weight of the evidence appears to be distinctly in favour of the Etruscan character of the language, and Pauli’s view is now generally accepted by students of Etruscan; hence the inclusion of the inscription in the Corpus Inscc. Etruscarum.
4. The first attempt to interpret Etruscan inscriptions was made by Phil. Buonarroti (Explic. et conject. ad monum. &c., Florence, 1726), who, as was almost inevitable at that epoch, tried to explain the language as a dialect of Latin. But no real study was possible before the determination of the alphabet by Lepsius (Inscc. Umbr. et Oscae, Leipzig, 1841), and his discovery that five of the Tables of Iguvium (q.v.), though written in Etruscan alphabet, contained a language akin to Latin but totally different from Etruscan, though some of the non-Italic peculiarities of Etruscan had been already pointed out by Ottfried Müller (Die Etrusker, Breslau, 1828). The earliest inscriptions, e.g. the terra-cotta stele of Capua of the 5th century B.C., are written in “serpentine boustrophedon,” but in its common form of the 3rd century B.C. the alphabet is retrograde, and has the following nineteen letters:—
On older monuments 
= k occurs as an archaic form of c;
= q; 
, a sibilant of some kind; and 
= 
, this last mostly
in foreign words. In the earlier monuments the cross-bars of e
and v and h have a more decidedly oblique inclination, and s is
often angular (
). The mediae b, g, d, though they often occur
in words handed down by writers as Etruscan, are never found
in the Etruscan inscriptions, though the presence of the mediae
in the Umbrian and Oscan alphabets and in the abecedaria
shows that they existed in the earliest form of the Etruscan
alphabet, O is very rare. The form ↑ (earlier 
↑) = f in
south Etruscan and Faliscan inscriptions should also be mentioned.
Its combination with h shows that it had once served
to denote the sound of digamma just as Latin F. The varieties
of the alphabet in use between the Apennines and the Alps
were first examined by Mommsen (Inschriften nord-etruskischen
Alphabets, 1853), and have since been discussed by Pauli (Altitalische
Forschungen, 1885–1894, esp. vol. iii., Die Veneter, p. 218,
where other references will be found, see also Veneti).
5. The determination of the alphabet was followed by a large number of different attempts to explain the Etruscan forms from words in some other language to which it was supposed that Etruscan might be akin; Scandinavian and Basque and Semitic have been tried among the rest. These attempts, however ingenious, have all proved fruitless; even the latest and least fanciful (Remarques sur le parenté de la langue étrusque, Copenhagen, 1899; Bulletin de l’Académie Royale des Sciences et des Lettres de Danemark, 1899, p. 373), in which features of some living dialects of the Caucasus are cautiously compared by Prof. V. Thomsen (as independently by Pauli, see § 12), is at the best premature, and as to the numerals probably misleading. Worst of all was the effort of W. Corssen (Die Sprache der Etrusker, 1875), in whom learning and enthusiasm were combined with loose methods of both epigraphy and grammar, to revive the view of Buonarroti. The only solid achievement in the period of Corssen’s influence (1860–1880) was the description of the works of art (tombs, vases, mirrors and the like) from the different centres of Etruscan population; Dennis’s Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (1st ed., 1848; 2nd, 1878) contributes something even to the study of the language, because many of the figures in the scenes sculptured or engraved bear names in Etruscan form (e.g. usils, “sun”; or “of the sun,” on the templum of Placentia; fuflunś;, “Bacchus”; tuχulχa, a demon or fury; see Dennis, Cities, 2nd ed., frontispiece, and p. 354).
6. The reaction against Corssen’s method was led first by W. Deecke, Corssen und die Sprache der Etrusker (1876), Etruskische Forschungen (1875–1880), and continued by Carl Pauli at first jointly with Deecke and afterwards singly with greater power (Etruskische Studien, 1873), Etr. Forschungen u. Studien (Göttingen-Stuttgart, 1881–1884), Altitalische Studien (Hanover, 1883–1887); Altitalische Forschungen (Leipzig, 1885–1894). Of the work achieved during the last generation by him and the few but distinguished scholars associated with him (Danielsson, Schaefer, Skutsch and Torp) it may perhaps be said that, though the positive knowledge yet reaped is scanty, so much has been done in other ways that the prospect is full of promise. In the first place, the only sound method of dealing with an unknown language, that of interpreting the records of the language by their own internal evidence in the first instance (not by the use of imaginary parallels in better known languages whose kinship with the problematic language is merely assumed), has been finally established and is now followed even by scholars like Elia Lattes, who still retain some affection for the older point of view. By this means enough certainty has been obtained on many characteristic features of the language to bring about a general recognition of the fact that Etruscan, if we put aside its borrowings from the neighbouring dialects of Italy, is in no sense an Indo-European language. In the second place, the great undertaking of the Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum, founded by Carl Pauli, with the support of the Berlin Academy, conducted by him from 1893 till his death in 1901, and continued by Danielsson, Herbig and Torp, for the first time provided a sound basis for the study in a text of the inscriptions, edited with care and arranged according to their provenance. The first volume contains over four thousand inscriptions from the northern half of Etruria. Thirdly, the discoveries of recent years have richly increased the available material, especially by two documents each of some length. (1) The 5th-century stele of terra-cotta from S. Maria di Capua already cited, published by Buecheler in Rhein. Museum, (lv., 1900, p. 1) and now in the Royal Museum at Berlin, is the longest Etruscan inscription yet found. Its best preserved part contains some two hundred words of continuous text, and is divided into paragraphs, of which the third may be cited in the reading approved by Danielsson and Torp, and with the division of words adopted by Torp (in his Bemerkungen zur etrusk. Inschr. von S. Maria di Capua, Christiania, 1905), to which the student may be referred. “iśvei tule ilucve, an priś laruns ilucuθuχ, nun: tiθuaial χues χaθc(e) anulis mulu rizile, ziz riin puiian acasri, ti-m an tule, leθam sul; ilucu-per priś an ti, ar vus; ta aius, nunθeri.” (2) The linen wrappings of an Egyptian mummy (of the Ptolemaic period) preserved in the Agram museum were observed to show on their inner surface some writing, which proved to be Etruscan and to contain more than a thousand words of largely continuous text (Krall, “Die etruskischen Mumienbinden des Agramer. Museums,” Denkschr. d. k. Akad. d. Wissenschaften, 41, Vienna, 1892). The writing has probably nothing to do with the mummy as it is on the inner surface of the bands, and these are torn fragments of the original book. The alphabet is of about the 3rd century B.C.
7. From the recurrence of a number of particular formulae with frequent numerals at intervals, the book seems to be a liturgical document. Torp has pointed out that the two documents have some forty words in common, and, with Lattes (“Primi Apprenti sulla grande iscriz. Etrusca,” &c., in Rendic. d. Reale Inst. Lomb., serie ii. vol. xxxviii., 1900, p. 345 ff.), has shown that both contain lists of offerings made to certain gods (among them Suri, Leθam, and Calu); and Skutsch (Rhein. Mus. 56, 1901, p. 639) has added a plausible conjecture as to the occasions of the offerings, based on the phrase “flerχva neθunsl” “Neptuni statua” (or “statuae pars”); Torp has made it very probable that the words vacl (or vacil) and nun, which recur at regular intervals in both, mean “address,” “recite,” “pray,” or the like, preceding or following spoken parts of the ritual.
8. Along with the growth of the material, some positive increase in knowledge of the language has been attained. Independently of the work done upon particular inscriptions, such as that which has just been described, a considerable addition has come from the elaborate study of Latin proper names already mentioned by Prof. W. Schulze of Berlin (Zur Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen, Berlin, 1904), which has incidentally embodied and somewhat extended the points of Etruscan nomenclature previously observed. The chief results for our purpose may be briefly stated. It will be convenient to use the following terms:—
(1) praenomen = personal name of the individual.
e.g. Vel or Lar of a man, Larθi or θana of a woman.
(2) nomen = family name.
