Understanding Etruscan: A New Step

Wolodymyr H. Kozyrski^{1, *}, Alexander V. Malovichko²

¹The International Physical Encyclopedia Bureau, Mathematical Modeling Department of The Bogolubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kiev, Ukraine

²Physics Laboratory, The Lyceum at the National Technical University "KPI", Kiev, Ukraine

Abstract

Here we give a scetch of two our new results in the field of Etruscan inscriptions interpretation. As all the attempts to understand Etruscan inscriptions have no success, we have tried to use Caucasian languages as the the source of lexic material to help in reading inscriptions mentioned. We present some evident lexical parallels in East Caucasian and Etruscan vocabularies. We hope that our comparative reading given here show the possible way to clarify the old Etruscan problem.

Keywords

Archeolinguistics, Basic Vocabulary, Comparativistics, East Caucasian, Etruscan

Received: July 6, 2015
Accepted: July 11, 2015
Published online: August 17, 2015

@ 2015 The Authors. Published by American Institute of Science. This Open Access article is under the CC BY-NC license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

1. Introduction

We have constructed archeolinguistics [1] as a certain kind of build on the ground of modern comparativistics, archeology, paleoanthropology, and paleogenetics with paleobotany and paleozoology elements. We have thought of it not to be far-fetched analytic playing by related words within various languages but with the aim to create scientifically grounded approach to possible restauration of human culture pre-history that, unfortunately, left quite few material artifacts.

However, languages can help us having created basic vocabulary at prehistoric times that being developed saved rich prehistoric information up to our time [2].

Therefore, comparative investigations of both basic and cultural prehistoric vocabularies is a topical linguistic problem. As for the prospect, one can hope to get rid off certain gaps in our knowledge about sequence of human cultural achievements through time, their development and propagation among tribes and peoples.

The subject of paper: Here we present two results of our several years work in this field. We mean possible getting read out of two Etruscan text fragments, namely TLE 2 and 570.

The scope of the subject is restricted with the comparison of some Etruscan inscriptions and their lexic parallels in East Caucasian we have found out.

The main goal of the paper is to share our new nontrivial results with interested experts to further study the cultural impact of Etruscans upon descendants.

The novelty of research work lies in its grounds, namely, using East Caucasian vocabulary to understand Etruscan inscriptions. Let us note, these are not epitaphs.

The paper is organized as follows. At first, we give a short sketch of some scientific circumstances stimulating us to carry out this research. Then, we present our analytic prolegomena and lexical comparison of some Etruscan inscriptions with evident East Caucasian and Kartvelian correspondences and discuss the results obtained, ending the paper by Conclusion and References.

Research Significance. The idea to revive human culture prehistory through lexical analysis of human achievements we develop gradually is supported by Trombetti statement: "Language... is the most rich and reliable archive of humanity". Here we expose a part of our experience in this field related to old Etruscan problem. Result we show in what follows is a new step to understand Etruscan that remains up to now a challenging mystery. We believe this step will be the beginning of the wide path to the problem solution.

2. Historical Background

Etruscan culture was the predecessor and mostly the ground of ancient Rome culture. However, despite over half thousand years period when Etruscans and ancient Romans were neighbors and even existence of many bilinguae, Etruscan has remain a mystery today even to professional scholars.

Throughout the twentieth century, the Etruscans were all "on hearing". Most frequently one called them mysterious. How to explain such a steady "pop"? During intense archaeological excavations continuing to the present time, the public in Italy and throughout Europe in general was struck by the amount of archaeological material found in Tuscany (ancient Etruria), and, of course, surprised by the unusual form of ancient Etruscan art. For example, this is the Capitoline she-wolf, which has become a symbol of ancient Rome having been created by Etruscan artists. This is Etruscan chimera and other unusual art works of the Etruscans.

The mystery of the Etruscans may be explained rather by the obscurity of their language, the majority of inscriptions in which is unclear even now, at the beginning of the third millennium. Why, in the age of high-speed computers one can not even come close to solving this problem?

Italian etruscologists, of course, were the first who got acquainted with the archaeological materials, including those with inscriptions found. Therefore, they were the first who started to decrypt, and then interpret these inscriptions.

At first it was considered certain that the Etruscans spoke some incomprehensible, but certainly Indo-European language. So, the Herodotus story on Etruscans / Tyrsenoi / resettlement from Asia Minor was sometimes perceived as author fantasy or a fairy tale.

The best linguists have tried to read Etruscan inscriptions. However, 98% of them were Indo-Europeists by their education. And the main results have not been achieved by linguists and etymologists. These were those involved in the interpretation of numerous epitaphs written in the framework of the same form. As a result of combinatorial method, we now know the values of over 150 Etruscan words.

Therefore, the result of Indo-Europeists work is insignificant one, especially when you consider that the work has started more than two hundred years ago. To develop etruscology, it is therefore natural to pay attention to non-Indo-European languages whose speakers live in the East. And what about those Indo-Europeists who spent decades interpreting Etruscan texts? Retrain into other languages? Or, armed with unfamiliar language vocabulary, to continue superficial study? N. J. Marr meant just this, when speaking of scientists who studied the Etruscan language that they explore the unknown with the help of an unknown, because the languages in which they studied Etruscan were as unknown to them as the Etruscan itself.

In the mid-twentieth century, as a result of study by such methods, the leader of the Italian etruscology Massimo Pallottino suggested that the Etruscan language is entirely a product of the Italian linguistic development. This statement can only be understand as follows: the Etruscan language originated and developed in Italy having nothing in common with any language of the world. And if we mention also Larissa Bonfante opinion that "the Etruscan language is actually completely isolated language", the question arises: how can the linguists say such things about any language? Such statements may be the result of a complete lack of information about the situation in linguistics, or a consequence of the idea that etruscology is a purely Italian science and nobody has the right to be interested and engaged in it. Therefore, what Italian scholars have express, will be the ultimate truth.

The reluctance to turn to languages of other language families whose speakers live mostly in Asia, is dictated perhaps by the fact that many scholars, even not historians, hardly imagine that glottogonic areal of modern European languages could be only Asia. Either East, or West, but Asia exclusively. Therefore, one saying that the ancestors of the Italians lived in Asia, will find a complete misunderstanding of these professionals. And often resistance.

It is worth recalling an episode from the N. J. Marr life. When he, the author of "Japhetic theory" according to which the Caucasus in ancient times was the center of a large civilization, during a trip to Western Europe, wanted to see the site in Tuscany, his entry into Italy was simply disallowed. And we do not think that it was a matter of politicians. Some scholars did this failure who did not want to listen to a colleague who could advise them to seek the origins of the Etruscan civilization in the Caucasus.

Over ten years, we have explored the language appeared in Africa about 2 million years ago. It was the first human language called now the language of Niger Congo phylum. Languages that nowadays are called Nostratic became the descendants of this language. If you ask where these languages arose in Africa, then we answer: the first Nostratic languages, separate from Niger Congo, were Cushitic and Chadic languages whose speakers live in our time in the same places where their ancestors lived. The separation of these languages from other Nostratic can be explained by a small distance between these languages and the languages of the Niger-Congo.

In the early twentieth century, Danish linguist Holger Pedersen lay out the ground of the Nostratic theory whose basic lexical material was collected by a genial linguist (originally from Kiev) Vladislav Illich-Svitych.

Simultaneously with Illich-Svitych study, Joseph Greenberg book "The Languages of Africa" appeared that justified the emergence of Niger-Congo phylum. We emphasize that this phylum appeared much earlier than other language macrofamilies.

3. Analytic Prolegomena

As for our present research, it is still too early to announce the final conclusions. The reason is that the vocabulary and grammar of the Etruscan language is close to Hurro-Urartian vocabulary and grammar. In addition, we found in this language Nostratic elements, in particular, those of the Altai language. Therefore, we first present the attempt to interpret the passage of a small Etruscan text, using the vocabulary of the East Caucasian languages.

In Kiev journal "Origin of language and culture: ancient history of mankind", we published the paper [3] containing ethnolinguistic model explaining very confused "biography" of Etruscan language and its carriers. For example, we interpreted a small fragment of the text written on a tile from Capua.

Last 40 years, an interest to this language rather decreased, than revived. However, in the last some years due to scholars who saw for a long time in the name "Etruscan" direct indication that Etruscans are Russians, an interest to this unclear and original language, becomes considerable.

The history of Etruscan inscriptions interpretation shows that research success depends on correct technique competently applied last 30 years only. This is, first of all, the comparing of basic vocabularies of different languages that became possible after Morris Swadesh has created the grounds of lexicostatistics.

In the book "Indo-European language and Indo-Europeans" [4] Т. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov compared vocabularies arbitraryly. They considered that if one can find any similar words in studied languages, then it is sufficient proof of their relationship. However, as it was found out, to prove language relationship, one must compare certain vocabulary. Still in the sixties, it was named basic one. Morris Swadesh suggested 200- and 100-word lists of such vocabulary. However, the experience has shown that there were more useful shorter 30- and 35-word lists that really were practical [5].

While the experience of comparing Etruscan vocabulary with vocabularies of several tens other languages was collected (including such exotic languages as Kabyle, Touareg, Sanscrit et al.), Italian etruscologists, using large number of epitaphs found in Toscana, interpreted (not decoded) these inscriptions and, for today, one can tell only about authentical sense of approximately 150 words.

Such modest success has been reached by means of a combinatory method allowing to learn the sense only thanks to huge number (over 12 thousand inscriptions) of epitaphs with data about the died written in the same form. The majority of etrucologists still hope that Etruscan language, eventually, is one of archaic but just Indo-European language.

After perusal of the inscription found on Lemnos [6], it became obvious that Etruscan language relates to Asia Minor. Here, according to the majority of historians and linguists, Indo-European Hittite language "dominated". However, Hittite language, perhaps, not earlier than the end of the ІІІrd millenium B.C. "was imposed" on local Khatti language having absolutely different nature. Unless one can invent myths that in Asia Minor there was the reverse imposing of languages, i.e. Khatti was imposed on Hittite one and carriers of the last founded in the VIIIth millenium B.C. the settlements Chatal-Hjujuk and Hadzhilar, then it would be worth to pay attention to basic vocabulary of Etruscan language that is likely close to vocabulary not only Khatti language, but also to East Caucasian (i. e., Nakh-Dagestan and Hurro-Urartian) languages and South Caucasian (i.e., Kartvelian) languages.

W. Tomsen as far back as 100 years ago has paid attention to the Caucasian languages [7]. Later Georgian researcher Rismag Gordeziani has compared Etruscan vocabulary with Kartvelian one [8]. Only in the late seventies I. M. Diakonov suggested the following idea: "The grammar of Etruscan language is already clear in many respects and shows strong and doubtless typological analogies with Hurritic one. Unfortunately, no material genetic relations were find out" ("Classic languages of Asia Minor", p. 105) [9].

In the eighties, V. V. Ivanov, developing W. Tomsen's ideas, in the paper [10] suggested to use North Caucasian languages to decode Etruscan texts. However, in 1988 in the article [11] he declined "Khatti and other North Caucasian languages" and considered that "Etruscan was a result of one of Hurritic dialects".

However, even the author of this pioneer article has not dared to interpret any Etruscan text using vocabulary of the East Caucasian languages. The reason of its vacillation, perhaps, lies in that V. V. Ivanov, most likely, didn’t know original Etruscan texts. One must notice that the texts are little-known because they were published in Italy a long time ago. One can see them, for example, in the collection Testimonia Linguae Etruscae (TLЕ) published by Massimo Pallottino in 1954 and in 1968 [12].

Therefore, in our opinion, Hurritic (as one of East Caucasian), apparently, can clear a situation concerned with an origin of Etruscan language and help to read at least some small inscriptions whose sense is while undeterminable by means of the basic studying method for Etruscan vocabulary, namely, combinatory one.

We do not know, whether someone did use hypotheses of the mentioned authors. We also do not know, whether V. V. Ivanov himself interpreted any Etruscan inscription. Therefore, V. V. Ivanov article in the collection "The Ancient East: An Ethnocultural Contacts" was the first and last message on comparison of Etruscan vocabulary with that of East Caucasian languages, not speaking about any interpretations of texts.

As to the origin of Etruscan ethnos and its language, we believe that this ethnos has moved to Apennines from the East. As a rule, scholars use such "exact" definition of the notion "East" having nothing to tell more than they already told. Others, mainly West European and American researchers, under the notion "East" understand all that lies to the east of the central Europe. Look, e.g., what composers of Etymological dictionary of English language (Ed. R.Barnhart) write explaining an origin of a word from "east languages". To be more exactly, we consider that Etruscan came to Apennines from a fertile half-moon in Northern Mesopotamia, and a part of them came earlier from Southern Caucasus [13].

To interprete historical events competently, one must know that Southern Caucasus, more exactly, the right bank of the Kura river in East Georgia and extreme western part of Azerbaijan were a center of earlier agricultural archaeological culture with all its attributes. At the territory of the culture called the Shulaveri-Shomutepe culture, already in the VIth millenium B. C. 11 cultivars of wheat and some cultivars of others grain and grain-bean cultures grew up.

Later, in the same territory in the middle of the IVth millenium B. C. the outstanding archaeological culture of early bronze occurred called the Kuro-Araks culture [14]. The black-glossy ceramics was one of characteristic signs of this culture. After the opinion presented in [14], this culture originated as the result of common habitation in the same region of two language families carriers, namely, East Caucasian and Kartvelian. In our opinion, this circle of farmers and cattlemen tribes includes also those who later gone to the West [15].

If one will confirm Hurritic, i.e., East Caucasian, nature of Etruscan language, then, apparently, a number of questions will arise. One of them lies in a phenomenon of high-level Etruscan knowledge in various areas of human activity. One must answer, at last, a main Etruscology point: where have Etruscans got this knowledge and who was the ethnic ancestor of them?

As we noted above, our assumptions result from ideas developed not by Italian and other western etruscologists but the former Soviet linguists never engaged specially in Etruscan language. One must notice that Italian researchers of Etruscan language still consider it to be Indo-European one. Those who, since G. B. Dzhaukian, consider Hurro-Urartian languages as Indo-European ones have the same opinion too [16].

Whether one can get rid off such opinion disorder? The steady impression has arosen that one has no methods to determine genetic relations of languages and researchers refer till now to not entirely established facts instead of checking up relations of any two languages by reliable methods.

Study of Etruscan vocabulary began only when a possibility occured to read numerous short inscriptions in historical Etruria, modern Toscana. At the same time more or less long inscriptions are not readable at all. Often it is even not clear what an inscription properly means because the language is absolutely unclear.

How can one compare Etruscan vocabulary with other language vocabulary if the number of determined Etruscan words hardly exceeds 150 units?

To all appearance, if one considers the main problem of Etruscan linguistics (not Etruscan archaeology!) to decode or to interpret Etruscan texts and to understand the role of Etruscans for European civilization (not only providing archeological dig), then the above mentioned opinion that Etruscan language is "without doubt" Indo-European one "quickly appeared" at Apennines can delay the problem solving even more.

Perhaps, one can explain today state of the Etruscan language problem as follows: all who concerned this problem, but rare exception, were indo-europeists not allowing "non-Indo-European" point of view. Therefore, the work of researchers considering Etruscans to be eastern newcomers are often ignored up to now.

4. Discovered Evident Parallels Comparison and Discussion

As we already noted, nobody used Ivanov’s idea, neither he himself, nor someone another. We did such an attempt in [3,17]. We looked for Etruscan inscriptions with words reminding Hurritic ones. Certainly, one must know existing Etruscan vocabulary too.

We found suitable fragment on a tile from Capua. However, before interpreting the fragment found, we give results of Etruscan and East Caucasian basic vocabularies comparison. Let us remind that East Caucasian languages involve Nakh-Dagestan and dead Hurro-Urartian languages [9,18].

What Etruscan basic vocabulary can we use in lexicostatistical studies knowing sense of only certain 150 Etruscan words? The used vocabulary is a part of 100-word list by Morris Swadesh. However, first we use 35-word list of "the steadiest words" suggested by S. E. Yakhontov. His list is a part of 100-word M. Swadesh list [5]. We give here only already known Etruscan words included in the list. We take this Etruscan vocabulary from the Dictionary in the book "Etruscan language. An introduction" [19] by Giuliano and Larissa Bonfante:

1)  al – ‘ to give ’, ‘ to bring ’, ‘ to endow ’;

2)  tul – ‘ a stone ’;

3)  mi, me, mini – ‘I’, ‘me’;

4)  lein – ‘ to die ’;

5)  thu – ‘ one ’ (this Etruscan word is written down more correctly as θu).

To etymologize entries of the list, let us consider their East Caucasian parallels.

1)  Etr. al – ‘to give’, Nakh. al-a – ‘to give’, Hurro-Urartian (HU) ar – ‘to give’ [18].

2)  Etr. tul – ‘stone’ (the translation given in [19] only). Apparently, this Etruscan word is close to a word tular – ‘border’, after the name of hoarstones. The word has parallels in E C languages: in Chechen language ‘stone’ – t’o, t’ulg. Nostratic preform for ‘stone’ – *kiwi is close to Kart *kwa, Semito-Hamitic (S-H) *kw and Ural (Ur) *kiwe [20]. However, common Altaic Starostin’s reconstruction [5] for ‘stone’ – *tiola is close to Kart word t’ali – ‘flint’. Perhaps, no matter how it sounds fantastically, an English word tool – ‘the working tool’, ‘beard (stone)’ reflects the archaic time when a stone was a working tool. In Georgian ‘trim’ is tla.

3)  Etr. pronouns mi, me, mini – ‘I’, ‘me’ are often considered to be Indo-European by origin. However, such pronoun exists in all Nostratic languages (Alt, Kart, and Ur). At the same time, in E C languages the similar pronoun looks like: in Nah. – so, suo, in H – iste, and in U – jese.

4)  Etr. lein – ‘to die’. Still Ivanov wrote [8] about Chechen parallels: v-ella – ‘he has died’, d-ella – ‘dead’, v-ellarg – ‘the dead person’. However, he has not noticed Chechen word len – ‘deadly’, ‘mortal’. There are interesting Scandinavian parallels to the word – ‘convivial hall of the killed heroes’ is called Valhalla where the halla, apparently, is close to Nakh. word γаlа meaning ‘the inhabited house-fortress’.

5)  Etr. thu, according to some etruscologists, means ‘one’ [19]. This numeral has no obvious parallels in Caucasian languages. However, in Nakh languages there are some words begining with an element du (dux) which, in our opinion, is close to the sense ‘one’, ‘unit’, ‘first’, if to know word meanings whose structure they are included into: Chechen duxxarnig – ‘first-born’, duxxarlera – ‘primary’, ‘primitive’, Ingush. duxa-la – ‘unequivocal’ etc. In the same way, as well as Chechen. duxarg (дуьхьарг) – ‘one-year heifer ’ – terms ‘two-years heifer’ – šin-ara from Nakh ši – ‘two-’ and ‘three-years heifer’ – qaarg (кхаарг) from qo (кхоъ) – ‘three’ are formed. Obviously, in these terms the first syllable means corresponding numeral. The antiquity of these terms is illustrated by Hurritic terms [21] ‘two-year’ – šin-ar-bu, ‘ three-year ’ – kig-ar-bu. Unfortunately, we do not know the term meaning ‘one-year(-old) ’.

There is one more Etruscan demonstrative pronoun (in 35-word list) close to Kart eca, ica, ca – ‘this’, in Georgian – eg, ega, es. Therefore, at least five words of Etruscan and the East Caucasian languages in 35-word list have similar roots. That gives 14,3 % exceeding casual coincidence threshold. However, this figure does not tell enough. Because coincidence percent should exceed 10 % within 100-word M. Swadesh list [5]. I.e., there should be 10 words coinciding in their form to confirm confidently that Etruscan language belongs to the East Caucasian language family.

Therefore, we try to interpret the fragment of Etruscan text from TLE-2 (18, 19, 20) [12,17]: iśvei tule ilucve apirase laruns ilucu hu χ śanti huri alχu esχaθ sanulis mulu rizile zizriin puiian acasri tinian tule leθamsul ilucu perpri śanti arvus ta aius nunθeri.

The key to interpret this fragment are two words zizriin and puiian standing next to one other. As one knows, Etruscan puia means ‘wife’. We doesn’t know the mean of the suffix ii and ending n. We suggest to use the fact that in Nakh languages the suffix ii denotes a possessive adjective [22]. In Hurritic, the word zizzi means ‘female breast’, ‘mammilla’ [18]. In the text, the word has the suffix r that is a suffix of plural not only in Etruscan but also in various Caucasian languages. Therefore, we translate these two words with identical suffixes as ‘(belonging, concerning, devoted) to mammillas of the wife’. One must add that many languages contain the root of Etruscan word zizzi with the same sense and form.

Ÿ rizile – we translate as ‘the first (or repeated) outflow’ considering the root of the word – zi to be close to U с’i – ‘ leak ’ or to H word şi-u-le – ‘will pour down’ [9]. One says, apparently, about the lactation beginning because the words describing close in the sense objects: ‘the wife’, ‘mammillas’, ‘to flow’.

Ÿ mulu – ‘to devote’, ‘to endow’. The most often meeting in texts form of the word is mulvanice, muluvanice. This word also has H-U analogies: urpu – ‘to endow’. It is surprising that, in our opinion, Nostratic Illich-Svitych Dictionary (I-S) [20] contains this word with a little other sense. In I-S Dictionary it is № 126 ʔarba – ‘to conjure’ (the Dictionary contains the Altai, Ural and Semito-Hamitic forms). This form is widely shared in all Turkic world (and not only in Turkic) in the name of the most honoured holiday q’urban bairam. We consider that sounds r and b in the west were softened and have passed, accordingly, into l and v.

Ÿ tul – ‘stone’. Apparently, tule means something stony, ‘altar’ or ‘stele’. It proves to be true by word-combination tinian tule which we translate as ‘altar devoted to Tin’ (-an is a suffix of an adjective and Tin is Supreme deity name of Etruscans).

Ÿ acasri. The root acas is given in different sources almost equally – ‘to do’, ‘to offer’. Therefore, we translate this word together with the subsequent as "becoming (or, taking place) at Tin altar". In Georgian, aketeb ‘you do’.

Ÿ nunθeri. Comparing this word to the root of Urartic word nun – ‘to come’, one can assume that the root of the word already in Etruscan language has got some different sense: ‘to endow’ or ‘to make (certain gift ritual)’ [25]. It is very probable that nunθeri means ritual arrival to an altar with (traditional) gifts. In H language un is ‘to come’ [23].

Ÿ ilucu. We translate it as ‘has abluted/washed’ grounding on similarity with Nakh word ‘to wash’ – d-ila, i-ila. Perhaps, ilucve is a verbal name in a genitive case [22] (for H language a suffix of a genitive case is -ve [21]).

Ÿ perpri. The sense of this Etruscan word, in our opinion, completely corresponds to similar Latin word puerpera – ‘woman recently confined’. About puer Ivanov wrote [11] "…Lat. puer – ‘boy’, ‘child’ (old loan from Etruscan or related language)". For some reason he did not compare this word with meeting in Etruscan texts word perpri and with Nakh word ber – ‘child’.

Ÿ śanti. To determine the sense of this word, we used Nemirovsky’s idea [24] that śanti is ‘water’. However, in our opinion, ‘water’ is śan and -ti is ‘in’. I.е., śanti means ‘in the water’. Perhaps, śan is the name of a special water, ‘sacred’, ‘ritual’ or the water from a sacred source. And, may be, so this root san has appeared in Latin with the sense ‘holy’, ‘sacred’. The word following śanti, namely, arvus should determine, apparently, in what water source the woman recently confined has been abluted: in a font or in pool source.

Ÿ The considered words lie in the second part of the fragment (beginning with mulu) whose translation is published in [17]. In the first part of the fragment there are words which could be noticed by experts in H-U languages. Unfortunately, they are not interested in Etruscan language and, the main thing, in Etruscan inscriptions. Experts in Etruscan language are not interested in Hurro-Urartian languages.

huri. We consider that one can compare it with H xurrə – ‘morning’, ‘east’. Chechen ‘morning’ – Iуьйре (Rus. transcription) [17, 18]. In the considered text, huri, may be, means ‘in the morning’ (i.e., answered the question when?). Then one can translate śanti huri as ‘in the water in the morning’, or ‘in morning water’.

Ÿ esxaθ. H-U dictionary contains similar word: H aşx – ‘lift’, ‘endow’ [18]. We explain various senses of this H word by the fact that altars, may be, were erected on raised places (as, for example, in the Caucasus. At hills and tops of mountains one can see till now stone constructions on whose top flat part one sacrifices animals), or altars themselves were high stone constructions.

Ÿ sanulis. We consider this word to consist of two parts: the first one is san (we already considered the sense of this word). The root of the second part ul can be compared with U word u/ol ‘to go’. Let compare this word with a word in H in the phrase [9]: "aše ešia şiule" – ‘when from the sky the water will pour down’ (here şi, apparently, is ‘water’) [18]. In Etruscan text san-ulis, may be, meant the noun ‘current, flowing water’ in a genitive case – ‘of flowing water’.

It is interesting to compare described ritual of abluting with water to Hittitic ritual of disposal of sins of the last year by abluting with ritually pure water (šehelliyaš watar) that happened in ‘the house for abluting’ [27]. This ritual was made by King and Queen during spring holiday of new year beginning. One of religious rites consisted in sacrificing in front of the stone stele of Thunder-storm God that began at a dawn of the second day of new year.

Abluting by ritually pure water was a basis of described ritual. This ritual, apparently, had H roots because Hettitic term ‘ritually pure water’ – šehelliyaš watar contains H root seγ-(a)lə ‘(ritually) pure’, šêγə, siγə ‘pure (about water)’; U šêxa is the same [18]. One can assume that in the subsequent parts of this large inscription there are words whose roots contain this H-U root. These are śixaciiul and śixaiei.

Ÿ alxu. May be, this word is the verb ‘give’ in the past tense. Here instead of usual Etruscan verb suffix of past tense -cu one had used -xu as well as in some other verbs: cerixu, zixu, etc. In Nakh. languages ‘give’ – ala, in H-U – ar [16].

Ÿ For the remained three words iśvei, apirase, and hux we did not found the Ibero-Caucasian parallels. Therefore, in the translation of considered fragment given below we propose our own interpretation of these words.

Ÿ Besides, we remind that verbal noun ilucve which we translate as ‘ablution’ is in genitive case.

Here we give our translation of this fragment published in [17]: "Promised altar abluting ritual is executed (i.e., ritual promised to Gods, apparently, by the husband of the woman recently confined): Laruns (apparently, the first magician) has abluted the body (of the Supreme Etruscan God Tin in the form of a stone or stele figure) in morning water, has made a sacrifice to flowing water (perhaps, this flowing from the ground water of a sacred source was ritually pure water to which the ritual in which water is the whole show was devoted), devoted to the first outflow (from) mammillas of the wife (i.e. to lactation beginning), taking place in front of Tin altar. Letamsul (i.e., the second magician) has abluted the woman recently confined in pool water (of this source) and has made this gift to God".

The second studied text is the initial lines of an inscription on stone stele from Perugia (TLE-570). Thanks to Italian archeologist from Perugia F. Roncalli that corrected inscription text, the first word is eurat [26] instead of eulat as it is written in the book [12]. This word and the most part of words of the first fragment (especially, words of initial lines), very much remind well-known to experts Hurro-Urartian (H-U) words [21].

Initial lines of the inscription are eurat · tanna · la · rezulamevaxrlautn · velθinaś · eśtla · afunaś · slele θ · caru · tezan … The word еurat root eur is similar to U eur-i ‘mister’, ‘lord’, ‘King’ and to H ‘owner’ [21]. So far it is difficult to say what does ending -at mean. Perhaps, it is case inflexion we don’t know. Proceeding from the sense of inscription beginning, we translate this word as ‘by the mister’, (‘by the lord’). In our opinion, this word sounds in unclear refrains of the Georgian songs: iwri (ewri) Arale – Lord Arale! Arale is the name of H-U pantheon deity.

The word tanna root is similar to H-U verb tan in the sense ‘to create’, ‘to do’, ‘to make’, and tanu – ‘to construct’ [21,22]. We consider these verbs to be close to multivalued Nakh verb dan ‘to make’, ‘to carry out’, ‘to create’, ‘to do’, ‘to execute’ etc. May be, -na is the suffix of a verbal name. A suffix of verbs in Persian language is -dan. The word la is similar to Nakh laa – ‘to want’, ‘to wish’; laar, laam – ‘desire’ and to ancient Georgian word lamoba ‘desire’.

The long word rezulamevaxrlautn, in our opinion, consists of four parts: rezul, ame, vaχr, lautn. The word ame is known for a long time. In compound words it usually stands after the basic verb, i.e., plays a link-verb role. The verb rezul is similar to Nakh verb reza ‘to agree’. Specific in pronunciation word vaχr reminds H-U words fahr-umme, wahr-umme, i.e., ‘kindness’, ‘friendship’, and faхr, i.e., ‘to be good’ [21].

Etruscan word lautn is known and has various translations: ‘family’, ‘sort’, ‘libertine’ [27]. One can compare it to common Caucasian word lay, lag, laγ – ‘slave’, ‘man’. Together with initial words, we translate this compound word as "the mister carried out the desire, (he) has agreed (for) kind libertine (or family)…".

Further, two personal names stand in genitive case with word eśtla between them. We found no parallel to it in Caucasian languages. May be, it is close to Nakh adverb and pronoun ištta – ‘so’, ‘also’, ‘such’. One must notice that Latin words iste and ista are close in form and have sense ‘such’.

We translate words sleleθ caru as "has got (has achieved, has obtained) the inheritance". We consider it would not be exaggeration to compare sleleθ to Nakh šeret ‘the inheritance’ (the legal term).

In Nakh languages the verb karo means ‘to get’ (‘to obtain’), ‘to acquire’ (‘to find’, ‘to look for’); in U karu – ‘to win’, ‘to overcome’ [22]. The word tezan is translated as ‘possession’ [27].

Therefore, we give the following translation of initial phrase: "the mister carried out the desire, (he) has agreed to get/transfer inheritance possession (for) kind/honest Veltina family/kin to certain Afuna". Or else: "the mister has wished to transfer inheritance possession (from) honest Veltina kin to certain Afuna…"

Further one can read the following: …fuśleri · tesnś · teiś · raśneś · ipa ama hen naper XII · velθinaθuraś araś · peraś ….

Inscription continuation helps to understand and translate three episodes: we translated the fragment "XII velθinaθuraś araś peraśc" in [17] as ‘XII young men and children of Veltina kin’. ‘Children’ in Nakh is beraš where -aš is Nakh plural suffix and the letter c in the end of a word is written instead of the union ‘and’ [18].

Velθinaθur is full name of the family, i.e., the name of Veltina kin. In our paper [13], we have written as Massimo Pallottino explained suffix θur mean.

We translate the word araś as ‘young men’ from Urartic language using [18] because in U arše is ‘young men, children’. Generally speaking, both ber and ar are Nostratic level words with the same sense [20]. We have considered the first one above translating perpri as the woman recently confined. The root per we translate as ‘child’.

As for the four words fuśleri · tesnś · teiś · raśneś, we translate the first one as ‘executing’ or ‘in pursuance of’. Therefore, using our previous paper [17], we give the following translation of these words: "executing laws of these Etruscan".

As we mentioned above, the word am has sense ‘to be’ and often represents itself as a link-verb.

Using this considerations, we have the translation of the fragment leaving without translation unknown words: "the mister wished to transfer to Afuna as kind ancestor of Veltina kin the possession as the inheritance for the winner, executing laws of these Etruscan ipa (have received?) ama (to be?) hen (all?) XII young men and children of Veltina kin…."

5. Conclusion

Having presented above the fragments of our Etruscan diving, we hope the path we have treaded out should lead to a wide gate into the new advanced research in the field of Etruscan studies.

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