ETRURIA CAPTA. 173 



personal hura, he, is doubtless composed of hau and the termination 

 ra. There are few commoner words in Basque than eritsi, esteem, 

 judge. The auxiliary verbs, naiz and dut, hardly appear in these 

 inscriptions, but in the Eugubine Tables they abound. Eritza, now 

 deritza, is the 3 sing. pres. ind. of eritsi. The final i of orogogoi is 

 an old dative and ablative sign. 



42. FEL • lEZOE • LAZAL 



Transliterated — ag in sa * hu ne no mo ne ' sa ra no ri za 

 Basque — agintza hunen amona Sarano eritza 

 Translation — offering of this mother Sarano esteems 

 Freely — an offering, Sarano honours his mother. 



Here agintza, meaning an offering, is unchanged. The demon- 

 strative, hau, used as pei-sonal, has its genitive form hunen. In the 

 preceding inscription the genitive was unnecessary, because iiga fol- 

 lowed Saraku, giving the genitive of position. The word amona 

 means lady mother, and is more elevated than uga and less natural. 

 Sarano may be Soranus, said to be a Sabine name of Pluto. 



44. OANA • YPIJSTAYI • YVYNAZA 



Transliterated — ma ra ka ra • ku tu u ka ra ku u ■ ku pi ku ka ra na re 

 Basque — marakara Kuta orogogoi jabe Kukara anre 

 Translation — monument Kuta remembrance to lord Kukara's wife 

 Freely — Monument to the memory of Kuta, the wife of Lord Kukara 



This inscription has been either carelessly made or carelessly 

 copied. The first character in the second word is probably pi V, 

 instead of ku Y.*^ Also INAYI is plainly a mistake for lANYI, a 

 very common formula. The feminine name would thus read Pita or 

 Yetta. The final vowel of orogogoi is a dative sign. In the Eugu- 

 bine inscriptions kupi occurs continually as the word for a lord or 

 ruler. In modern Basque it is jabe or jauhe, master, dominus. The 

 letter j represents the guttural sound of the Spanish jota in most 

 Basque dialects.^ The Basque word for lady, wife, is anre, or more 

 euphoniously andre, one of the commonest terms in the Etruscan 

 sepulchral inscriptions. 



prominence of the mother. Thus the master of the house is etehe-ko-jaun, but in order to be 

 so he must he uga-zaba, perhaps uga jabe, the lord of the mother. The Japanese for mother 

 is okkaa or okkaasan. The Dacotah Is ika, huku, the Choctaw, ishki, the Iroquois, ista. 



*3 Mr. VanderSmissen informs me that VP Pita is the reading in Fabretti. 



<* The word YV kuhe, gopi, as it may be rendered, is one of those which seem to be the 

 projjerty of all languag-es, its original signification varying between loftiness and forwardness. 

 Thus the Accadian has gitb, high, answering to the Hebrew gabah, and gub, front. The Latin 

 4 



