter 

 character and 8 appear to denote the same sounds and to belong to different stages of the 

 written language. But the Cippus sliows beyond doubt that the angular form was reserved for 

 I preceded by a long vowel. In B, the combination 18 appears, the perpendicular line repre- 

 senting the long vowel. 



2!* I compare the Aztec with the Koriak of eastern Siberia as the resemblance between the 

 Koriaks, Tchuktchis and Kamtchadales on the one hand and the American Indians on the other 

 3 



