244 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



moon in some phase ; literally it means " black month " and now 

 denotes January. In 10, 10', 14 kusa may stand for eguzki, the 

 sun. Egubena for egunbena or eguzhena denotes the fifth day of the 

 week, Thursday, in Basque, but its derivation is obscure. According 

 to Festus, buris, the tail of the plough, was an Etruscan word. It 

 may appear in 2 pikoya buratu, the extremity or bending of the 

 ploughshare. The Basque verb burdatu means to bend, and from it 

 burdax, an extremity, is supposed to be derived. Such a term must 

 be astronomical, as the whole of the contents of the Templum appear 

 to be. 



With this arcane subject I close for the present my survey of the 

 Etruscan inscriptions, which I have pursued with ever-increasing 

 sympathy for the many and distinguished scholars who have read 

 them by a totally different system, in view of the numerous apparent 

 confirmations of their process, yet with ever-inci'easing confidence 

 that by that process no light can be shed on Etruscan antiquities 

 nor a solid basis be gained for a consistent reading of the documents 

 themselves. Conscious of its many imperfections, I send this article 

 forth from my study as a first essay in decipherment calling for the 

 honest criticism and collaboration of scholars to whom truth is more 

 than theory, rather than a decipherment itself of the documents with 

 which it deals. Nor can I, in closing, forbear to express to one 

 whose name occurs frequently in these pages, my sense of indebted- 

 ness for long hours stolen from the engagements of a busy life to add 

 to my Etruscan material, to read with critical eye the results pre- 

 sented, and to furnish me with many valuable suggestions which 

 cannot but be useful to the student of the new process. 



ETRUSCAN VOCABULARY. 



In this vocabulary, as in the first reading of the inscriptions in the 

 text, I have given the same conventional phonetic values to the 

 Etruscan characters. Thus I read A as ra, O as ma, S as ?io, E as 

 ne, P as tu, &c. For the extent to which this conventional reading 

 may be depai'ted from I refer to the analysis of the syllabary, without 

 a careful study of which this vocabulary cannot be understood. 



1. A ra, Basque ra, to, towards. 



2. A ra, Basque ara, interjection, behoLl. 



3. A ra, Basque ere, also. 



4. A ra, B. erre, to burn. 



