186 
Dice Digits. 
Epitaph Digits . 
MACH 
MACH-S 
HUTH 
HUTH-S 
Cl 
CI-S 
SA 
SA-S 
ZAL 
ESAL-S 
TTIU 
THU-NESI 
The last digit is probably a compound denoting either 7, 8, or 9. 
As to the others, the agreements are as remarkable as the differ- 
ences. The chief difference is the regular addition of a final s in 
the epitaph digits. This can very easily be accounted for. The 
dice dibits must be the cardinal numbers, one, two, three, four, five, 
six. Taking avils to mean atatis, the epitaph digits would be 
ordinals, and the final s would be the ordinal suffix, corresponding 
to th in the English ordinals four-th, fif-th, and six-th. 
We may therefore take it as beyond dispute that we have really 
got hold of the first six Etruscan digits, and also of at least ten 
other numerals lower than one hundred. The philological import- 
ance of this result can hardly be exaggerated. Jacob Grimm, the 
great comparative philologist, has laid down the law that numerals 
take the first rank as evidences of the affinities of language. There 
are few who will venture to gainsay him. 
But here comes a great difficulty ; a difficulty so great, that for 
more than a quarter of a century it has rendered useless the key to 
the Etruscan language which the dice have supplied. How are we 
to ascertain the order in which these six words are to be arranged ? 
Any one of the six words on the dice might denote any one of the 
first six numbers. There are fifteen possible arrangements — all 
different. How shall we allot the six words to the six digits ? Our 
six keys are of no use till we know how to place them in the 
six key-holes. It is possible to evade this difficulty by beginning 
with the decades instead of the digits. Taking our sixteen epitaphs, 
it is manifest that two of them (Nos. 5 and 12) contain only 
dice digits, and therefore relate to children not more than six years of 
age. In one epitaph (No. 14) the word sesphs is shown by the effigy 
of the deceased to denote the age of a lad in his teens, while another 
(No. 13) is anomalous, since the word tivrs might mean “ tenth,” 
or it might mean “days,” “ weeks,” or “ months.” Setting these 
four epitaphs aside, there remain twelve inscriptions which certainly 
contain decades. These decades are of two kinds. We have — 
MEALCIILSC ZATHRUMS 
muvalciils (thrice) zathrmso 
CELCIILS, or CEALCIILS (thrice) CIEMZATIIRMS 
SEMPHALCIILS 
CEZPALCHLS 
