Script

Transmission of the alphabet to and in Italy

In the 8^th century BC, the island of Pithekoussai (modern Ischia) off the coast of Campania was colonized by Greeks from Euboia. While it is not quite clear whether the settlement was a proper colony or just a trading post, it spawned the foundation of historically important Kyme around the middle of the 8^th century on mainland Italy. Pithekoussai itself seems to have lost importance at the turn of the century. The alphabet used by the colonists was that of the Euboic mother-cities Chalkis und Eretria – indeed, one of the oldest testimonies of early Greek writing is from Pithekoussai: the so-called Cup of Nestor, dated to the last quarter of the 8^th century. (Jeffery 1990: 235) The Etruscans would have been in contact with the Greek settlers from the beginning, and the acquisition of their script was not a long time coming: The oldest document of written Etruscan, a kotyle from Tarquinia (Ta 3.1), is dated to about 700 (Wallace 2008: 17).

As the oldest abecedarium on an ivory tablet from Marsiliana d’Albegna (about 650) shows, the Etruscans adopted the Greek alphabet, in its Eastern Greek "red" variety as used in Euboia, without any changes with regard to the different phonemic systems of the two languages. (For details see Jeffery 1990: 236 ff.) Only by and by do the documented abecedaria reflect a process of adaptation to writing practice. Etruscan had a plosive system consisting of two rows, written with the Greek characters for the unvoiced unaspirated (Pi, Tau, Kappa (/Gamma/Qoppa)) and unvoiced aspirated (Phi, Theta, Khi) rows. A phonetic realisation very much like the Greek is communis opinio among Etruscologists (see Wallace 2008: 30 f.). In any case, the obsolete characters for the mediae dropped out – all exept Gamma, which together with Kappa and Qoppa became part of a curious orthographic rule for writing allophones, and only later replaced both the other characters as the exclusive one for the velar stop. Due to the lack of /o/ in Etruscan, Omikron fell away. In the 6^th century, an additional sign was created for /f/, after a phase of writing the sound with a digraph <vh> oder <hv>, and added to the end of the row. As concerns the writing of sibilants, a certain confusion on the part of the Greeks (see Jeffery 1990: 25 ff., Swiggers 1996: 266 f.) appears to have been propagated to the Etruscans: The Etruscan language seems to have had – apart from a dental affricate written with Zeta – two sibilants /s/ and probably /ʃ/ which were written with Sigma and San – in the South Sigma for /s/, San for /ʃ/, the other way round in the North. In the Southern cities Caere und Veii, where a number of divergences from general Etruscan writing practice can be observed over the course of time, a Sigma with more than three strokes appears instead of San. Finally in Cortona, a monophthongised, possibly long /e/ was consistently written with the sign . As is customary in archaic Greek inscriptions, Etruscan inscriptions are generally sinistroverse, apart from a short phase around 600 in Caere and Veii. Unlike Greek practice, boustrophedon writing is rare. While word separation is consistently executed on Nestor's Cup, the archaic Etruscan texts often dispense with it, until it establishes itself in neo-Etruscan time (after 470). (For details see Wallace 2008: 17 ff.; a collection of Etruscan abecedaria in Pandolfini & Prosdocimi 1990: 19–94.)

As things present themselves to us now, the Etruscan script must have found its way to the peoples north of the river Po more than once, but not from the Etruscan settlements in Transpadania. Etruscan inscriptions in the very North are known from Adria (Ad) and Spina (Sp), which only became relevant as Etruscan settlements towards the end of the 6^th century, from the area around Mantova, which also yields inscriptions only from the 5^th century onwards (??), and from Feltre (Pa 4.1).

According to the theory of Prosdocimi, the first version of the Venetic script, attested securely only in one (*Es 120, dated to the beginning of the 6^th c. at the latest) and possibly in two more inscriptions, was based on a model from Northern Etruria, while a seperate tradition lies at the basis of the younger alphabet of Este. The archaic Venetic alphabet seems to have featured a rare form of Theta which is found in a handful of inscriptions from 6^th century Chiusi and Volsinii (Cl 2.8, Cl 2.6, Cl 2.5, Vs 1.23 and Vs 1.14, see Colonna 1972: 470). The younger Este alphabet is unusually well documented on a number of votive writing tablets from a sanctuary-cum-writing school and distinguished by syllabic punctuation, both of which phenomena, together with the actual content of the inscriptions, connect it with the 6^th century writing tradition of the Portonaccio sanctuary in Veii. The background of syllabic punctuation is debated (see silbenschreibung schon in kyme). Syllabic punctuation became the key feature of Venetic script, even though alphabet variants from other parts of the Venetic realm deviate from the Este alphabet, most prominently in the writing of the dental stops. Whether the Veneti still had access to the characters for mediae (as lettres mortes through Etruscan teaching) is hard to judge, but they did not use them to write their voiced stops. Instead, they employed the superfluous letters for the Etruscan aspirated row. While in the case of labials and velars, this transition happened smoothly (Pi = /p/, Phi = /b/; Kappa = /k/, Khi = /g/), the characters for the dentals were shifted around. While *Es 120 clearly demonstrates the use of Tau for /d/; the abovementioned Chiusi-style Theta must be expected to stand for /t/. In Este (and also in the sanctuaries of Làgole (Calalzo di Cadore) and Auronzo di Cadore), Zeta is employed to write /d/, while /t/ is written as a large St. Andrew's cross. The origin of this St. Andrew's cross is somewhat obscure: On the Este alphabet tablets, Tau and Theta (determined by theit position in the row) appear in very similar shapes, i.e. as full-size St. Andrew's crosses. The individual letters being written in rectangular frames, with the frame lines regularly being used as hastae, it may be expected that the entire frame around the St. Andrew's cross representing Theta is supposed to be part of the letter, forming a large, but otherwise inconspicuous ? – the fact that the Theta-cross is usually larger, while the Tau-cross does not touch the frame, corroborated this. It is generally assumed that Theta came to be reduced to only the cross through reinterpretation, and that consequentially, the St. Andrew's cross representing /t/ in the regular votive inscriptions is Theta. This fails to explain the shape of Tau on the tablets, and also the fact that the Lepontic alphabet, whose origin is supposed to be independent of the Eastern alphabets of Transpadania, also features the St. Andrew's cross as the standard letter for /t/. A third combination was used in Padua, where both Etruscan Tau and the St. Andrew's cross were in use for /d/, while /t/ is written with Theta in the form of a frame, angular or rounded, with a dot in the centre. Apart from the different shapes of Theta, the Padua system appears to be closer to the archaic Venetic one (note that the variety of Theta used in Padua was indeed the standard form in Chiusi; see table). St. Andrew's cross for /t/ is a novelty which may be due to interference from Este; Padua, after all, did not have a regulative sanctuary. p, l, u? Matters are complicated by the fact that Venetic features the Greek Omikron, which in the Venetic alphabet of Este is situated not in its ancestral place, but at the very end of the row, as evidenced by the votive tablet Es 23, the only one bearing a complete row (in addition to the usual consonant-only row). While Omikron is usually assumed to have been acquired directly from the Greek alphabet, probably through contact with Greeks settling in and south of the Po delta, Prosdocimi favours the theory that it was taken as a lettre morte from he Etruscan alphabet before its ultimate reduction. (For details see Prosdocimi 1988: 328-351.)

weiters die räter ohne silbenpunktierung, können sich das von den venetern wiederhergestellte plosivschreibungssystem wieder auf den bauch hauen, obwohl anscheinend reste davon da sind - welche venetische tradition? gemischt? beziehungen zu cadore oder nicht, und wenn ja, über welche route? welche rolle spielen die venetoiden inschriften im gebirge - zeugnis für alpentransit, oder chronologischer faktor? ist das alphabet von magrè eh einfach venetische schrift mit einem sonderzeichen? wieso schauen die sonderzeichen so unterschiedlich aus?

lepontisch dagegen seinerseits vom etruskischen, aber auch mit o, verweis aufs lexlep, ältestes dokument eigentlich von jenseits mit fraglicher stellung, archaisch-lepontisches zentrum an den südspitzen von lago maggiore und lago di como (comer arm), dann auch im tessin (s. uhlich), und sonst is aus der gegend zwischen dort und mantua, wo eigentlich die etrusker sitzen, recht viel undefinierbares zeugl.

und schließlich die camuner im oglio-tal oberhalb vom lago d'iseo, was mit denen verkehrt is, weiß keiner.

Nestor's Cup	725–700	←	A19 s
Kyme 2	700–675	→
Marsiliana d'Albegna (ivory tablet)	~650	←															addKsi1 s
Clusium (statistical)	7th–6th c.	←	A19 s
*Es 120	600–575	←	A19 s
Portonaccio (statistical)	6th c.	←																		?
Es 23 (votive plaque)	??	←										[]				[]
Padua
Cadore
Magrè		←
Sanzeno		←
Steinberg		←
Golasecca / Archaic Lepontic
Late Western
Piancogno (PC 10)	??	→																						?
Foppe di Nadro (alphabetaria)	??	←															addKsi2 s

Alphabets of Transpadana and the Alps as distinguished in TIR

Greek

Etruscan

North Italic

The archaic Venetic alphabet

Alphabet of Este

Alphabet of Padua

Alphabet of Cadore

Alphabet of Magrè

Alphabet of Sanzeno

Alphabet of Steinberg

Alphabet of Lugano

Camunic

Latin

Images

Map of inscriptions in the two Raetic alphabets.

Map of North Italic inscriptions.

Bibliography

AIF I	Carl Pauli, Altitalische Forschungen. Band 1: Die Inschriften nordetruskischen Alphabets, Leipzig: 1885.
Colonna 1972	Giovanni Colonna, "Clusium et Orvieto", Studi Etruschi 40 (1972), 470–471.
ET	Helmut Rix, Gerhard Meiser (Eds), Etruskische Texte. Editio Minor [= ScriptOralia 23-24; Reihe A, Altertumswissenschaftliche Reihe 6-7], Tübingen: Gunter Narr 1991. (2 volumes)
Gamper 2006	Peter Gamper, Die latènezeitliche Besiedlung am Ganglegg in Südtirol. Neue Forschungen zur Fritzens-Sanzeno-Kultur [= Internationale Archäologie 91], Rahden/Westfalen: Leidorf 2006.
Jeffery 1990	Lilian H. Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece. A study of the origin of the Greek alphabet and its development from the eighth to the fifth cernturies B.C., Oxford: 1990.
Lexicon Leponticum	David Stifter, Martin Braun, Michela Vignoli et al., Lexicon Leponticum. URL: http://www.univie.ac.at/lexlep/
Lunz 1981b	Reimo Lunz, Venosten und Räter. Ein historisch-archäologisches Problem [= Archäologisch-historische Forschungen in Tirol Beiheft 2], Calliano (Trento): 1981.
Mancini 1980	Alberto Mancini, "Le iscrizioni della Valcamonica. Parte 1: Status della questione. Criteri per un'edizione dei materiali", Studi Urbinati di storia, filosofia e letteratura Supplemento linguistico 2 (1990), 75–167.
Marchesini 2013	Simona Marchesini, "Descrizione epigrafica della lamina", in: Carlo de Simone, Simona Marchesini (Eds), La lamina di Demlfeld [= Mediterranea. Quaderni annuali dell'Istituto di Studi sulle Civiltà italiche e del Mediterraneo antico del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. Supplemento 8], Pisa – Roma: 2013, 45–53.
Marinetti 2004	Anna Marinetti, "Nuove iscrizioni retiche dall'area veronese", Studi Etruschi 70 (2004), 408–420.
Marinetti 2004b	Anna Marinetti, "Venetico: Rassegna di nuove iscrizioni (Este, Altino, Auronzo, S. Vito, Asolo). (Rivista di Epigraphia Italica)", Studi Etruschi 70 (2004), 389–408.

Main Chapter Pages:
Ancient sources I Archaeology in the Raetic area I Bibliography I Concordance I Index I Modern research on Raetic I Non-script notational systems I Raetic epigraphy I Raetica I Script I The Raetic language