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, which was the immediate ancestor of the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...
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 entirel ...
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
The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization.
The Phoenician a ...
, although the precise chain of cultural transmission is unknown. Some scholars argue that the
Etruscan alphabet was imported from the
Euboea
Evia (, ; el, Εύβοια ; grc, Εὔβοια ) or Euboia (, ) is the second-largest Greek island in area and population, after Crete. It is separated from Boeotia in mainland Greece by the narrow Euripus Strait (only at its narrowest poin ...
n
Greek colonies of
Cumae
Cumae ( grc, Κύμη, (Kumē) or or ; it, Cuma) was the first ancient Greek colony on the mainland of Italy, founded by settlers from Euboea in the 8th century BC and soon becoming one of the strongest colonies. It later became a rich Ro ...
and
Ischia (Pithekoūsai) in the
Gulf of Naples in the 8th century BC; this
Euboean alphabet is also called 'Cumaean' (after Cumae), or 'Chalcidian' (after its
metropolis
A metropolis () is a large city or conurbation which is a significant economic, political, and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections, commerce, and communications.
A big ci ...
Chalcis).
The Cumaean hypothesis is supported by the 1957–58 excavations of
Veii
Veii (also Veius; it, Veio) was an important ancient Etruscan city situated on the southern limits of Etruria and north-northwest of Rome, Italy. It now lies in Isola Farnese, in the comune of Rome. Many other sites associated with and in the ...
by the
British School at Rome, 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,
Latins, and
Sabines to the south, in the 6th century also in the
Po Valley and amongst the
Cisalpine Celtic,
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
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic bran ...
) 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
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
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, Dutc ...
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
Nocera Superiore ( nap, Nucèrë or ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Salerno in the Campania region of south-western Italy.
It was the core of the ancient city of ', later known as ', ' and then ' ( it, Nocera dei Pagani), which a ...
,
Sorrento
Sorrento (, ; nap, Surriento ; la, Surrentum) is a town overlooking the Bay of Naples in Southern Italy. A popular tourist destination, Sorrento is located on the Sorrentine Peninsula at the south-eastern terminus of the Circumvesuviana ra ...
,
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
The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization.
The Phoenician a ...
.
Missing from the above table:
*
Venetic
*
Faliscan
*
Umbrian
*
North Picene
*
Rhaetic (Raetic)
*
Camunic
Rhaetic alphabets
The alphabet of
Sanzeno (also, of
Bolzano), about 100
Rhaetic 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 on
rock drawings in Valcamonica.
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 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
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
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
*
Alphabets of Asia Minor
Various alphabetic writing systems were in use in Iron Age Anatolia to record Anatolian languages and Phrygian. Several of these languages had previously been written with logographic and syllabic scripts.
The alphabets of Asia Minor proper s ...
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
{{Etruscans
Languages of ancient Italy
Obsolete writing systems
Palaeography
it:Lingua etrusca#Alfabeto