The Old Italic scripts are a family of similar ancient
writing systems used in the
Italian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place. The most notable member is the
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 ...
, which was the immediate ancestor of the
Latin alphabet currently used by
English and many other languages of the world. The
runic alphabet
Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...
s used in northern
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...
are believed to have been separately derived from one of these alphabets by the 2nd century AD.
Origins
The Old Italic alphabets clearly derive from the
Phoenician alphabet, although the precise chain of cultural transmission is unknown. Some scholars argue that the
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 ...
was imported from the
Euboean
Greek colonies of
Cumae and
Ischia (Pithekoūsai) in the
Gulf of Naples in the 8th century BC; this
Euboean alphabet
Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the archaic and early classical periods, until around 400 BC, when they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that is the standard today. All forms ...
is also called 'Cumaean' (after Cumae), or 'Chalcidian' (after its
metropolis Chalcis
Chalcis ( ; Ancient Greek & Katharevousa: , ) or Chalkida, also spelled Halkida (Modern Greek: , ), is the chief town of the island of Euboea or Evia in Greece, situated on the Euripus Strait at its narrowest point. The name is preserved from ...
).
The Cumaean hypothesis is supported by the 1957–58 excavations of
Veii by the
British School at Rome
The British School at Rome (BSR) is an interdisciplinary research centre supporting the arts, humanities and architecture.
History
The British School at Rome (BSR) was established in 1901 and granted a UK Royal Charter in 1912. Its mission is ...
, which found pieces of Greek pottery indicating that contacts between the
Etruscan city of Veii and the Greek colonies of Cumae and Ischia have existed ever since the second half of the 8th century.
Other scholars posit a different hypothetical Western Greek alphabet that was even older than those attested to have given rise to the Etruscan letters.
Whatever the case, the Etruscans added the ''c'', the ''q'' and the combination of ''vh'' or ''hv'' (for /f/) in order to spell sounds that did not exist in Ancient Greek.
The development and usage of their own Greek-derived alphabet arguably marked the end of the
Villanovan culture and ushered in the Etruscan
Orientalising period.
As the Etruscans were the leading civilization of Italy in that period, it is widely accepted that they spread their alphabet across the peninsula, and the other Old Italic scripts were derived from theirs.
Scholars provide three reasons: Etruscans and non-Etruscans had strong contacts in the 8th and 7th centuries, surviving inscriptions from other languages appear later (after the end of the 8th century) than the earliest Etruscan ones (first amongst the
Umbrians,
Faliscans
Falisci ( grc, Φαλίσκοι, ''Phaliskoi'') is the ancient Roman exonym for an Italic tribe who lived in what is now northern Lazio, on the Etruscan side of the Tiber River. They spoke an Italic language, Faliscan, closely akin to Latin. Or ...
,
Latins
The Latins were originally an Italic tribe in ancient central Italy from Latium. As Roman power and colonization spread Latin culture during the Roman Republic.
Latins culturally "Romanized" or "Latinized" the rest of Italy, and the word Latin ...
, and
Sabines
The Sabines (; lat, Sabini; it, Sabini, all exonyms) were an Italic people who lived in the central Apennine Mountains of the ancient Italian Peninsula, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome.
The Sabines divid ...
to the south, in the 6th century also in the
Po Valley
The Po Valley, Po Plain, Plain of the Po, or Padan Plain ( it, Pianura Padana , or ''Val Padana'') is a major geographical feature of Northern Italy. It extends approximately in an east-west direction, with an area of including its Venetic ex ...
and amongst the
Cisalpine Celtic
The Cisalpine Celtic languages of northern Italy include the Lepontic language and the Cisalpine Gaulish language.
''Transalpine Celtic'' refers to Celtic languages on the other side of the Alps (from Rome) such as Transalpine Gaulish.
See also
...
,
Venetic and
Raetic tribes), and the letters used in these texts are evidently based on the Etruscan version of the Western Greek alphabet.
However, some of them, including the Latin alphabet, retained certain Greek letters that the Etruscans themselves dropped at a rather early stage.
The Old Italic alphabets were used for various different languages, which included some
Indo-European ones (predominantly from the
Italic branch, but also in
Gaulish and probably in inscriptions interpreted as
Proto-Germanic) and some non-Indo-European ones (such as
Etruscan itself).
Alphabets related to Etruscan
The following table shows the ancient Italic scripts that are presumed to be related to the Etruscan alphabet. Symbols that are assumed to be correspondent are placed on the same column. Many symbols occur with two or more variant forms in the same script; only one variant is shown here. The notations
'' and
'' indicate that the shapes shown were used when writing right-to-left and left-to-right, respectively.
Warning: For the languages marked
the appearance of the "Letters" in the table is whatever one's browser's
Unicode font shows for the corresponding code points in the
Old Italic Unicode block. The same code point represents different symbol shapes in different languages; therefore, to display those glyph images properly one needs to use a Unicode font specific to that language.
Etruscan alphabet
Various
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, ...
belonging to the
Italic branch (
Faliscan and members of the
Sabellian group, including
Oscan,
Umbrian, and
South Picene, and other Indo-European branches such as
Venetic) originally used the alphabet. Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian,
North Picene, and South Picene all derive from an Etruscan form of the alphabet.
Alphabet of Nuceria
The ''Nucerian alphabet'' is based on inscriptions found in southern Italy (
Nocera Superiore,
Sorrento,
Vico Equense and other places). It is attested only between the 6th and the 5th century BC.
The most important sign is the /S/, shaped like a fir tree, and possibly a derivation from the
Phoenician alphabet.
Missing from the above table:
*
Venetic
*
Faliscan
*
Umbrian
*
North Picene
*
Rhaetic
Rhaetic or Raetic (), also known as Rhaetian, was a language spoken in the ancient region of Rhaetia in the eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by around 280 texts dated from the 5th up until the 1st century BC, which wer ...
(Raetic)
*
Camunic
Rhaetic alphabets
The alphabet of
Sanzeno (also, of
Bolzano), about 100
Rhaetic
Rhaetic or Raetic (), also known as Rhaetian, was a language spoken in the ancient region of Rhaetia in the eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by around 280 texts dated from the 5th up until the 1st century BC, which wer ...
inscriptions.
The alphabet of Magrè (near
Schio), east Raetian inscriptions.
Venetic alphabet
Alphabet of Este: Similar but not identical to that of Magrè,
Venetic inscriptions.
Camunic alphabet
Inscribed
abecedarium
An abecedarium (also known as an abecedary or ABCs or simply an ABC) is an inscription consisting of the letters of an alphabet, almost always listed in order. Typically, abecedaria (or abecedaries) are practice exercises.
Non-Latin alphabe ...
on
rock drawings in Valcamonica
The rock drawings in Valcamonica (Camonica Valley) are located in the Province of Brescia, Italy, and constitute the largest collections of prehistoric petroglyphs in the world. The collection was recognized by UNESCO in 1979 and was Italy's f ...
.
Latin alphabet
21 of the 26 archaic Etruscan letters were adopted for
Old Latin from the 7th century BC, either directly from the
Cumae alphabet, or via archaic Etruscan forms, compared to the classical Etruscan alphabet retaining B, D, K, O, Q, X but dropping Θ, Ξ, Ϻ, Φ, and Ψ.
South Picene alphabet
The South Picene alphabet, known from the 6th century BC, is most like the southern
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 ...
in that it uses ''Q'' for /k/ and ''K'' for /g/.
is a reduced and is a reduced , used for .
Unicode
The Old Italic alphabets were unified and added to the
Unicode Standard in March 2001 with the release of version 3.1. The Unicode block for Old Italic is U+10300–U+1032F without specification of a particular alphabet (i.e. the Old Italic alphabets are considered equivalent, and the font used will determine the variant).
Writing direction (right-to-left, left-to-right, or
boustrophedon) varies based on the language and even the time period. For simplicity most scholars use left-to-right and this is the Unicode default direction for the Old Italic block. For this reason, the glyphs in the code chart are shown with left-to-right orientation.
See also
*
Euboean alphabet
Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the archaic and early classical periods, until around 400 BC, when they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that is the standard today. All forms ...
*
Alphabets of Asia Minor
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
{{Etruscans
Languages of ancient Italy
Obsolete writing systems
Palaeography
it:Lingua etrusca#Alfabeto