Etruscan alphabet
The Etruscan alphabet was the alphabet used by the Etruscans, an ancient civilization of central and northern Italy, to write their language, from about 700 BC to sometime around 100 AD.
The Etruscan alphabet derives from the Euboean alphabet used in the Greek colonies in southern Italy which belonged to the "western" ("red") type, the so-called Western Greek alphabet. Several Old Italic scripts, including the Latin alphabet, derived from it (or simultaneously with it).
Origins[]
The Etruscan alphabet originated as an adaptation of the Euboean alphabet used by the Euboean Greeks in their first colonies in Italy, the island of Pithekoussai and the city of Cumae in Campania.[1] In the alphabets of the West, X had the sound value [ks], Ψ stood for [kʰ]; in Etruscan: X = [s], Ψ = [kʰ] or [kχ] (Rix 202–209).
The earliest known Etruscan abecedarium is inscribed on the frame of a wax tablet in ivory, measuring 8.8×5 cm, found at Marsiliana (near Grosseto, Tuscany). It dates from about 700 BC, and lists 26 letters corresponding to contemporary forms of the Greek alphabet, including digamma, san and qoppa, but not omega which had still not been added at the time.
Letters[]
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| Sound in Ancient Greek (Western) | [a] | [b] | [g] | [d] | [e] | [w] | [dz]~[z]~[zd] | [h] | [tʰ] | [i] | [k] | [l] | [m] | [n] | [ks] | [o] | [p] | [ts]~[s] | [k] | [r] | [s] | [t] | [u] | [ks] | [pʰ] | [kʰ] | |
| Unicode Old Italic block |
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