Etruscans interesting facts. Origin of the Etruscan people

Their borders converged in the area where Rome arose.

The Etruscans, who before the Romans were the most powerful tribe in Italy, lived in the country of the valleys and slopes of the Apennines, rich in olives and grapes, along the seaside of this region, and from the mouth of the Padus to the northern bank of the Tiber. They early formed a federation consisting of twelve independent cities (the Etruscan Twelve Cities). These Etruscan cities were: in the northwest of Cortona, Arretius, Clusium and Perusia (near Lake Trasimene); in the southeast of Volaterra, Vetulonia (which had Telamon as its harbor), Ruzella and Volsinia; in the south of Tarquinia, Caere (Agilla), Veii, Faleria (near Mount Sorakte, rising alone on the plain). At first, all these states had kings, but early (before the 4th century) the kingship was abolished, all spiritual and secular power began to belong to the aristocracy. There was no federal government in the Etruscan federation. During the war, some cities probably entered into alliances among themselves by voluntary agreement.

Etruria and the conquest of the Etruscans in the VIII-VI centuries. BC

The legend of Demarat testifies that the Etruscan federation was in contact with the commercial and industrial city of Corinth from an early time. She says that the Corinthian Demaratus settled in Tarquinia, that the painter Clephantus and the sculptors Eucheir (“artful-handed”) and Eugramm (“skillful draftsman”) came with him, that he brought the alphabet to Tarquinia. Written monuments and drawings that have come down to us from the Etruscans also show the Greek influence on this wonderful people. Their language shows no trace of kinship with either Greek or Italic; we have not yet learned to understand what is written on it, but we can reliably see that it did not belong to the Indo-Germanic family. The Etruscan alphabet was undoubtedly borrowed from the Greeks in very ancient times and, moreover, not through the Latins, but directly from the Greek colonists of southern Italy, as can be seen from the differences in the forms and meanings of the letters of the Etruscan alphabet from the Latin ones. Clay urns and other vessels with black drawings found at Tarquinius and Caere also show the connection of Etruscan painting and plastic art with Greek: these vases are strikingly similar to the Greek periods of the ancient style.

Etruscan trade and industry

The development of cities was facilitated by the fact that the Etruscans engaged in trade and industry. From a very old time, Phoenician, Carthaginian and Greek trading ships sailed to the Etruscan coast, which had good harbors; Agilla, standing near the mouth of the Tiber, was a convenient marina for the exchange of goods.

Judging from the shape of the Etruscan vases and the exceptional love of Etruscan artists for depicting scenes from Greek myths and tales of heroes, it must be assumed that the school of art that flourished in southern Etruria was a branch of the Peloponnesian school. But the Etruscans did not borrow the later more perfect style from the Greeks, they remained forever with the ancient Greek. The reason for this could be that the influence of the Greeks on the Etruscan coast then decreased. It weakened, perhaps because the Etruscans, in addition to honest maritime trade, were also engaged in robbery; their piracy made the Tyrrhenian name a terror to the Greeks. Another reason for the weakening of Greek influence on the Etruscans was that they developed their own commercial and industrial activities. Owning the seaside from Tarquinia and Caere to Capua, to the bays and capes near Vesuvius, which are very convenient for navigation, the Etruscans themselves soon began to export the expensive products of their country to foreign lands: iron mined on Ilva (Etaly, i.e. Elbe), Campanian and Volaterra copper, Populonian silver, and amber that reached them from the Baltic Sea. Bringing goods themselves to foreign markets, they had more profit than when trading through intermediaries. They began to seek to oust the Greeks from the northwestern Mediterranean. For example, they, in alliance with the Carthaginians, drove the Phocians from Corsica and forced the inhabitants of this poor island to pay tribute to them with its products: resin, wax, honey. In addition to pottery, the Etruscans were famous for foundry art and metalwork in general.

Etruscan civilization

Etruscan burial urn. 6th century to R. X

It is very likely that the Romans borrowed their instruments of military music and attire from the Etruscans, just as they borrowed their haruspices, religious rites, folk festivals, building art, land surveying rules from them. The ancient writers say that from Etruria the Romans took their religious-dramatic games, the games of the circus, the theaters of the people, in which actors, dancers and jesters played out gross farces; that they also borrowed gladiator fights from the Etruscans, magnificent processions of victors returning from the war (triumphs) and many other customs. These news of the ancients are confirmed by the latest research. The development of the building art of the Etruscan civilization is evidenced by the remains of huge structures, such as, for example, the colossal walls of Volaterra and other cities, the tomb of Porsena in Clusia, the ruins of huge temples, the remains of huge mounds, roads, tombs and other underground structures with vaults, canals (for example, so called the Philistine ditches). The very name "Tyrrens", in the old form "Tyrsene", ancient writers derive from the fact that the Etruscans built high towers ("Thirs") on the seashore to repel enemy landings. Like the Cyclopean walls in the Peloponnese, the buildings of the Etruscan civilization are built from large blocks of stone, sometimes hewn, sometimes unhewn and lying on top of each other without cement.

The development of technical arts among the Etruscans was favored by the fact that their land had many good materials: soft limestone and tuff were easy to cut to build strong walls; greasy plastic clay well accepted all forms. The abundance of copper, iron, gold, and silver led to foundry business, to the minting of coins, to the manufacture of all kinds of metal tools and ornaments. The main difference between Greek and Etruscan art was that among the Greeks art aspired to ideal goals and developed according to the laws of beauty, while among the Etruscans it served only the needs of practical life and luxury; remaining immobile in their ideals, the art of the Etruscans tried to replace their improvement with the preciousness of the material and the pretentiousness of style. It has forever preserved the character of handicraft work.

The social structure of the Etruscans

The Etruscan people were formed from a mixture of different tribes: the newcomers conquered the former population and put it in the position of a class subject to them; we can reliably see this from many facts that have been preserved in historical times. The heterogeneity of the population is evidenced in particular by the fact that the Etruscans had an estate of subject people, which the rest of the Italian peoples did not have; the subject people were, no doubt, the descendants of the former population of the country, conquered by the newcomers. The Etruscan cities were ruled by the aristocracy, which was both a military and a priestly estate: it performed religious rites, commanded the army, and conducted court; the owner of the estate was at the trial the representative of the commoner subject to him in his lawsuit; commoners were subordinate to the owners, whose land was cultivated, paid taxes to their masters or worked for them. “Without this enslavement of the masses of the people, it would hardly have been possible for the Etruscans to erect their huge structures,” says Niebuhr. About what kind of tribes were the estates of owners and subject people, scientists think differently. But in all probability the natives belonged to the Umbrian tribe, which in ancient times occupied a very wide area, or was closely related to them. It seems that the descendants of this former population remained especially numerous in the southern parts of the Etruscan land between the Tsiminsky Forest and the Tiber. The dominant, so-called Etruscan tribe, no doubt came from the north from the Po valley. The ancient writers had a very common opinion that the Etruscans moved to Italy from Asia Minor, it is also proved by modern research.

Aristocrats called lucumons ruled the cities of the Etruscans. General meeting they were probably decided by allied affairs and, in cases of need, chose an allied ruler, who had the distinction of his rank of an ivory chair, called a curule, and a toga with a purple trim, and who was accompanied by twelve police officers (lictors), who had bundles of sticks with an embedded in them with an ax (chamfers, fasces). But this elected head and high priest of the union had quite a bit of power over the cities and aristocrats. The Etruscans liked to give outward glamor to their rulers, but did not give them independent power. The twelve cities that made up the union were equal in rights, and their independence was little embarrassed by the allied ruler. Even for the defense of the country, they probably rarely connected. Early in the habit of the Etruscans, alien to the Italians, the custom of sending mercenary troops to war.

The Etruscans did not have a free middle class; the oligarchic social system had its inevitable affiliation of turmoil; therefore, in the Etruscan states, a decline in energy began early, resulting in political impotence. Agriculture and industry once flourished in them, they had many military and merchant ships, they fought with the Greeks and Carthaginians for dominion in the western Mediterranean; but the enslavement of the masses weakened the Etruscan states; townspeople and villagers had no moral energy.

The Etruscan aristocracy, which at the same time was a priestly class, left with its monopoly those astronomical, physical and other information on which worship was based. The lukumons performed public sacrifices and divination by sacrificial animals (haruspies), established the annual calendar, that is, the times of the holidays, and managed military and peaceful public affairs. They alone knew how to explain the signs and learn from them the will of the gods; they alone knew the laws and customs that had to be observed when founding cities, building temples, when surveying land, when setting up a military camp. They spread the culture of the Etruscans across the plain of Pada, brought it to the mountains, taught the wild mountain tribes the simplest crafts, gave them an alphabet. In the early days of Rome, as Livy says, noble Roman youths came to them to study sacred knowledge. The interpretation of the will of the gods could be done by the Etruscans and women. The Romans had a tradition about the soothsayer Tanakvila, the wife of Tarquinius the Elder; in the temple of Sanka, the Romans kept her spinning wheel.

The culture of the Etruscans was quite high degree development; the ruins of their structures testify to the enormity and boldness of their architectural and engineering works; their painted vases, copper statues, beautiful dishes, elegant headdresses, their coins and carved stones surprise us with their fine technique; but Etruscan art and, in general, all Etruscan education did not have folk character, were deprived of creative power, therefore they did not have strength, they were alien to progressive development. The culture of the Etruscans soon stagnated, subjected to the numbness of a handicraft routine. Knowledge did not have a beneficial, softening effect on social life among the Etruscans. It remained the privilege of the ruling class, separated from the people by the right of birthright into a closed caste, was inextricably linked with religion and surrounded by the horrors of gloomy superstition.

The Etruscans loved to excess to enjoy the abundant gifts of nature in their country and early indulged in luxury. Twice a day they ate long and hard; this gluttony seemed strange and bad to the Greeks, moderate in food. The Etruscans loved pampered music, skillful dances, the cheerful singing of the Fescennin folk festivals, and the terrible spectacles of gladiatorial combat. Their houses were full of patterned carpets, silver utensils, bright paintings, all kinds of expensive things. The servants of the Etruscans were whole crowds of richly dressed slaves and slaves. Their art did not have Greek idealism and was alien to development; there was no restraint and simplicity in their way of life. The Etruscans did not have that strict family life, like the rest of the Italian tribes, there was no complete subordination of the wife and children to the will of the householder, there was no strict sense of legality and justice.

Etruscan painting. Around 480 B.C.

Etruscan colonies

The Etruscans founded colonies, the most famous of which were: in the north of Fezuly, Florence, Pistoria, Luca, Luna, Pisa; in the south of Capua and Nola. Etruscan names are also found on the southern bank of the Tiber. Tradition says that on the Caelian hill there was an Etruscan village founded by a stranger from Volsinia, Celes Vibennoy, and after his death, which had his faithful companion, Mastarna, as its ruler; in Rome, on the lowland adjacent to the Palatine Hill, there was a part of the city called Etruscan; this name shows that there was once a colony of the Etruscans. Some scholars even believed that the tradition of the Tarquinian kings meant the period of Etruscan rule over Rome and that Mastarna was the king whom the Roman chronicles call Servius Tullius. The Etruscan colonies preserved the laws, customs, and federal structure of their homeland.

Etruscan gods

Alien to the Old Italian tribes in origin, language, way of life, character, culture, the Etruscans also had a religion significantly different from their beliefs and rituals. Greek influence, which manifests itself in the entire civilization of the Etruscans and is explained by their commercial relations with Greece and with the Italic colonies of the Greeks, is also found in the Etruscan religion; it is obvious that the Etruscans from a very long time succumbed to the attractiveness of Greek culture and mythology, the spread of which among different peoples united different religions, introduced a cosmopolitan character into aesthetic ideas and into their poetry.

Etruscan painting. The feast scene. 5th century BC

The Etruscans had their own deities, which were highly respected in those cities in which they were objects of local worship. Such were in Volsinia the patron goddess of the Etruscan federation Voltumna and Norcia (Northia), the goddess of time and fate, in whose temple a nail was annually driven into the crossbar to count the years; in Tser and in the coastal city of Pyrgi, such were the forest god Silvanus and the benevolent "mother Matuta", the goddess of the day being born and every birth, at the same time the patroness of ships, leading them safely to the harbor. But besides these native deities, we find among the Etruscans many Greek gods and heroes; they especially revered Apollo, Heracles and the heroes of the Trojan War. The Etruscans respected the Temple of Delphi so much that a special treasury was built in its sacred enclosure for their offerings.

The Etruscan king of the gods, the Thunderer Tina, whom the Romans called Jupiter, corresponded to Zeus; the Etruscan goddess Cupra (Juno), the goddess of the citadel of the city of Veii, the patroness of cities and women, corresponded to Hera, and her service was accompanied by the same great games and processions. Menerfa (Minerva) was, like Athena Pallas, the divine power of the mind, the patroness of crafts, the female art of spinning wool and weaving, the inventor of the flute, the game on which was accompanied by worship, and the military trumpet; the goddess of heavenly heights, throwing lightning from them, she was also the goddess of military art. Apollo (Aplu) was also among the Etruscans the god of light, the healer of diseases, the purifier of sins. Vertumn, the god of fruits, who changed his appearance according to the seasons, the correct change of which was produced by the rotation of the sky, was among the Etruscans, like the Greek Dionysus, the personification of the course of annual changes in vegetation and in field labors; the changing colors of the fruits and the variety of vegetation are expressed by the fact that Vertumnus takes on different types and different emblems. Main holiday it, called by the Romans vertumnalia, took place in October, at the end of the harvest of grapes and fruits, and was accompanied by folk games, amusements and a fair. The Etruscans borrowed from the Greeks, and other Italic peoples borrowed from the Etruscans, the system of six gods and six goddesses, which was generally accepted in the colonies of the Greeks, as in Greece itself. These twelve deities formed a council, and therefore among the Romans, who borrowed such an idea of ​​​​them from the Etruscans, were called consentes "co-sitting"; they ruled the course of affairs in the universe, and each of them was in charge of human affairs in one of the twelve months of the year. But they were lower deities; above them, the Etruscans had other deities, the mysterious forces of fate, "covering gods", not known either by name or by number, who lived in the innermost region of the sky and grouped around Jupiter, the king of the gods and ruler of the universe, who questioned them; their activity manifested itself to the human spirit only during great catastrophes.

Spirits in the religion of the Etruscans

In addition to these "protective" and lower deities, who were independent personal beings, separated from the infinite divine power, the Etruscans, other Italic peoples and later the Romans, like the Greeks, had an innumerable number of spirits whose activity, indefinite in size, supported the life of nature and of people. These were the patron spirits of clans, communities, localities; for a family, city, district, who were under the protection of famous spirits, serving them was of the greatest importance. Among the Etruscans, whose character was gloomy, prone to tormenting thoughts, the activity of these spirits, and in particular its terrible side, had a very wide scope.

The cult of death and ideas about the underworld among the Etruscans

The Etruscan religion, equally far from the clear rationalism of the Romans and from the bright, humane plasticity of the Greeks, was, like the character of the people, gloomy and fantastic; symbolic numbers played an important role in it; there was a lot of cruelty in her dogmas and rituals. The Etruscans often sacrificed slaves and prisoners of war to angry gods; the Etruscan realm of the dead, where the souls of the dead (manes, as the Romans called them) roamed and the mute deities, Mantus and Mania, ruled, was a world of horror and suffering; in it the dead were tormented by ferocious beings who had the form of women, called furies among the Romans; there, to suffer from beatings with sticks and being bitten by snakes, Harun, a winged old man with a big hammer, took away the souls.

Chimera from Arezzo. An example of Etruscan art. 5th century BC

Divination among the Etruscans

The Etruscans were very disposed to mysterious teachings and rituals; state divinations (divinatio, as this art was called among the Romans) developed strongly among them and passed from them to the Romans: divination by the flight of birds (auguria), by the brilliance of lightning (fulguria), by the entrails of sacrificial animals (haruspicia); the art of fortune-telling, based on superstition and deceit, was developed by the Etruscans and gained such respect from the Romans and from the Italians in general that they did not undertake any important state business without questioning the gods by means of auguries or haruspices; with unfavorable signs, rites of reconciliation with the gods were performed; extraordinary phenomena of nature (prodigia), happy or unfortunate omens (omina) influenced all decisions. This feature of the Italians came from their deep faith in fate. Borrowed from the Etruscans, the belief in oracles, in omens by which the gods give advice and warnings, was in the Italic folk religion and then in the official religion of Rome as strong as in any other, and the service to the deities of fate, Fortune and Doom (Fatum) did not was nowhere as common as in Italy.

The Romans adopted many types of divination from the Etruscans. Auguries were called fortune-telling about the future, about the will of the gods by the flight or cry of some birds, and especially eagles. The augur (“bird-reader”) stood in an open place (templum), from which the whole sky was visible, divided the sky into parts with a crooked rod, (lituus); the flight of birds from some parts foreshadowed happiness, from others - misfortune. Another way to find out from the actions of the birds whether the intended business would be successful was to give food to the sacred chickens and see if they were eating; the rules of this divination were to be known in Rome not only by the priests, but also by all the patricians who wished to hold government posts. The fulgurators observed the appearance of lightning (fulgur), by which the gods also proclaimed their will; if the lightning was unfavorable, then rituals were performed that softened the wrath of the gods; - The Etruscans considered lightning the most reliable of all heavenly signs. The place where the lightning fell was sanctified; a lamb was sacrificed on it, a tire was made on it in the form of a well covered with a log house and surrounded by a wall. Most often, the Etruscans performed divination through haruspices; they consisted in the fact that the fortuneteller, the haruspex, who produced them, examined the heart, liver, other internal parts, sacrificial animals; the rules of these divinations were worked out in great detail by the Etruscans. The art of divination - auspices, as the Romans called them, was taught by the Etruscans Tages, a dwarf with a child's face and gray hair, which came out of the ground near Tarquinia in a plowed field; having taught the lukumons (priests of the Etruscans) the science of divination, he immediately died. The Tages books, containing the doctrine of lightning, divination, the rules that must be observed when founding cities, and land surveying, were the source of all Etruscan and Roman guides to the art of divination. The Etruscans had schools in which the art of auspices was taught by the lucumons, who knew this science well.

Etruscan literature

Zalessky N. N. Etruscans in Northern Italy. L., 1959

Richardson E. The Etruscans: Their Art and Civilization. Chicago, 1964 (in English)

Mayani Z. The Etruscans begin to speak. M., 1966

Hampton C. The Etruscans and Antiquities of Etruria, London, 1969 (in English)

Burian Yan, Moukhova Bogumila. Mysterious Etruscans. M., 1970

Pallotino M. Etruscans. London, 1975 (in English)

Kondratov A. A. Etruscans - the number one mystery. M., 1977

Nemirovsky A. I. Etruscans. From myth to history. M., 1983

Sokolov G. I. The art of the Etruscans. M., 1990

Brendel O. Etruscan art. New Haven, 1995 (in English)

Vaughan A. Etruscans. M., 1998

Haynes S. Etruscan Civilization. Los Angeles, 2000 (in English)

Nagovitsyn A.E. Etruscans: Mythology and Religion. M., 2000

Reimon block. Etruscans. predictors of the future. M., 2004

Ellen McNamara. Etruscans: Life, religion, culture. M., 2006

Robert Jean Noel. Etruscans. M., 2007

Bohr, Tomajic. Veneti and Etruscans: at the origins European civilization: Digest of articles. M. - SPb., 2008

Ergon J. Everyday life of the Etruscans. M., 2009

“Craniometric data from Etruscan tombs provide information that they were a non-Indo-European and non-Semitic people, but typical inhabitants of the Eastern Mediterranean of the early Bronze Age. Like the earlier representatives of El Argar from Spain, the mesocephalic values ​​of the cranial index dominate over the dolichocephalic and brachycephalic values, forming equal proportions with these extreme values. It is worth noting that the metric characteristics of both series are very similar, but the Etruscan skulls are slightly larger, which is not surprising.

On the Etruscan turtles, the eyebrows are strongly smoothed; the walls of the cranium are not parallel, as in the classical Mediterranean forms, but widened at the back of the head and tapering in the front of the skull; forehead - narrow; the orbits are high and round; nose is narrow. The Etruscans, with a typically Near Eastern skull, resemble the Cappadocian type found in the Hittite period at Alishara and the planocyptal brachycephals found in the tombs of Cyprus. In Roman times, these two variations were mixed, resulting in various mesocephalic forms, which also included the Phoenicians.

"... The structural features of the face included the famous "Roman" nose, which may have been partly of Etruscan origin"

K. Kuhn about the population of north-central Italy

“In the population of Bologna, a significant predominance of the Alpine and Dinaric types is noticeable, especially in the past, but one third of the population is dolichocephalic. Among this third, the Nordic type is not uncommon, but a more significant element is the tall, thin-boned, dark-pigmented, long-faced type, with a thin, straight or prominent nose and thin lips. This is a variant of the Atlanto-Mediterranean type, with some Cappadocian features brought from Western Asia by navigators, including the Etruscans. This type is combined with the slope of the palpebral fissure, which is very long, high arched arched eyebrows ... The beauty of the Bolognese women, which has become a household name, is associated with the above type, which is responsible for this reputation. This type is common in other regions of Northern Italy, and was also often depicted in the paintings of Renaissance painters. This type is also found as an insignificant element in Tyrol ... "

The above Central Italian type:

An excerpt from work J. Sergi, "Mediterranean race" (1895)

« Etruscans. The Etruscan question is a polyhedron of various aspects, among which the question of the origin of civilization and physical characteristics, chronology, the origin of the language, as well as Italic and extra-Italic influences. I am not going to solve this problem completely in a few pages, in which the Etruscans will be only briefly considered, and not considered as the main object of my work.

In the Italian version of this book, I designated the Etruscans as "Late Pelasgians", as a separate branch of the Asia Minor Pelasgians that migrated by sea to Italy, similar to the Pelasgians who inhabited Greece and part of Italy. I fully accepted the traditional version of Herodotus, opposite to the opinion of the Germans that the Rassenes were Alpine Raets who moved to Central Italy. This later [Germanic] version was cast aside because of its absurdity, like the argument that the sun rises in the west. According to Brisio, who has collected considerable evidence for his theories, the Etruscans are of Eastern Mediterranean origin; another well-known researcher, Montelius, having considerable authority, confirmed the same theory. I do not agree with the chronology of Montelius, in which the appearance of the Etruscans dates back to the 11th century. BC. - I still support my old opinion that this event cannot be dated earlier than the second half of the 8th century. BC, with which Arthur Evans also agrees. Although the problem of chronology requires further discussion.

When studying, over the past time, the anthropological characteristics of the Etruscans, I noted that the presence in the Etruscan graves of two racial types is related to the mixture of the early inhabitants of Umbria, in the burials of which almost only Mediterranean types are represented, as well as the late Aryan conquerors. I also noted that the "fat Etruscans" of Catullus refer to a foreign element that is not Etruscan. Interestingly, this element is still present among the population of Etruria, at the same time, as I noted, that the true Etruscan type absolutely predominates in images from older tombs and on some terracotta sarcophagi. The great tombs in the Chiusi region are undeniably Etruscan, and there we can find various scenes from life and many human figures. I did not find fat figures there, but only slender and delicate forms, with elongated faces of the Mediterranean type. The corpulent figures, with larger heads and broader faces, are a foreign element, not Etruscan.

The physical features of the Etruscans were Mediterranean, they were true Italics, and certainly they belonged to the Pelasgian branch.

Among other arguments supporting this position are inscriptions from Lemnos related to the Etruscans. I must say that the Etruscan language is Pelasgic and is a branch of the Mediterranean languages, now dead and, according to Brinton, related to the Libyan languages.

The surviving ideas of Corssen and the more recent Deccas and Latte, that Ario-Italic similarities exist, are called into question, due to the fact that the Etruscans lived apart among the Aryan population, and changes took place only in a few cases. Etruscan will always be a problem for Ariophile linguists who cannot find a way to interpret it.

It is worth noting that the Etruscan colonies that occupied the territory of Umbria could not be very numerous, but given their civilizational superiority, they dominated the surrounding population in a moral and material sense, and therefore could change the system of customs, including the method of burial, which almost always mixed, combining both burial in tombs and cremation, which I personally observed with the help of excavations of poor and traditional graves.

True Etruscan graves are divided into chambers and are more or less rich and spacious. Hollowed out in the rocks or dug into the ground, although divided into chambers, they still belong to the local people who were Etruscanized. Consequently, not all burials on Etruscan soil are Etruscan, and most of them must belong to the population that preceded the Etruscan colonization, although they were influenced by newcomers.

This influence, however strong it was, was still insufficient to transform the language of the conquered into the language of the conquerors; after the elimination of Etruscan dominance, the Etruscan language disappeared forever, remaining only on stone inscriptions, incomprehensible and undeciphered, despite the fact that they are sometimes bilingual.

The true primary influence of the Etruscans is the civilization that became the "starting point" for the development of Latin civilization, as well as the expansion of the Eastern Mediterranean civilization into Italy, and into Central and Northern Europe."

Etruscan skulls from the above book by Sergi:

Images from Etruscan tombs:

Summing up all of the above (descriptions of Kun and Sergi, as well as images from Etruscan tombs), we can distinguish the following anthropological features that were originally characteristic of the Etruscans (the original type of the Etruscans, later partially changed as a result of the assimilation of the autochthonous):

Height - medium / medium-high
Cranial index - mesocephaly/sub-dolichocephaly
Hair form - curly
Skull - long medium-wide
Build - thin-boned; long legs combined with a relatively short torso
The size of the skull - medium-large
The height of the vault of the skull - medium
Hair color - dark (brown or black)
The bridge of the nose is straight or convex; bridge - high.
Eyebrows - smoothed
Forehead - low, narrow

Eastern Mediterranean forms of modern Italy:

A few examples of modern Tuscans, remotely similar to the ancient images of the Etruscans:

As a conclusion...

As already noted by Sergi, the ethnogenesis of the population of Etruria was closely connected with the Etruscanization of the autochthonous population of Tuscany, Umbria and Latium by newcomers from Asia Minor, as well as with the homogenization of the new population that appeared as a result of the above processes. The original Etruscan element could become dominant only in southern Tuscany (actually, Etruria). In northern Tuscany, Lazio and Umbria, the expansion of the Etruscans and the Etruscanization of the local population led to the formation of many new forms - both in anthropological terms (influence on the specifics of the racial genesis of the population of Central Italy) and in cultural and civilizational terms (formation of the civilizational basis of the Roman (Latin) civilization) .

P.S. An article confirming Sergi's conclusions (i.e., the theory of Herodotus) about the origin of the Etruscans:

"The mystery of Etruscan origins: novel clues from Bos taurus mitochondrial DNA"

Conclusions on the article:

“We assume that the end of the Bronze Age is a period that is closely associated with the arrival of new settlers from the east in Central Italy. These people, along with their cattle, sailed and settled in Tuscany. This may have been due to the consequences of catastrophic events such as the tsunami that occurred in the late Bronze Age in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean (Noor and Kline, 2000). The mixing of these people and their animals with the autochthonous Italic populations sowed the seed Etruscan culture and also shaped the genome of local cattle breeds.”

The Romans are called the teachers of Western Europe. Indeed, Western European civilization adopted from Roman culture a huge number of its achievements, starting with alphabetic writing and ending with sewerage. But the Romans themselves had their teachers. For at the cradle of Roman civilization stands another, more ancient one, created by the Etruscans, a people who remain mysterious to this day. And it’s not for nothing that we called our book “The Etruscans – Mystery Number One”. Indeed: shouldn’t the “first issue” of modern historical science studying the origin of ancient civilizations be the question of the “teachers of teachers” of Western European culture, a culture that, after the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, spread to all parts of the world, including the current wintering stations in Antarctica?

There are many peoples on the globe whose origin, history, language, culture seem mysterious. And yet, the Etruscans are rightfully called the "most mysterious" people. After all, they did not live in distant exotic lands, but in the very heart of Europe, their study began in the Renaissance, when Europeans did not know anything about America, Australia and Oceania, and their information about Africa and Asia was very fantastic, but our knowledge about the "teachers of teachers" is less than about the Pygmies of the Congo, the Indians of the Amazon, the Polynesians of Oceania and other peoples who are called "mysterious". The riddle of the Etruscans is really “mystery number one”.

This mystery cannot but excite our, Soviet, scientists studying the origins of cultural heritage which we use along with other European nations.

The symbol of Rome is the Capitoline she-wolf, who nursed Romulus and Remus. Romulus is considered the legendary founder of the city, from whose name the very name Rome, or rather Roma, is produced (it is we, the Slavs, who call it Rome). Of course, this is just a widespread myth. Name " eternal city” is given by the river on which it stands. After all, the ancient name of the Tiber sounds like Ruma. This word, most likely, comes from the language of the Etruscans. But not only the name, but also the creation of the city itself, the Romans owe to their mysterious predecessors. Yes, and the sculpture of the Capitoline she-wolf, personifying Rome, was made by the hands of an Etruscan master, only later, by the Romans, statuettes of babies Romulus and Remus were attached to it. And for us, unlike the ancient inhabitants of Rome, it takes on a different meaning: the “eternal city” was founded by the Etruscans, and then the Romans took over from them.

Not far from the outskirts of modern Bologna, archaeologists were lucky to find a small Etruscan city, more or less spared by time. It can be used to judge the layout of the Etruscan cities. They were built on the hills, step by step. In the center, at the top, temples were erected, below the residential part of the city was geometrically correct. Its obligatory affiliation was a water pipe ... Isn't it an exact copy of ancient Rome, standing on seven hills, each of which is crowned with temples, and equipped with a water supply system (which, by the way, still operates to this day!)?

The oldest houses of the Etruscans were round; they were covered with thatched roofs. But very early, rectangular houses began to appear, in the central room of which a hearth burned. Smoke escaped through a hole in the roof. The aristocrats and military nobility who dominated the Etruscan cities lived in houses with an atrium, that is, with open area inside the house, on which the hearth was placed. All this we find later in the "Roman" type of residential building. It is more correct to call it "Etruscan".

From the Etruscans, the Romans also adopted the design of temples, whose roofs and entablature - the part of the structure between the roof and the columns - were decorated with sculptures and clay reliefs. However, sometimes there was not even continuity or imitation here: many of the famous temples of Rome were erected by Etruscan masters.

The Capitoline she-wolf is a symbol of Rome; the symbol of his eternity and power is the grandiose temple on the crest of the Capitoline Hill, which was decorated with the famous she-wolf, as well as many other statues and reliefs. Their author was the Etruscan sculptor Vulka from the Etruscan city of Veii.

Temple on the Capitol Hill; dedicated to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, was commissioned by the last king of Rome, Tarquinius the Proud, an Etruscan by birth, and its architecture is typically Etruscan. The front of the temple is a hall with a colonnade; back - three halls located parallel to each other; rooms: the central one, dedicated to the supreme god Jupiter, and two side ones, dedicated to Juno and Minerva.

Etruscan were not only proportions, decorations, designs, but also the material from which the Capitoline temple was made. Along with stone, the Etruscans also used wood. To protect the wooden walls from rotting, they were lined with mud slabs. These plates were painted in various colors. This, of course, gave the temple a festive and cheerful look.

The Capitoline Church was destroyed by fire several times, but each time it was rebuilt. Moreover, in the very original form in which it was built by the Etruscan architects, because, according to the soothsayers, “the gods are against changing the shape of the temple” - it was only allowed to change its size (although in size the first Capitol was not inferior to the largest temples of Ancient Greece).

Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote about the plumbing, "worked by the slaves of Rome." In fact, this is not entirely true: the construction was carried out by the Romans themselves on the orders of the Etruscan king Tarquinius Priscus, who ruled Rome.

"Cloaca maxima" - "great cloaca" - this is how the ancient Romans called a huge stone pipe that collects excess moisture and water from showers and carries it to the Tiber. “Sometimes the Tiber drives the waters back, and various streams collide inside, but despite this, a strong structure withstands the pressure,” Pliny the Elder reports and adds that it is “so spacious that an arba loaded with hay could pass through it.” But not only a load of hay, but also the huge weights that were transported on top of this covered canal, could not do anything with it - “the vaulted building does not bend, fragments of buildings fall on it, which themselves suddenly collapsed or were destroyed by fires, the earth oscillates from earthquakes, but nevertheless it has endured it for seven hundred years since the time of Tarquinius Priscus, being almost eternal, ”writes Pliny the Elder.

Another two thousand years passed. But to this day, the “cesspool of maxim” is included in the sewer system of the “eternal city”.

Actually, the creation of this building made Rome Rome. Until then, there were villages here, on seven hills, and between them there was a swampy place - pasture for cattle. Thanks to the "cesspool of maxim" it was drained and became the center of the city - a forum. First, the central square, then the center of Rome, then the Roman Empire, which covered almost the entire civilized world of the ancient era, and, finally, it became a symbolic name ...

Thus, the Etruscans created the "authentic Rome", even if we assume that not only they lived in the villages on the hills, but also other tribes, which the legends of the Romans speak of.

As early as the 18th century, the Italian architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi noted that the Etruscans had a strong influence on the "Romanesque style of architecture" - a style that dominated the medieval art of Europe for several centuries, when, in the words of the chronicler Raoul Glubner, author of the Five Books of History, who lived in the 11th century, “Christian nations seemed to compete with each other in splendor, trying to surpass each other in the elegance of their temples,” and “the whole world unanimously threw off the ancient sackcloth to put on the snow-white clothes of churches.”

It turns out that these “snow-white robes of churches” nevertheless appeared under the influence of “ancient rags”, and not even “Romanesque”, that is, Roman, but even more ancient - Etruscan!

Not only the art of urban planning, but also the management system was adopted by the Romans from the Etruscans. Thus, Strabo reports that "triumphal and consular decorations, and in general the decorations of officials, were transferred to Rome from Tarquinia, as well as fasces, axes, trumpets, sacred rites, the art of divination and music, since the Romans use it in public life." After all, the rulers of the Etruscan city of Tarquinia, as the legends unanimously assert, were also the kings of Rome. And those attributes that we always associate with Roman domination are in fact Etruscan. For example, bundles of rods with axes stuck in them, a toga trimmed with purple, an ivory chair, etc.

More than one hundred articles and books have been written about the art of Roman sculptural portraiture. It owes its origin again to the Etruscans. “Having adopted the funeral customs from the Etruscans, the Romans began to preserve the appearance of the deceased in the form of a wax mask. The masks conveyed the individual features of a relative who enjoyed the veneration of his descendants. Subsequently, sculptural images made of hard metal (bronze, stone) followed this artistic realistic tradition,” writes Professor A. I. Nemirovsky in the book “The Thread of Ariadne”, dedicated to ancient archeology.

The Romans were also students of the Etruscans in the manufacture of bronze statues. As we have already said, the Capitoline she-wolf was cast by Etruscan masters. No less magnificent is the bronze figurine of a chimera, found in one of the Etruscan cities - the personification of malice and revenge. Her hidden tension before the jump is conveyed with extraordinary skill and realism. Both the she-wolf and the chimera are examples of the traditional style of Etruscan cult art; their eyes were once made of. precious stones. Later, in Roman temples, bronze statues were placed along with terracotta statues.

The Etruscans were teachers of the Romans not only in the field of fine arts. For example, according to Titus Livius, they owe their origin to performing arts Rome. In 364 BC. e., he reports, to save from the plague in honor of the gods, stage games were arranged, for which “gamers” were invited from Etruria, who performed various dances. Interested in their game, the Roman youth also began to dance in imitation of the Etruscan "games", and then accompany the dance with singing. Later, the Romans learned about the Greek theater... “Although T. Livy’s presentation suffers from some inconsistency, the combination of three elements in the Roman drama - Latin, Etruscan and Greek, remains indisputable,” states S. I. Radtsig in his textbook “Classical Philology”.

The Etruscan influence on the Romans was reflected not only in the field of urban planning, architecture, fine arts and art in general, but also in the field of science. Wealthy Romans sent their children to Etruria to study the "Etruscan discipline" - the Etruscan sciences. True, the main achievement of this science was considered the ability to predict the future. More precisely, even one of the varieties of this ancient “futurology” is the so-called haruspicy, predictions from the entrails of sacrificial animals (however, sometimes another “science” was called haruspicy - fortune telling by interpreting signs in the form of lightning sent by the gods during a thunderstorm).

The main object of study for haruspex predictors was the animal's liver, less often the heart and lungs. A divination process is engraved on an Etruscan bronze mirror found in the city of Vulci. The Haruspex is bent over a table on which the trachea and lungs lie, and in his left hand he holds the liver. The slightest changes in the color and shape of the liver received a "strictly scientific" interpretation. Moreover, at the suggestion of the Roman emperor Claudius, an attempt was made to turn haruspicy into a "state doctrine". Haruspices played a huge role in the life of Ancient Rome and the entire Roman Empire. At first they were all Etruscans, then the Romans adopted this "science". Their collegium, whose center was traditionally located in the Etruscan Tarquinia, was addressed not only on personal, but also on state issues. And although the political independence of the Etruscans at that time was lost a long time ago, the "ideological" influence persisted for many centuries.

In the IV century. n. e. Emperor Constantine, the "benefactor" of the Christians, issues a strict order for the haruspex to stop sacrificing at altars and in temples. But the activity of the Etruscan priests and their Roman students continues. When Constantine, under pain of death, generally prohibits the activities of haruspices. But this also cannot stop the priests - divination on the liver and entrails of sacrificial animals does not disappear. Even in the 7th century n. e., when there are no traces of the ancient Etruscans left in the memory of the peoples who inhabited the expanses of the former Roman Empire, decrees continue to be issued that the haruspices stop their prophecies!

... So, art and architecture, urban planning and plumbing, the creation of the "eternal city" and the "science of divination" - all this was the work of the Etruscans, and not the Romans, their heirs. As well as the creation of the "Roman" system of government. The Romans themselves admitted that they learned a lot from the Etruscans in military affairs. The art of building and driving ships was completely adopted by the "land" Romans from the Etruscans - one of the best sailors in the Mediterranean, rivals of the Greeks and allies of the Carthaginians ...

Who are they, the Etruscans? What is this people? These questions have been of interest for a very long time, even in the era of antiquity. And even then the “Etruscan problem” was born, because the opinions of scientists of that time diverged sharply. The dispute about the Etruscans began almost two and a half thousand years ago. An argument that continues to this day!

Who and where

Initially, in the X-IX centuries. BC e., the Etruscans lived in the northern part of present-day Italy, in Etruria (later it became known as Tuscany, because the Etruscans were also called “Tosks” or “Tusks”). Then their dominion extended to the whole of Central Italy and part of the Mediterranean. Their colonies also appear in the south of the Apennine Peninsula, in Corsica and other islands, in the foothills of the Alps. The Etruscan state was not centralized: according to the Romans, it was a federation of 12 cities of Etruria (a number of them have already been excavated by archaeologists, and a number have yet to be discovered). In addition, there is information about the "12 cities of Campania", south of Etruria, and about the "new twelve-city in the North", in the Po valley and the Central Alps. The famous enemy of Carthage, Senator Cato even claimed that the Etruscans once belonged to almost all of Italy. The Etruscan kings ruled Rome.

But now the “eternal city” is freed from the dominion of the Etruscan kings and becomes a city-republic ... And after that, a slow but inevitable decline of Etruscan domination begins. Greek colonists in southern Italy close their ports and the Strait of Messina to Etruscan ships. Then they, in alliance with the ruler of Syracuse, inflict a crushing defeat on the Etruscan navy. The maritime glory of the Etruscans is waning. They take away the island of Elba, then Corsica. The Etruscans are losing their colonies and cities in the most fertile Campania in the south and the "new twelve-city" in the north. It is the turn of the loss of land in Etruria itself.

Rome's longtime rival was the Etruscan city of Veii, a neighbor and competitor in trade, art, and fame. Bloody skirmishes between the Romans and the Etruscans ended with the fall of Veii. The inhabitants of the city were killed or sold into slavery, and its territory was transferred to the possession of the citizens of Rome. After that, the slow penetration of the Romans into Etruria begins, which is replaced by a sudden invasion of the Gallic tribes.

The Gauls first capture northern Italy, devastate Etruria, and then defeat the Roman troops. Rome was also captured by hordes of aliens, its buildings were destroyed and burned, only the temple on the Capitol Hill, the famous Capitol built by the Etruscans, survived (remember the legend about how "the geese saved Rome" by warning the defenders of the Capitol?).

The Gauls, having devastated and received tribute, left the land of Rome and Etruria. Rome managed to recover from their invasion and began to gain strength again. Etruria, on the contrary, received a mortal blow from the Gallic invasion. On its territory, the Romans arrange their colonies. One by one, the Etruscan cities fall under the rule of Rome. And gradually Tuscany no longer becomes a "country of the Etruscans", but a Roman province, where not Etruscan, but Latin speech sounds. True to the principle of "divide and rule", the Romans widely grant citizenship to their former rivals. Along with Roman citizenship come Roman customs. The native language is forgotten, the former religion and culture are forgotten, and, perhaps, by the beginning of our era, only the art of divination remains Etruscan. In all other respects, the Etruscans are already Latins, Romans. Having fertilized the culture of Rome with its achievements, the Etruscan civilization disappears ...

The end of the Etruscans, as well as the heyday of Etruria, are well known. The birth of the Etruscan civilization, the Etruscan people is unknown. "Father of history", Herodotus gives the most ancient evidence of the origin of the Etruscans, called the Tyrrhenians by the Greeks. According to him, they come from Asia Minor, more precisely, from Lydia (by the way, the female name Lydia has conveyed to this day the name of this ancient country, located in the center of the western tip of the peninsula of Asia Minor).

Herodotus reports that “during the reign of Atys, the son of Maneas, there was a great need for bread throughout Lydia. At first the Lydians endured the famine patiently; then, when the hunger did not stop, they began to invent means against it, and each one came up with his own special one. It was then, they say, that the games of cubes, dice, ball, and others were invented, besides the game of chess; Lydians do not attribute the invention of chess to themselves. These inventions served them as a means against hunger: one day they played continuously so as not to think about food, the next day they ate and left the game. In this way they lived for eighteen years. However, the hunger not only did not weaken, but was intensified; then the king divided the whole people into two parts and cast lots so that one of them would remain in their homeland, and the other would move out; he appointed himself king of the part that remained in place by lot, and appointed his son, named Tyrrhenus, over the evicted. Those of them who were destined to emigrate went to Smyrna, built ships there, put on them the objects they needed, and sailed off to look for food and a place to live. Passing through many peoples, they finally arrived at the Ombrics, where they founded cities and live to this day. Instead of the Lydians, they began to be called by the name of the son of the king who forced them to emigrate; they took his name to themselves, and were called Tyrrhenians.

Herodotus lived in the 5th century. BC e. Many of his stories have been confirmed in the light of modern discoveries, including some reports about the Etruscans. So, Herodotus says that the Etruscans, in honor of their victory over the Greeks, regularly organized gymnastic competitions, a kind of "Etruscan Olympiad". During excavations of the famous Etruscan city of Tarquinia, archaeologists discovered colorful frescoes depicting sports: running, jumping, discus throwing, etc. - like illustrations for the words of Herodotus!

The stone tombs of the Etruscans bear a resemblance to the stone tombs discovered in Lydia and neighboring Phrygia. The sanctuaries of the Etruscans, as a rule, are located near the springs, as well as the sanctuaries of the ancient inhabitants of Asia Minor.

According to many experts, Etruscan art, if we discard the later Greek influence, has a close connection with the art of Asia Minor. They believe that the colorful Etruscan painting comes from the East, like the custom of erecting the most ancient temples on high artificial platforms. In the figurative words of one of the researchers, “through the elegant Greek clothes thrown over Etruria, it shines through, however, oriental origin this people."

Some historians of religion also join this opinion of art historians, who believe that although the main gods of the Etruscans had Greek names, they, in principle, were closer to the deities of the East than the Greek Olympus. In Asia Minor, the formidable god Tarhu or Tarku was revered. Among the Etruscans, one of the most common names came from this name, including the names of the Etruscan kings who ruled Rome, the Tarquinian dynasty!

The list of similar arguments in favor of the testimony of the "father of history" could be continued. But all these arguments are indirect, by analogy. The similarity of customs, names, monuments of art may be accidental, and not due to deep ancient kinship. As for the story of Herodotus about the “starving Lydians”, who, fleeing from hunger, spent 18 years playing games, you yourself probably noticed a lot of fabulous, legendary things in it. Moreover, who lived, like the "father of history", in the 5th century. BC e. the Greek author Hellanicus of Lesbos told us a completely different story related to the origin of the Etruscans.

According to Hellanic, the territory of Hellas was once inhabited by the ancient people of the Pelasgians - up to the Peloponnese peninsula. When the Greeks came here, the Pelasgians were forced to leave Hellas. First they moved to Thessaly, and then the Greeks drove them across the sea. Under the leadership of their king Pelasg, they sailed to Italy, where they began to be called in a new way, and gave rise to a country called Tirsenia (i.e. Tirrenia-Etruria).

Other authors of antiquity say that the Pelasgians were forced to flee from Thessaly by a flood that was under King Deucalion, even before the Trojan War. They report that part of the Pelasgians settled on the islands of Lemnos and Imbros in the Aegean Sea; that the Pelasgians originally landed near the Spinet River on the coast of the Ionian Gulf, and then moved inland and only then came to their present homeland, Tyrrhenia or Etruria ...

These versions are contradictory, but they all agree on one thing: the Etruscans are the descendants of the predecessors of the Hellenes in Greece, the Pelasgians. But besides this and Herodotus' "theory of the origin of the Etruscans" there are two more, also dating back to antiquity. Rome at the end of the 1st century BC e. lived a native of the Asia Minor city of Halicarnassus named Dionysius, an educated person and well acquainted with both the traditions of his homeland and Roman-Etruscan traditions and traditions.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus wrote a treatise "Roman Antiquities", where he strongly objects to Herodotus' assertion that the Etruscans are descendants of the Lydians. He refers to the fact that a contemporary of the "father of history", Xanthos, wrote a four-volume "History of the Lydians", specially dedicated to this people. And it does not say a word about the fact that half of the Lydians moved to Italy and gave rise to the Etruscans. Moreover, according to Xanthus, the son of King Atys was not called Tyrrhenus, but Thoreb. He separated from his father part of Lydia, whose subjects became known as Torebians, and by no means Tyrrhenians or Etruscans.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus believes that the Lydians and the Etruscans have nothing in common: they speak different languages, pray to different gods, observe different customs and laws. “Therefore, it seems to me, those who consider them to be the local population rather than aliens are right,” concludes Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a native of Asia Minor who lived in Rome, once founded by the Etruscans. And this point of view is shared not only by Dionysius himself, but also by many modern scientists.

"Newcomers from the East or Aborigines?" - so, it would seem, one can summarize the long-standing dispute about the origin of the Etruscans. But let's not rush. We have already quoted Titus Livius, an ancient Roman historian. Let us quote another curious remark made by him: “And the Alpine tribes, no doubt, are also of Etruscan origin, especially the Rheti, who, however, under the influence of the surrounding nature, became wild to such an extent that they did not retain anything from the old customs except the language, but even the language they failed to preserve without distortion.

The Rhaetians are the inhabitants of the area stretching from Lake Constance to the Danube River (the territory of present-day Tyrol and part of Switzerland). The Etruscans, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, called themselves racens, which is close to the name of retia. That's why back in the middle of the XVII! V. the French scientist N. Frere, referring to the words of Titus Livius, as well as a number of other evidence, put forward the theory that the homeland of the Etruscans should be sought in the north - in the Central Alps. This theory was supported by Niebuhr and Mommsen, two of the greatest historians of Rome in the last century, and in our century it has many supporters.

For a long time, Herodotus' message about the Etruscans was considered the most ancient. But now the inscriptions carved on the walls of the ancient Egyptian temple in Medinet Habu were deciphered, which spoke of the attack on Egypt by the "peoples of the sea" in the XIII-XII centuries. BC e. “No country has resisted the right hand,” the hieroglyphs say. - They advanced on Egypt ... The allies were united among them prst, chkr, shkrsh, day And vshsh. They laid hands on countries to the ends of the earth, their hearts were full of hope and they said: "our plans will succeed." Another text speaks of tribes shrdn, shkrsh and finally trsh.

As you know, the Egyptians did not convey vowels in writing (let us refer the reader to our book “The Riddle of the Sphinx”, published by the Znanie publishing house in the “Read, comrade!” series in 1972, which tells about Egyptian hieroglyphics). Therefore, the names of peoples for a long time could not be deciphered. Then the people prst managed to identify with the Philistines, who are spoken of in the Bible and from whom the name of the country of Palestine comes. People day, most likely, these are the Danaans or the Achaean Greeks, those who crushed Troy. People shrdn- these are Sardis, people shkrsh— sikuly, and the people trsh- tyrsenes or tyrrhens, i.e. Etruscans!

This message about the Etruscans in the texts of Medinet Habu is many centuries older than the evidence of Herodotus. And this is not a tradition or a legend, but a genuine historical document, compiled immediately after the Egyptians managed to defeat the advancing armada of the “peoples of the sea”, acting in alliance with the Libyans. But what does this message say?

Supporters of the "Asia Minor address" of the homeland of the Etruscans saw in the indication of Egyptian inscriptions a written confirmation of their correctness. After all, the "peoples of the sea", in their opinion, moved to Egypt from the east, from Asia Minor, through Syria and Palestine. However, nowhere in the texts does it say that the "peoples of the sea" attacked Egypt from the east, it only says that they crushed the countries lying east of the country of the pyramids.

On the contrary, many facts indicate that the Sea Peoples attacked Egypt from the west. For example, the biblical tradition indicates that the Philistines came to Palestine from Caphtor, that is, the island of Crete. The headdresses of the "peoples of the sea", depicted on the Egyptian frescoes accompanying the inscriptions, are surprisingly similar to the headdress imprinted on the head of the pictorial sign of the hieroglyphic inscription, also found on the island of Crete. The Danaan-Achaeans lived in Greece almost a thousand years before the appearance of the "peoples of the sea", and Greece also lies to the west of Egypt. The name of the island of Sardinia comes from the name of the Sardinian tribe, the ancient inhabitants of Sicily were called Sicules ...

Where, then, did the Tirsenes, the allies of all these peoples, come from? From Greece, home of the Pelasgians? And then Hellanicus of Lesbos is right? Or maybe from Italy, along with sards and siculi? That is, they were natives of the Apennine Peninsula, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus believed, who raided to the east? But, on the other hand, if this is so, then maybe the Alpine theory of the origin of law? At first, the Etruscans lived in the Central Alps, the Retes remained in their ancestral home, and the Tyrrhenians founded Etruria and even, having entered into an alliance with other tribes living in the neighborhood in Sicily and Sardinia, moved far to the west, right up to Egypt and Asia Minor ...

As you can see, the deciphering of the Medinet-Habu inscriptions did not clarify the long-standing dispute about the Etruscans. More than that: it gave rise to another "address". They began to look for the homeland of the mysterious people not to the north or east of Etruria, but to the west of it - at the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea and even the Atlantic Ocean! For in the "peoples of the sea" some researchers tend to see the last wave of the legendary Atlanteans, the inhabitants of the sunken mainland, which Plato told mankind about in his "Dialogues". The Etruscans, therefore, were considered the descendants of the Atlanteans, and the riddle of Atlantis, if it can be solved, should become the key to solving the Etruscan riddle!

True, other researchers believed that it should not be about searching at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, but much closer, at the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea. There, according to a number of researchers, there is a sunken land - Tyrrenida. Her death happened in historical period(and not millions of years ago, as most geologists believe), and there it was the homeland of the Etruscans. After all, they find the ruins of Etruscan buildings and cities at the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea!

And the latest finds of archaeologists and "excavations" of linguists force us to add one more address to the list of candidates for the Etruscan ancestral home - and what! The legendary Troy, sung by Homer and destroyed by the Achaean Greeks!

The Romans considered themselves descendants of Aeneas, a fugitive from the burning Troy. The legends about this have long been considered a "propaganda gimmick". Indeed, the Romans have nothing in common with the inhabitants of ancient Troy. But, as you yourself have perfectly seen, a lot of "Roman" actually turns out to be Etruscan. And, as archeological excavations of the last twenty years show, the cult of Aeneas was also borrowed by the Romans from the Etruscans! In February 1972, Italian archaeologists discover an Etruscan tomb, or rather a cenotaph, a “false tomb” or a monument tomb dedicated to the legendary Aeneas. Why did the Etruscans worship a hero who came from distant Troy? Perhaps because they themselves come from those places?

About a hundred years ago, the outstanding etruscologist Karl Pauli compared the name of the inhabitants of ancient Troy, the Trojans, with the name of the Etruscans (among the Romans) and the Tirsenes (among the Greeks). The name of the Etruscans is decomposed into three parts: e-cowards-ki. The initial "e" does not mean anything, it is an "auxiliary vowel" that made it easier for the Romans to pronounce the loan word. "Ki" is a Latin suffix. But the root "coward" is similar to the root underlying the name of the Trojans and Troy.

True, for a long time this comparison of Pauli was considered incorrect and was cited as a curiosity. But here linguists penetrate the secret of the languages ​​of the inhabitants of Asia Minor, the neighbors of the Trojans. And they contain the same root "true" or "tro" - moreover, it is included in the composition of proper names, names of cities and even nationality. It is quite possible that the Trojans also spoke a language related to other ancient languages ​​of Asia Minor - Lydian, Lycian, Carian, Hittite.

If this is so, then the language of the Etruscans must be related to the Trojan! And again, if not so, then perhaps Herodotus is right, and the Lydian language, well studied by scientists, is the language of the Etruscans? Or are the relatives of the Etruscans - Alpine retii, speaking the "spoiled" Etruscan language? And if Dionysius of Halicarnassus is right, then the Etruscan language should not have any relatives at all, at least in Asia Minor, in the Alps, and nowhere else except Italy ...

As you can see, the key to riddle number one, the riddle of the origin of the Etruscans, lies in the juxtaposition of Etruscan and other languages. But the fact of the matter is that the Etruscan language itself is a mystery! Moreover, it is even more mysterious than anything else related to the mysterious people. If the Etruscans themselves and the civilization they created are the “number one mystery” of modern historical science, then the Etruscan language is the “mystery of the mystery”, or rather, “the number one mystery of the number one mystery”.

But, what is most surprising, you can learn to read Etruscan texts in a few hours. To read without understanding the words of a foreign language, or rather, even knowing the meaning of individual words ... And yet, for about five centuries, scientists have been trying in vain to penetrate V the secret of the Etruscan language.

Language unknown

How many Etruscan letters do you know? If you can read English, French, German - in a word, any language that uses the Latin alphabet, then you can easily read about half of all Etruscan letters. Yes, and owning only a “Russian letter”, you will also read a few letters. Our "a" is both written and read like the letter A in Etruscan texts. Our “t” is also the Etruscan T. The letter K was written by the Etruscans in the same way as our “k”, only it was turned in the other direction. The same goes for the letter E.

The letter I of the Latin alphabet and in the letter of the Etruscans conveyed the vowel "and". The Latin and Etruscan letters "M", "N", "L", "Q" are identical (capital letters, the so-called majuscules; lowercase letters - minuscules - appeared only in the Middle Ages). A few more Etruscan letters have the same form and the same reading as the letters of the ancient Greek alphabet. It is not surprising that people learned to read Etruscan inscriptions a very long time ago, back in the Renaissance. True, some letters could not be read immediately. And the entire Etruscan alphabet was deciphered only in 1880, when it was established what phonetic reading all the letters of this alphabet have. That is, its deciphering stretched out for several centuries, despite the fact that the reading of most Etruscan letters is known from the very beginning, the first texts written by the Etruscans were hardly found, or rather, as soon as Renaissance scientists became interested in them (inscriptions made by the Etruscans on various objects, vases, mirrors, etc., have been found before, but they did not arouse anyone's interest).

Of course, the styles of Etruscan letters have different options: depending on the time of writing (they cover about six or seven centuries, from the 7th to the 1st century BC) and the place where this or that inscription was found. Just as there are different dialects in a language, so there can be variations in writing, depending on the "schools of writing" in a given province or region.

Etruscan inscriptions are made on a variety of objects and, of course, differ from the typographic font familiar to us. The Etruscan texts that have come down to us were written by both experienced scribes and people who were not very good at writing. Therefore, again, we are faced with different handwritings and, which makes reading especially difficult, with different spellings of the same word. The Etruscans, however, like many other peoples of the ancient world, did not have strict spelling rules. And here's the same name ARNT we find in writing: A, AT, AR, ARNT(And in two versions, because for the sound T, in addition to the usual T, there was another letter, in the form of a circle crossed out in the middle with a cross, and in later texts it turned into a circle with a dot in the middle). Another common name among the Etruscans VEL spelled as VE, VL And VEL.

We know these names. What about words we don't know the meaning of? Here it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to figure out what is in front of us: whether the same word in different spellings Or are they different words? At the same time, in many texts, the Etruscans did not put signs separating words (usually they separated one word from another not with a space, as we do, but with a special word division icon - a colon or a dash).

Try to understand a text written in a language you do not know, where all the words are written together, where many vowels and sometimes consonants are missing, and the text itself is inscribed on some stone or vessel and many of its parts are so damaged that it is difficult to distinguish one letter from another - and then you will understand the difficulties that the researcher faces when he takes only the first step in the study of Etruscan texts - he tries to read them. But the most important thing, as you know, is not reading, but translating texts, the task is much more difficult!

We began the chapter by showing that you know how to read a whole range of Etruscan letters, although you have never specifically studied Etruscology. Now let's say more: you know the meaning of several Etruscan words, despite the fact that the Etruscan language is perhaps the most mysterious in the world.

The familiar words “cistern”, “tavern”, “ceremony”, “person”, “litera” (and, therefore, “literature”) come from the Etruscan language. Do not be surprised, there is no miracle here: these words came into our language (and into most of the world's cultural languages) from Latin. The Romans borrowed all these concepts - "cistern" and "liters", "ceremonies" and "taverns" - from the Etruscans, as well as the words for them. For example, the central part of the Roman house, as you know, was called atrium. It is borrowed from Etruscan architecture, along with the Etruscan word ATRIUS.

Many words, on the contrary, got into the Etruscan language from the Romans. So, wine in Etruscan was called VINUM. This is a borrowing from Latin. There were even more borrowings in the Etruscan language from ancient Greek, because this mysterious people was associated with the great civilization of Hellas for many centuries. And since many words from Greek got into our Russian language, many words of the Etruscan and Russian languages ​​are similar in sound and meaning. For example, in Etruscan ELEIVA has the meaning of "oil, oil, ointment" and is related to our "oil", the Greek word.

The kilik, a drinking vessel used by the ancient Greeks, Romans and Etruscans, is called KULIKHNA in Etruscan inscriptions. The Etruscans adopted the Greek name along with the vessel itself. As well as ask, the vessel and its name (among the Etruscans it is called ASKA). The names kilik and aska may be familiar to you from books on the history of ancient culture. But the ancient Greeks also had several dozen special names for vessels of various capacities and shapes (after all, we also have goblets, glasses, glasses, glasses, jugs, bottles, damask bottles, quarters, half-liters, mugs, etc. etc.). P.). The names of these vessels are known to specialists in Greek and history of ancient culture. And it turned out that there are about forty names in Etruscan texts. Greek culture, undoubtedly influenced the culture of the Etruscans. The Etruscans borrowed vessels from the Greeks along with their Greek names, slightly changing them, as is almost always the case when borrowing words from one language to another unrelated to it.

But not only in material culture did the Greeks influence the Etruscans. Perhaps they had even greater influence in the “ideological”, spiritual sphere. The Etruscans worshiped many gods of Olympus and the heroes of Ancient Hellas, however, like the Romans. The pantheon of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans was in many ways similar. Sometimes each of these peoples called the same god their own, "national" name. For example, the Greeks called the god of trade, the patron of travelers, merchants and shepherds Hermes, the Romans called Mercury, and the Etruscans called him TURMS. But often the name of the Etruscan god coincides with its Greek or Roman name. The Greek Poseidon and the Roman Neptune are known to the Etruscans under the name NETUNS. Roman Diana and Greek Artemis are called by the Etruscans ARTUME or ARITIMI. And the god Apollo, called by both the Greeks and the Romans alike, is called by the Etruscans in the same way, only in the Etruscan manner: APULU or APLU.

The names of all these gods (and there is also Minerva, called in Etruscan MENRVA, Juno, called by the Etruscans UNI, Vulcan - among the Etruscans VELKANS, Thetis-Tetis, known to the Etruscans under the same name - TETIS, the ruler of the underworld Hades - in Etruscan AITA and his wife Persephone-Proserpina, in Etruscan called PERSEPOI) are probably well known to you. And even more so they were familiar to connoisseurs of antiquity, who studied Etruscan texts. And, having met in them the names Apulu or Tethys, Netuns or Menrva, they easily determined which gods they were talking about. Moreover, very often the Etruscan text was accompanied by images of these gods with their characteristic attributes, in situations familiar from ancient myths.

The same is with the names of the heroes of these myths. Hercules was called the Etruscans HERKLE, Castor - KASTUR, Agamemnon - AHMEMRUN, Ulysses-Odysseus - UTUSE, Clytemnestra - KLUTUMUSTA or KLUTMSTA, etc. Thus, you, without specifically studying the Etruscan language, and indeed, perhaps, reading a book for the first time about the Etruscans, being a cultured and inquisitive person, you can understand a decent number of words in Etruscan texts, especially the names of their own gods and heroes.

However, not only them, but also mere mortals. After all, the names of many Etruscans are well known from the history of ancient Rome. The kings of the Tarquinian dynasty sat on the Roman throne. The last king was expelled by the Roman people, says the legendary story of the "eternal city", and settled in the Etruscan city of Caere. Archaeologists have found the ruins of this city near modern Cerverteri. During the excavations of the burial ground in Tsere, a burial was discovered, where there was an inscription "TARKNA". Obviously, this is the tomb of the Tarquinian family, who once ruled Rome.

No less amazing "meeting" took place during the excavation of a grave near the Etruscan city of Vulci, discovered by a resident of Tuscany Francois and named after the discoverer "Francois' Grave". There were frescoes depicting the battle between the Romans and the Etruscans. They were accompanied by brief inscriptions, or rather, the names of acting characters. Among them was this one: “KNEVE TARKKHUNIES RUMAKH”. It is easy to guess that "Rumakh" means "Roman", "Tarkhunies" - "Tarquinius", "Kneve" - ​​"Gnaeus". Gnaeus Tarquinius of Rome, ruler of Rome! This is how the text is translated.

According to the legends about the early history of Rome, the kings of the Tarquinian family, who ruled the city, more precisely, Tarquinius Prisk (i.e., Tarquinius the Elder), fought against the rulers of the Etruscan city of Vulci, the brothers Gaius and Aulus Vibenna. Episodes of this war are depicted on the frescoes of the "Graves of Francois". The burial dates back to more recent times than the reign of the last Roman kings (6th century BC), and the frescoes obviously depict the legendary history of Rome and the Etruscans.

But the famous Italian archaeologist Massimo Pallotio is excavating the sanctuary of the Etruscan city of Veii. And then he finds a vase - obviously, a sacrifice on the altar - on which the name of the donor is inscribed. This name is AVIL VIPIENAS, that is, Avl Vibenna in Etruscan transcription (the Etruscans did not have letters in the alphabet to convey the sound B and they wrote it through P). The vase dates from the middle of the 6th century. BC e., the era of the reign of the Etruscan kings in Rome. Most likely, the brothers of Vibenna, like the kings of Tarquinia - historical figures - drew the conclusion of Pallotino, and a large number of Etruscologists agree with him.

Be that as it may, these names, known to us from Roman sources, are also inscribed on the Etruscan writing monuments. We know many Etruscan names and not legendary, but quite real. For example, the Etruscan was a famous politician and patron of the arts Maecenas, whose name has become a household name. An Etruscan who lived in the 1st century. n. e. the satirist-fabulist Avl Persius Flakk and Cicero's friend Avl Cetina, who initiated him into the "science of prediction", haruspicy... urns or crypts that we are talking about a person bearing the name Avl, common among the Etruscans.

Thus, starting to study Etruscan texts, researchers knew the reading of most of the letters of the alphabet in which they are written, and had a certain stock of Etruscan words and proper names, as we could see for ourselves (after all, you know them!).

However, this list does not exhaust the list of Etruscan words whose meaning is known. In the writings of ancient authors, one can find references to the Etruscan language. True, none of them compiled either a dictionary or a grammar of this language. Just in connection with this or that case, some Roman historians or writers give the meaning of individual Etruscan words.

For example, explaining the origin of the name of the city of Capua, one ancient author writes: “It is known, however, that it was founded by the Etruscans, and the appearance of a falcon, which in the Etruscan language is called KAPUS, served as a sign, hence Capua got its name.” From other sources we learn that the monkey was called AVIMUS in the Etruscan language, from the third - the names of the months in Etruscan: ACLUS - June, AMPILES - May, etc. (although the names of the months have come down to us in a dictionary in Latin, compiled in the VIII century and, of course, underwent a "deformation" no less strong than that to which the Etruscans subjected the names of the gods and Greek words).

Suetonius, author of the "Biography of Caesar Augustus", tells that before the death of the emperor, lightning struck his statue and knocked down the initial letter C in the word "CAESAR" ("Caesar"). The interpreters of omens (haruspex, fortunetelling by lightning) stated that Augustus had one hundred days left to live, because "C" in the writing of the Romans also meant the number "100", but after death he will be "ranked among the gods, since AESAR, the rest of the name Caesar, in Etruscan means god. Another author, Cassius Dio, writes that the word AISAR among the Tyrrhenians, that is, the Etruscans, means god, and the compiler of the dictionary Hesychius also writes that the word AISOI has the meaning of "gods" among the Tyrrhenians.

All Etruscan words, the meaning of which is given by ancient authors, were collected together in early XVII V. Thomas Dempster, a Scottish baron and professor at the University of Pisa and Bologna (although his work "Seven Books on the Kingdom of Etruria", which gave a list of these words, was published only a hundred years later). And they, of course, were able to lighten the meaning of the Etruscan texts, if ... If only in these texts there were words explained by ancient authors. But, alas, apart from the word "god", the rest of the words, all these "falcons" and "monkeys", are known to us only from the works of scientists of antiquity, and not from the texts of the Etruscans. The only exception is the word "aiser", i.e. "god". And here, too, among scientists there is no agreement on what it means - singular or plural, that is, "god" or "gods."

What's the matter? Why can't we understand Etruscan texts that are well read and include words whose meaning we know? This question should be formulated somewhat differently. After all, you can also read not only individual words, but also entire texts, without being an etruscologist and without specifically deciphering. Moreover, there will be a huge number of such texts.

Here is a burial urn in front of you, on which one word is inscribed: "VEL" or "AULE". It is clear that you can easily read and translate such a text: it says that a man named Vel or Avl is buried here. And there are many such texts. Even more often, this kind of inscriptions consist not of one, but of two or sin words. For example, "AULE PETRUNI" or "VEL PETRUNI". It is also easy to guess here that the name of the deceased and his “surname” are given, or rather the genus from which he comes (real surnames appeared in Europe only in the Middle Ages).

The Etruscans created wonderful frescoes. Many of them depict gods or mythological scenes. Here, for example, is a fresco from the "Monster's Grave". You see a picture of the underworld, sitting on the throne of his lord Hades and his wife Proserpina. They are accompanied by signatures: "AITA" and "PERSEPOI". It is not difficult to translate them: "Hades" and "Proserpina". Another fresco from the same crypt depicts a terrible demon with wings. Above it is the signature: "TUHULKA".

This name is not familiar to you, but you can easily guess that this is a proper name: after all, their names are also inscribed above Hades and Proserpina. The meaning of this monster, which is among the mourning people, is also clear: it is the demon of death. So, the signature "TUHULKA" conveys his name... You have translated another Etruscan text!

True, it consists of only one word .... But here is a longer inscription. In the Leningrad Hermitage there is a bronze mirror, on the reverse side of which five figures are depicted, and above them - five words inscribed in Etruscan. Here they are - "PRIUMNE", "EKAPA", "TETIS", "TSIUMITE", "KASTRA". The word "Tethys" is well known to you: that was the name of Thetis, the mother of Achilles. The elder "Priumne" is Priam. Obviously, the rest of the characters are connected with the Trojan War. "Ekapa" is Hekaba, the wife of Priam - on the mirror she is depicted standing next to the elder. Castra is the prophetess Cassandra. It remains "Tsiumite". Instead of "b", as you already know, the Etruscans wrote "p"; they also deafened other voiced vowels. "D" was written by them through "t" and even through "c". "Tsiumite" should be transcribed "Diumide". The Etruscans did not have the letter O, they usually transmitted it through U. So: “Diomede” is the hero of the Trojan War, inferior in courage only to Achilles, Diomedes. So, the whole text is translated as follows: "Priam, Hekaba, Thetis, Diomedes, Cassandra."

As you can see, the task is not too difficult - to read an Etruscan text of one, two, three, five words ... But these are proper names, you don’t need to know any grammar or vocabulary. Well, what do you say, for example, about such a passage: “KHALKH APER TULE APHES ILUKU VAKIL TSUHN ELFA RITNAL TUL TRA ISWANEK KALUS…”, etc., etc.? In the inscription, where there are no drawings and nothing at all, what could be a “fulcrum”?

The first thing that comes to mind when we start reading a text in a language unknown to us is to look for similar consonances with our own language. Or with some other, foreign, but known to us. This is exactly what the first researchers of Etruscan texts began to do.

This technique is used in deciphering ancient writings and languages ​​not for the first time. And it very often brings success to the researcher. So, for example, scientists were able to read the mysterious texts found in the south of the Arabian Peninsula and dating back to the time of the legendary Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. The characters of the "South Arabian" characters were basically read in the same way as the well-known characters of the Ethiopian script. The language of South Arabian writing was close to classical Arabic, and even closer to Ethiopian and the "living" languages ​​of South Arabia and Ethiopia: Socotri, Mehri, Amharic, etc.

An excellent knowledge of the language of Egyptian Christians or Copts, which was used only in worship, but was a descendant of the language of the inhabitants of Ancient Egypt, allowed the brilliant Francois Champollion to penetrate the secret of the hieroglyphs of the country of the pyramids (the book “The Riddle of the Sphinx” tells more about this).

... In a word, the method of comparing a known language with a related unknown has justified itself in deciphering many scripts and languages.

But where he brought the Etruscologists, you yourself will understand after reading the next chapter.

World Wanted

In 1444, in the city of Gubbio, located in the ancient Italian province of Umbria and once the ancient city of Iguvia, nine large copper plates covered with inscriptions were discovered in an underground crypt. Two boards were taken to Venice, and since then no one has heard of them. The rest were placed in storage in the city hall. Two of the seven remaining boards turned out to be written in Latin with letters of the Latin alphabet. Five of the boards were written in an unknown language and in letters similar to Latin, but in many ways different from them.

A dispute broke out: whose writings are these, whose language do they hide? The letters were called "Egyptian", "Punic" (Carthaginian), "the letter of Cadmus", that is, the oldest variety of Greek writing, according to legend, was brought to Hellas by the Phoenician Cadmus. Finally, they decided that the letters were Etruscan, and their language was "forever lost." And only after long discussions and painstaking research it turned out that these letters are still not Etruscan, although their letters are related to the letters of the Etruscan alphabet. And the language of these texts, called the Iguvian Tables, has nothing to do with the Etruscan language at all.

In Italy in the 1st millennium BC. e., in addition to the Latins-Romans, there lived several other peoples related to them in culture and language: Samnites, Sabels, Osci, Umbras. In the language of the Umbrians, the Iguvian tables are written. This was proved about a hundred and fifty years ago by the German researcher Richard Lepsius, who later became famous for his most valuable contribution to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Well, what about the writings of the Etruscans? In the same 15th century, when the Igouvian tables were found, only not in its middle, but at the very end, in 1498, the work of the Dominican monk Annio de Viterbo “Seventeen volumes on various antiquities with comments by brethren” was published. John Annio de Viterbo. Here are excerpts from the writings of various ancient authors, which are commented on by de Viterbo. And besides that, he publishes Etruscan texts. And even deciphers them using the language of the biblical Old Testament - Hebrew ...

A little time passes - and now it turns out that de Viterbo owns not only comments, but also ... some texts. He wrote them himself! The credibility of the Seventeen Volumes on Various Antiquities has been lost. But here is the key with which he tried to penetrate the secret of the Etruscan language - the Hebrew language - was considered correct for a long time. The logic here was simple: the Etruscans are the most ancient people of Italy; Hebrew - the most ancient language in the world (after all, the hieroglyphs of Egypt were not read at that time, the “clay books” of Mesopotamia were not opened at all, and the Bible was considered the oldest book in the world).

In the middle of the XVI century. Vincenzo Tranquilli and Justa Lipsia publish the first collections of Etruscan inscriptions. At the same time, Pietro Francesco Giambullari, one of the founders of the Florentine Academy, translated some of them, of course, using the Hebrew language.

But Thomas Dempster, already mentioned by us, publishes an extensive collection of Etruscan inscriptions. And after him, in 1737-1743. in Florence, the three-volume work "Etruscan Museum" written by A.F. Gori is published, which also contains many texts written in Etruscan. And it becomes clear that the language of the Bible cannot be the key to the language ancient people Italy.

Perhaps this key will be given by other ancient languages ​​of Italy, called Italic - Oscan, Umbrian, Latin? Many researchers of the XVIII-XIX centuries. believed that the Etruscan language is related to Italian. This is precisely what the best etruscologist of the 18th century, the Italian Luigi Lanzi, proved, who published in 1789 in Rome a three-volume study on the Etruscan language, reprinted in 1824-1825.

And three years after the reprint of Lanzi's work, a voluminous two-volume work by the German scientist K. O. Müller (which has not lost much of its value to this day) comes out, in which it is shown that Lanzi, considering the Etruscan language to be related to Latin, was on the right track.

At the time of Luigi Lanzi, comparative-historical linguistics had not yet been created. Müller released his work at the time when its foundations were already laid and it was shown that there is a huge family of related languages, called Indo-European, which includes Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, Greek, Indian, Iranian, Romance (Latin, French, Spanish, Italian and many others) languages, that between these languages ​​there are certain sound correspondences that obey strict laws. And if you seriously prove that the language of the Etruscans is Italian, you need to show the "correspondence formulas" of the Etruscan words of Latin and other Italic languages. And the fact that some Etruscan words and names of gods are related to Latin does not prove anything. They could be borrowed by the Romans from the Etruscans or the Etruscans from the Romans, because they were the closest neighbors and were in close contact for many centuries (for example, there are a lot of Slavic words in the Romanian language, but this language is Romance, a descendant of the language spoken by the Romans). legionnaires; and not the language of the Slavs, with whom there were only close and long-term contacts).

Müller called for a "comprehensive comparison of languages" before concluding which of them is closest to the language of the Etruscans, whose relative it is. The researcher himself believes that the Etruscans were Pelasgo-Tyrrhenians, distant relatives of the Greeks. Other researchers believed that the Etruscan language is a direct relative of the Hellenic language. Still others, mainly Italian researchers, remained true to Lanzi's views, only began to prove his correctness using the methods of comparative historical linguistics: to identify the laws of correspondence between the sounds of the Etruscan and Italic languages, the laws of changes in the sounds of the Etruscan language itself over time, etc.

In 1874-1875. a well-known connoisseur of the Latin language, German professor W. Korssen, publishes a two-volume book called "On the Etruscan Language." In it, he, it would seem, convincingly proves that this language is related to Italian dialects, although many words in it are Greek. For example, the word TAURA in the Etruscan language means “bull” (Greek “taurus” - remember the Minotaur, the bull of the Cretan king Minos), the word LUPU or LUPUKE means “sculpted” (Greek “glipe” - “carve, sculpt”; hence our "glyptics"). We have already said that the name Avl (or Aule) was very widespread among the Etruscans. Korssen found that there is another similar sounding name - AVILS. And it was also used very often. Moreover, on sarcophagi and burials scattered throughout Etruria, moreover, in combination with the word “loupe” or “lupuke”, that is, “sculpt”, “carve”.

Korssen concluded that Ávile is the generic name of a dynasty of sculptors and sculptors whose talents served Etruria and whose names, like a “factory mark” or “quality mark”, were put on the work of their hands - funerary urns and sarcophagi, in which were representatives of the most noble Etruscan families were buried ...

But as soon as the second volume of the monograph of the venerable scientist was published, in the same year, a small, 39-page brochure by his compatriot Wilhelm Deeke leaves no stone unturned from Korssen's constructions with his Avils, Greek words in Etruscan and the latter's kinship with Italian languages.

Deeke convincingly shows that TAURA, which Korssen considers Greek word"bull", borrowed by the Etruscans, actually means "grave". The word LUPU or LUPUKE is not "sculpt" or "carve", but the verb "died"; the word AVILS means "year" and not given name. "Lupu" and "avil" very often form a stable combination, and the number of years is indicated between them in Latin numerals. Here is the “dynasty of sculptors” discovered by Corssen as a result of many years of painstaking study of Etruscan texts!

Deeke himself believed, like K. O. Müller, that the Etruscan people “belong to the family of Greek peoples, although it was, without a doubt, a distant member of it.” However, not everyone agreed with this. Back in the 18th century it was hypothesized that the Etruscans were the first wave of Celtic tribes that invaded Italy (followed by another Celtic tribe, the Gauls, who inflicted a mortal blow on the Etruscans). In 1842, a book (in two volumes) entitled "Celtic Etruria" was published in Dublin, Ireland's capital. Its author, V. Betham, argued that the Etruscan language is related to the extinct Celtic languages, such as the language of the Gauls, and also modern - Irish, Breton, Welsh.

In the same 18th century it has been suggested that the Etruscans are not the first wave of the Celts, but the ancient Germans, who many centuries later invaded the Roman Empire, reached Italy and crushed Rome. In the 19th century The relationship of the Etruscan language with the German ones was proved by many scientists: the German von Schmitz, the Englishman Lindsay, the Dutchman Maak, the Dane Niebuhr.

In 1825, the scientist Ciampi returned to his homeland in Italy from Warsaw, where he had been a professor for several years. He immediately urged his colleagues to abandon the search for the key to the Etruscan language with the help of Greek and Latin words. In his opinion, it is necessary to turn "to other ancient languages ​​descended from the original, namely, to the Slavic ones." Following this, Kollar's book "Slavic ancient italy"(1853) and A. D. Chertkov" On the language of the Pelasgians who inhabited Italy, and its comparison with ancient Slovenian. According to Chertkov, the Slavs "come, in a straight line, from the Pelasgians", and therefore it is the Slavic languages ​​\u200b\u200bthat can provide the key to reading the Etruscan inscriptions. Later, the Estonian G. Trusman clarifies the work of Kollar and Chertkov. Not the Slavs, but the Balto-Slavs are relatives of the Etruscans. That is, not only Slavic languages ​​​​(Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Czech, Polish, Serbian), but also Baltic ones (Lithuanian, Latvian and Prussian, which disappeared as a result of German colonization) can give the key to the Etruscan language. Publishing his work in Reval (now Tallinn), Trusman noted that he was "refused to publish the work in an academic publication, so the author publishes it himself."

Why academic publications in the XX century. (Trusman's book was published in 1911) were they denied publication of works on the Etruscan language, and the authors had to publish them themselves? Yes, because by this time the search for the key to the Etruscan writings had greatly undermined the credibility of any attempts to find it, especially if they were undertaken by non-specialists. “All these failures, which often occurred due to insufficient linguistic training of amateurs and because of naive claims to the appearance of success in “translation”, states the etruscologist Reymond Blok in this connection, “brought upon etruscology the unjust distrust of some sensible minds.” For it was not so easy to draw a line between work in the field of etruscology, trying to find a key among known languages world, and the writing of the "Etruscan", who by all means wants to "translate" Etruscan texts, without having sufficient knowledge.

“I visited the secretary of a Parisian weekly,” says one of the Etruscan enthusiasts. He was a serious young man with excellent manners. And then I told him point-blank that I was working on deciphering the Etruscan text. He staggered as if I had stabbed him in the jaw. For a fraction of a second, the ground shook under his feet, and he had to lean against the fireplace. I looked at him impassively. Finally, raising his head like a diver emerging from under the water, he said with a wide smile: “Ah! You are studying the Etruscan language!“. It was necessary to hear this “Ah!”. It was a whole symphony of sympathy and pity. He did not place me, of course, on straight line AB, where point A is occupied by the seeker of the philosopher's stone, and point B is occupied by the counterfeiter. In order to talk seriously about deciphering the Etruscan language, he needed the author of the Ancient History in three volumes, or at least the head of the department. But to hear an ordinary person talking about this, and even wanting to place a small article in his journal, was a blow to him! I understood this and was not offended. Indeed, it was a dangerous undertaking."

Remember Corssen's mistakes. The venerable scientist composed a whole story about the Avils “family of sculptors”, made thoughtful conclusions, although all this was based on an absolutely wrong understanding of the word “avils”. One can imagine where errors and misinterpretations led people who did not have the academic training and caution that Corssen certainly had.

Here is a short list. One researcher finds similarities between the Etruscan language and the language of an Indian tribe living in the Orinoco jungle. Hence the conclusion: it was not Columbus who discovered America, but the Etruscans! Another discovers, after "reading" the Etruscan texts, evidence of the death of Atlantis. They are trying to decipher the Etruscan language with the help of Ethiopian, Japanese, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian, the extinct Urartian, and finally, Chinese!

This list is far from complete. For example, here is how they tried to connect the Etruscans living in Italy with the inhabitants of distant India. In 1860, in Leipzig, Bertani's book entitled "An attempt to decipher several Etruscan inscriptions" was published - deciphering is carried out on the basis of the sacred priestly language of India, Sanskrit.

Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, it is related to Slavic and other languages. And if the Etruscan language is really related to Sanskrit, then it would be reasonable to expect that between Italy and Hindustan there will be other Indo-European languages ​​that will be even closer to Etruscan. For example, S. Bugge published a book in 1909, where he proves that the Etruscan language is a special branch in the family of Indo-European languages ​​and Greek, Armenian and Balto-Slavic languages ​​are closest to it.

However, very many scientists resolutely rebelled against the fact that the Etruscan language was included in the great Indo-European family. In addition to Indo-European languages ​​(ancient Sanskrit, modern Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, and many others), languages ​​of another family, Dravidian, are spoken in Hindustan, mainly in the south of the peninsula (Tamil, Malayali, etc.). In 1904, the Norwegian philologist Sten Konov published a work, and in such a respectable publication as the Journal of the Asiatic Royal Society, under the title "Etruscans and Dravidians". It compares individual Etruscan and Dravidian words that have a similar meaning and sound.

Following this, another researcher, J. Yadzini, compares the Etruscan letters with the icons on clay products found in Central India and dating back to the 3rd millennium BC. e.

True, it is not known whether these icons are letters and in general written signs.

In the 20-30s. of our century in the Indus Valley discover great civilization, modern to Ancient Egypt, Sumer, Crete. Hieroglyphic inscriptions have been found. In 1933, the Italian etruscologist G. Piccoli published a table. In it, he compares the hieroglyphs of Hindustan and the icons found on some Etruscan inscriptions - at their very beginning, as well as placed on some funerary urns. Piccoli finds that about fifty of these icons are similar to the hieroglyphs of Hindustan ... So what? After all, the hieroglyphs of Hindustan have not been deciphered, and, according to the author of the comparison, practically nothing is known about Etruscan badges. One unknown - this is already known! - you can not decide through another unknown.

The prominent Italian scholar and polyglot Alfredo Trombetti decided to abandon the comparison of the Etruscan language with one language or family. He believed that the languages ​​of our planet are related to each other, in them it is possible to identify a certain common layer, words that have the same meaning and very close sound. And if any Etruscan word sounds similar to those that belong to the universal layer, therefore, it must have the same meaning.

For example, in Etruscan there is the word TAKLTI. Trombetti believes that this is some kind of case of the word "taka". Then he finds the “universal” meaning of “roof”, which in the ancient Persian language is expressed by the word “teg” (house), in Sanskrit - “stkhagati” (to close), in Chechen - “tchauv” (roof), in Arabic - “dag” (to close), in Latin “tego” (I close), hence “toga”, in Greek - “stege” (roof), in the African language of Bari - “lo-dek” (roof). And Trombetti concludes: the word "taka" in the Etruscan language means "roof" (that is, "closing").

But, firstly, it is not clear whether the word "taklti" is really a case form of the word "taka". Secondly, the possibility of error in the "Trombetti method" is even greater than in the usual comparison of "language with language." And thirdly, no one has yet been able to prove and even give any serious arguments in favor of the fact that there really is a certain layer in all languages ​​​​of the world (and if they come from the same universal root, then the separation of languages ​​​​and peoples began many years before. thousands of years before there was a roof over people's heads and the word for it!).

With the help of universal laws, linguistic universals, Academician N. Ya. Marr also tried to penetrate the secret of the Etruscan language. He used a method he called "paleontological analysis".

According to Marr, any word in any language consists of only four elements. On these elements he "quartered" the words of the most different languages, from Abkhazian to Basque. The Etruscan words were also subjected to Marrov's "quartering". But etruscology did not benefit from this.

In 1935, summing up the results of the centuries-old search for Etruscologists, F. Messerschmidt wrote: "The problem is now even more confused than before." In 1952, the monumental monograph "Languages ​​of the World" was published, summarizing the results of the work of linguists in the study of the relationship of languages. And it was written in it: "Until now, the Etruscan language has not been attributed to any linguistic group."

In 1966, Soviet readers get acquainted with the translation of Z. Mayani's book "The Etruscans Begin to Talk", published by the Nauka publishing house. And in it they read that finally “the Etruscan Bastille has been taken… Yes, the key exists, and I just found it. It is very effective, and I leave it in the hands of all Etruscologists ... I think that if the decipherment of the Etruscan language goes on a wider and fresher road, Etruscologists will feel strong and better protected from their true and imaginary sorrows. And then they can finally break out of the vicious circle in which they are now. To this end, I am doing my bit."

So the key is really found?

Alexander Kondratov

From the book "Etruscans. Mystery number one", 1977

The Etruscans are one of the ancient civilizations that is considered the most amazing mystery of history. Even scientists cannot accurately state about the "roots" and language of the Etruscans. How are the Etruscans and Russians related? So far there is no answer to this question.

Important secrets

Even before our era, the state of Etruria was located between the Italian rivers Arno and Tiber. It is this state that is considered the cradle of Roman civilization. The management system, mosaics, engineering, funeral rites, chariot races, clothing - this and much more was borrowed by the Romans from the Etruscans.

For us, such an ancient civilization remains a great mystery. Although there is a lot of evidence about the Etruscans, we cannot now get a detailed and reliable picture of their life. Even scientists do not have accurate information about how the ancient people appeared, where they disappeared. The geographical boundaries of the state of Etruria have not been established, the unique Etruscan language has not been deciphered.

The large twenty-volume "History of the Etruscans" was left by the Roman emperor Claudius I, who ruled in the 1st century AD. e. From him, the descendants inherited a dictionary of the Etruscan language. Unfortunately, all the works burned down when there was a fire in the Library of Alexandria. Perhaps the manuscripts would "tell" us about the secrets of an ancient civilization.

Eastern people

There are only 3 versions of the origin of the ancient people. Titus Livy believed that the Etruscans were related to the Alpine Rets. These peoples together penetrated from the north to the Apennine Peninsula. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Etruscans belonged to the Italian natives, they adopted the achievements of the Villanova culture.

The "Alpine version" of the origin of the ancient people has not been materially confirmed. Modern scholars associate the Villanova culture with the Italics, but not with the Etruscan people.

Historians argue that the Etruscans were very different from their less developed neighbors. This feature became the basis of the third version of the origin of the ancient civilization. The latest version says that the Etruscans came to the Apennines from Asia (Small). Such a hypothesis was proposed by the famous Herodotus, who believed that the ancestors of the Etruscans migrated from Lydia.

It is the 3rd version that has the right to exist, because there are many facts about the Asia Minor origin of the ancient people. The way sculptures are made is just one example. The Etruscans did not carve stone sculptures, they used clay for this purpose. In this way, the peoples of Asia Minor created sculptures.

There are other proofs of the "Asia Minor version". Not so long ago (in the 19th century) on the island of Lemnos, which is located near the coast of Asia Minor, archaeologists discovered a tombstone.

The tombstone inscription was made in Greek letters, but they combined with each other in a strange way. After scientists compared this inscription with the texts of the ancient people, similarities were found between the two copies.

The development of the "Eastern version" was carried out by Vladimir Georgiev, a well-known Bulgarian historian. He believed that the Etruscans belonged to the legendary Trojans. The historian bases his conjectures on one legend, according to which the Trojans, together with Aeneas, fled from Troy to the Apennine Peninsula.

Vladimir Georgiev linguistically supports the "Eastern version". The scientist finds a certain relationship between the names "Troy" and "Etruria". People who are skeptical of this theory should reconsider their principles. In 1972, archaeologists from Italy found an Etruscan monument tomb that was dedicated to Aeneas.

Information about the genetic map

Herodotus' hypothesis was tested by specialists from the University of Turin. To do this, scientists used genetic analysis. The study compared the Y-chromosomes of the inhabitants of Tuscany and other Italian regions with the same material of the population of Turkey, the Balkan Peninsula and the island of Lemnos. The study showed that in genetic terms, the inhabitants of Tuscan cities are similar to the population of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Certain genetic data of the inhabitants of the Tuscan city of Murlo completely coincide with the genetic characteristics of the Turks.

Scientists from Stanford University used computer simulation to reconstruct the demographic processes that are relevant to the population of Tuscany. For the study, the information obtained after the anthropological and genetic examination was used.

The scientists were surprised by the results. It turned out that there is no genetic connection between the Etruscans and the ancient population of central Italy, as well as the modern inhabitants of Tuscany. Such data confirm that the Etruscans were destroyed by a terrible catastrophe. Perhaps this people represented a certain social elite, which was very different from the Italians.

Anthropologist Joanna Mountain reports that the Etruscans differed from the ancestors of modern Italians in every way. They spoke a language that does not belong to the Indo-European group. Mountain summarizes that linguistic and cultural characteristics ancient people - a mystery for research.

"Etruscan is Russian"

The ethnonyms "Etruscans" and "Russians" have a phonetic proximity. This enables the researchers of the hypothesis to talk about the connection between the two peoples. Alexander Dugin believes that "Etruscan is Russian." Rasenna or Raśna is the name of the Etruscans, which once again confirms the plausibility of the version.

"Etruscan" can be compared with the Roman name of the ancient people - "tusci". The word "races" is associated with the Greek name of the Etruscans - "tyrsenes". As a result of this, the connection between the ancient people and the Russians becomes not too obvious.

There is much evidence that the Etruscans may have left Italy. One of possible causes- climate change and drought, in time everything coincides with the disappearance of the ancient people.

It is assumed that the Etruscans had to emigrate to the north, which was considered a more suitable region for farming. This fact is confirmed by the urns found in Germany, designed to store the ashes of the deceased. The urns look like artifacts of the ancient people.

In part, the Etruscans could reach the territory of the modern Baltic. Here they could assimilate with the locals. This does not confirm the version that "Etruscan is Russian."

Surprisingly, in the Etruscan language there were no letters "d", "b", "g". The absence of such sounds is explained by the special structure of the larynx of the ancient inhabitants. Finns and Estonians are also characterized by this feature of the vocal apparatus.

Zachary Mayani believes that modern Albanians can be called descendants of the Etruscans. As evidence, the French scientist cites the data that Tirana (the capital of Albania) bears the name of the ancient people - "Tyrrenes".

Many scientists believe that the disappearance of the Etruscans is a consequence of their small number. Archaeologists speak of only 25,000 people who inhabited Etruria during its heyday.

Difficulties in translation

Since the 16th century, scientists have been studying Etruscan writing. To decipher the ancient inscriptions, experts used Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Finnish and other languages. Attempts did not give the desired results, and skeptic linguists said that the Etruscan inscriptions could not be read.

It is thoroughly known that the Greek became the basis for the Etruscan alphabet. The most interesting thing is that the Greek alphabet did not correspond well to the sounds of the Etruscan language. Late Etruscan texts often lacked vowels, which created problems in deciphering.

Linguists managed to decipher some of the inscriptions of the ancient people. Three scientists reported that Slavic languages ​​became the basis for deciphering the Etruscan inscriptions.

Valery Chudinov is a linguist from Russia who considers the language of the ancient people the successor to the "runic writing" of the Slavs. modern science does not accept this hypothesis as correct.

Researcher Vladimir Shcherbakov explains that the Etruscan people wrote as they heard. At this method deciphering, Etruscan words are as similar as possible to Russian names: “tes” - “forest”, “ita” - “this”.

Linguist Petr Zolin believes that modern words are not suitable for deciphering ancient inscriptions. The same point of view is shared by Andrey Zaliznik, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He says that in the past the language we knew looked different than it does today.

Modern historians suggest that the Etruscan inscriptions are unlikely to be deciphered in the near future.

The Etruscans, the ancient inhabitants of Central Italy, once called Etruria (modern Tuscany), are one of the most mysterious peoples that I knew.

They had a written language, but modern scientists have managed to decipher only a small part of the records that have come down to us. The rich literature of the Etruscans has been lost, apart from isolated passages, and all that we know of their history has come down to us only through the unflattering comments of Greek and Roman authors.

Ancient Etruscans

Etruria, an area that roughly coincided with the territory of the modern Italian province of Tuscany, was rich in iron and copper ores.

Chimera from Arezzo. Bronze statue of the 5th century. BC e.

Its coast abounded with natural harbors. So the Etruscans were good navigators and mastered the art of processing.

The basis of their wealth was the maritime trade in ingots, bronze and other goods along the entire coast of Italy and the South.

Around 800 BC e., when Rome was still a cluster of miserable huts clinging to the top of a hill, they already lived in cities.

But Etruscan traders faced fierce competition from the Greeks and Phoenicians.

Around 600 BC. e. The Greeks founded the trading colony of Massilia (modern) in southern France. With this stronghold, they were able to take control of an important trade route that led along the Rhone River to Central Europe.

The source of the wealth of the Etruscans was development; in particular, they owned the largest deposits of copper and iron in the entire Mediterranean. Etruscan artisans made wonderful works of art out of metal, such as this bronze statue of the Chimera, a monster with a lion's head and a snake instead of a tail.

To protect their interests, the Etruscans entered into an alliance with Carthage. The Etruscans owned all the advanced technologies of their time; they built roads, bridges and canals.

From the Greeks they borrowed the alphabet, painted pottery and temple architecture.

In the VI century. BC e. the possessions of the Etruscans expanded north and south of their original region of Etruria. According to Roman authors, at that time 12 large Etruscan cities formed a political union - the Etruscan League.

Founding of the Roman Republic

For some time the Etruscan kings ruled in Rome. The last king was overthrown by a group of Roman aristocrats in 510 BC. e. - this date is considered the moment of the emergence of the Roman Republic (the city of Rome itself was founded in 753 BC).

Since that time, the Romans began to gradually take away power from the Etruscans. At the beginning of the III century. BC e. the Etruscans disappeared from the historical scene; they were swallowed up by Rome's steadily expanding sphere of political influence.

The Romans adopted many ideas from the Etruscans in the field of culture and art, construction, metalworking and military affairs.

Etruria was glorified by skillful artists and artisans, especially since militarily the Etruscans could not compete with the Romans.

Etruscan cities of the dead

The Etruscans buried the dead in spacious necropolises that resembled cities in appearance. In the south of Etruria, they carved tombs from soft tuff rocks and decorated them inside as housing.

Often statues were placed in the tombs, depicting the deceased husband and his wife, sitting sprawled on a bench, as if during a feast.

The ancestral home of the Etruscans occupied part of modern Tuscany. They grew rich through the maritime trade in metal ores and, with the help of wealth, expanded their influence in the northern part of Italy.

Other tombs were decorated with frescoes, also depicting feasts, the participants of which were entertained by musicians and dancers.

Etruscan art

A significant part of the tombs was looted by thieves, but archaeologists managed to find many untouched tombs.

As a rule, they contained many Greek vases, as well as chariots, items made of gold, ivory and amber, testifying to the wealth of the Etruscan aristocrats buried there.

Main dates

The Etruscans, as one of the most highly developed civilizations of antiquity, plays an important role in history. The following are the main dates of the Etruscan civilization.

Years BC	Event
900	In northern Italy, the Villanova culture arises, whose representatives used iron.
800	Etruscan ships sail along the western coast of Italy.
700	The Etruscans begin to use the alphabet.
616	The Etruscan Lucius Tarquinius Priscus becomes king of Rome.
600	Twelve Etruscan cities are united in the Etruscan League.
550	The Etruscans take possession of the river valley. By north of Etruria and build cities there.
539	The combined Etruscan-Carthaginian army in a naval battle breaks the Greek fleet and drives the Greeks out of Corsica, which is taken over by the Etruscans. Greek colonization of the Western Mediterranean is suspended.
525	The Etruscans unsuccessfully attack the Greek city of Kuma (southern Italy).
525	The Etruscans found settlements in Campania (southern Italy).
510	The Romans expel Tarquinius II the Proud, the last Etruscan king of Rome.
504	The Etruscans are defeated in the battle of Aricia (southern Italy).
423	The Samnites take the city of Capua in Campania from the Etruscans.
405-396	The Romans, after a 10-year war, capture the city of Veii.
400	Gauls (Celtic tribe) cross, invade northern Italy and settle in the river valley. By. The power of the Etruscans over the region is weakening.
296-295	After a series of defeats, the Etruscan cities make peace with Rome.
285-280	The Romans put down a series of uprisings in the Etruscan cities.

Now you know who the Etruscans are, and why historians are so interested in their ancient civilization.