Etruscans

[Douglas G Kilday]

David L. White (25 Jan 2001) wrote:

[snip of alphabets and zebras]

>They [alphabetic innovations] are also too late to have much to do with a
>posited migration from the Aegean (or its eastern coast) to Italy.  The
>Phrygians and the Trojans (or their displaced descendants) belong to
>significantly different periods of NW Anatolian history, and there is little
>reason to think that their alphabets would have showed any especially close
>relation.

Not all believers in Anatolian Etruscans are fixated on the date of 1200 BCE
for the presumed migration. One respondent suggested a range of 1300-600.
The discrepancy between Lemnian and Phrygian alphabets argues directly
against any such migration during 800-600 and casts doubt on a moderately
earlier one, since Anatolians would still consider Anatolia their homeland
and would keep up Anatolian contacts. A sufficiently early migration
(1300-1200) indeed makes the alphabetic issue irrelevant, but runs into the
problem of absence from Epic tradition and historical records, as I have
already discussed. More important is the question of how a Tyrrhenian
community on Lemnos could have maintained its cultural and linguistic
identity during 600 years of comings and goings of Thracians, Pelasgians,
Minyans, Athenians, etc. Even if I were a true born-again believer in
Anatolian Etruscans, I would have grave doubts that the Lemnians who erected
the stele could possibly be the remnant of a Mycenaean-era migration. It
would be more remarkable than stumbling into an enclave of Dutch-speakers in
the heart of New York City.

>Furthermore, the view presented totally ignores the presence of the Turshas,
>who seem to bear the same name as the Tursenoi, raiding in the Nile Delta (and
>perhaps under the name Philistines similarly distresing the Hebrews) during
>the Aegean Dark Ages, roughly 1200-800.  I have not exactly memorized Egyptian
>historical records, but I think they rule out the possibility that the Turshas
>were the descendants of Italian colonizers of Lemnos about 600, and it is
>scarcely likely that true Tuscans were raiding the Eastern Mediterranean at
>any period.  Under the view presented, the time and place of the Turshas do
>not match up, for if one is right the other is wrong, so that we are left with
>little alternative but to deny that there is any connection between the names.

I'm no Egyptologist either, but you seem to be hanging a very heavy
conjecture (the identity of Tursenoi and Tw-rw-s' = "Tursha") on a very
slender peg. Furthermore, the Egyptian record does not specify a precise
homeland for these raiders; presumably they had access to the Mediterranean,
of course. The Philistines (Pw-r-s-ty) are mentioned in a later Egyptian
record. They were most likely Pelasgians from Crete, later driven out by
Dorian invaders (ca. 1100) and forced to resettle in Palestine.

>The seemingly Italian features in Lemnian could be due, as MCV suggests, to
>independent influences.  The change of /pt/ to /ft/ is fairly natural (is is
>known from Icelandic) and could have occurred in virtually any IE language.
>Likewise feminine /i/ is known from both Greek and Sanskrit, and so is hardly
>a reliable indicator of Italian provenance.

The oldest attested Etruscan (early 7th c.) does not use /i/ or /ia/ to
produce feminine names, but retains the native suffixes -tha and -thu for
this purpose. The adoption of the IE morphemes from Italic, not from Greek
or Sanskrit(!), is hardly debatable. You may well counter that Lemnian could
have borrowed independently of Italo-Etruscan. A feminine suffix perhaps,
but the whole PN-GN-MN system is very unlikely to be independently borrowed
or created.

>Nonetheless, I would guess that in this case the things noted are borrowing
>from Italian Etruscan into Lemnian, due to continuned contact between colonies
>and "mother-city" of a sort well-attested from this period. The Greek colonies
>generally made a point of keeping in contact with their mother cities, and so
>did Carthage.

Now that you have Etruscans bringing Etruscan from Italy to Lemnos, what
function does the rest of your theory serve?

>But I return to the names.  If the original name was /trosha/ or /trusha/ (in
>a language that did not distinguish /u/ and /o/ there is no meaningful
>distinction), then we might expect some difference of opinion about 1) what to
>do with the /r/ in languages that did not permit /tr/, 2) whether to borrow
>with /o/ or /u/, and 2) how to render /sh/ in languages that did not have
>/sh/.  Among the options for the first might be 1) to metathsize (Tursha,
>Tursenoi (from Egyptian?)), to delete (Tuscan), or to prefix (Etruscan,
>Etruria).  Among the options for the last might be 1) /sk/ (Etruscan, Tuscan),
>2 /si/ (Etruria, Troia (with later loss of /s/), and 3) /s/ (Tursenoi).  All
>these are variants of the same name.  To split off "Tursha" and "Troia" from
>the rest is unwarranted.  They fit in as well as any of the others, which are
>universally acknowledged to represent variants of the same name.

First, a word of advice: you should not characterize something as
"universally acknowledged" unless you have read everything that has ever
been written about it. In most cases this is a practical impossibility, so
it is prudent to avoid such superlative phrases. In this case, Etrus- is not
"universally" accepted as a prefixed form of anything. Alessio, for example,
derived Etruria from *Etro-rous-ia 'land of the others' from the Umbrian
viewpoint. This may not be entirely correct, but since Etruria and Etrusci
are "other-names" a connection with an Italic term for 'other' is not
implausible, and certainly better than slapping on an arbitrary prefix
whenever the urge strikes.

The basic root behind Tyrsenoi, Tusci, and probably Thouskoi is Tursk-,
which appears in Umbr. Turskum (numem) = Lat. Tuscum nomen 'the Tuscan
nation', and in the Arch. Etr. GN Tursikina. The /k/ of Etrusci does not
belong to the root (cf. Falisci, Falerii <- *Fales-).

As for Troia, the Etruscans had no trouble with the initial cluster, as
shown by Truials 'Trojan' (lit. abl. 'from Truia') and names like Trepu =
Lat. Trebonius (prob. from Umbr. 'carpenter'). Your "Tursha" might have been
Trojans, since they are reported from the late 13th cent. BCE, but there is
no basis for connecting either "Tursha" or Troia with Tusci or Etrusci.
Other than "spelling pronunciation" I have never heard of anyone using /sk/
to represent /s^/. Those who cannot acquire /s^/ will substitute /s/, as I
have personally observed; this is also illustrated by the anecdote about
"shibboleth" as a password. Historically /s^/ coming from /sk/ before
front-vowels is common, not the reverse. Besides, Etruscan had three
sibilants <s>, <s'>, <z> and in the opinion of many specialists <s'> (sadhe)
in South Etr. orthography was very close to /s^/ (Eng. ship). In sum, your
attempt to derive all the names from *Tros^a/*Trus^a doesn't have a leg to
stand on.

>It should be noted as well that much of Herodotus is technically in indirect
>discourse.  No particular disbelief is necessarily implied by any given
>instance.

True. My point was that by using indirect discourse in I.94, Herodotus was
showing that he did not personally vouch for the credibility of the Lydian
story. There are plenty of other passages in which he used direct discourse
to express what he did believe. Uncritical readers (and those who don't
bother with *any* source-checking) very commonly cite the Lydian story as
though Herodotus had expressed it on his own authority: "according to H.,
the Etruscans came from Lydia" and so on. Irresponsible statements like this
need refutation.

DGK