Le lamine di Pyrgi: Le bilingue etrusco-fenicia e il problema delle origini etrusche.

• Author: Schmitz, Philip
• Position: Reviews of Books - Book Review

Le lamine di Pyrgi: Le bilingue etrusco-fenicia e il problema delle origini etrusche. By SERGIO BATTAGLINI. Rome: IL CALAMO, 2001. Pp. 86, [euro] 12.91 (paper).

This brief book is ultimately an essay in linguistic taxonomy. Its chief concern is to place the Etruscan language in relation to Caucasian and Indo-European by solving lexical problems in the longer and shorter Etruscan texts from Pyrgi. The second chapter, concerning the Etruscan texts, is the longest (30 pages). The third chapter, on the Phoenician text, assumes fairly close equivalencies between the two versions. A brief fourth chapter compares the longer and shorter Etruscan texts and reconsiders the identification of the deity to whom the dedication was made. The fifth chapter briefly summarizes the author's position on the classification of the Etruscan language. The bibliography (twenty-one items) is followed by hand drawings and transliterations of the three texts. Facing p. 10 is a color plate showing legible images of the three gold lamina.

The author's starting point is the theory of transitional languages advanced by the influential Italian linguist Alfredo Trombetti (1866-1929). According to Battaglini, Trombetti categorized Etruscan as a transitional language linking the Caucasian family with Indo-European (see Trombetti's La lingua etrusca: Grammatica, testi con commento, saggi di traduzione interlineare, lessico [Florence: Rinascimento del libro, 1928]). In his conclusions, Battaglini interprets the lexical evidence of the Etruscan texts from Pyrgi as indicating the Armeno-Transcaucasian area as the place where Etruscan developed (p. 68). More precise geographic detail is not provided, but I think the author has in mind the area comprising the modern nations of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, the Abkhazian Autonomous Republic, the Ajarian Autonomous Republic, and the South Ossetian Autonomous Region, an area of "enormous ... historical and cultural complexity" (H. J. de Blij and P. O. Muller, Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts [New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997], 149).

In support of his argument locating the earliest "Etruscans" in Transcaucasia, Battaglini advances two onomastic examples: Etruscan hesacanas, which he equates with biblical (Hebrew?) Ashkenaz; and Etruscan cumere, corresponding to biblical Gomer. Comparing Etruscan sertur with Sarduri (language not specified), Battaglini moves the zone south and west to Cappadocia (p. 69). Arguing next from...