Nethuns
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Etruscan mythology Etruscan religion comprises a set of stories, beliefs, and religious practices of the Etruscan civilization, heavily influenced by the mythology of ancient Greece, and sharing similarities with concurrent Roman mythology and religion. As the Et ...
, Nethuns was the god of
well A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The ...
s, later expanded to all
water Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as a ...
, including the
sea The sea, connected as the world ocean or simply the ocean, is the body of salty water that covers approximately 71% of the Earth's surface. The word sea is also used to denote second-order sections of the sea, such as the Mediterranean Sea, ...
. The name "Nethuns" is likely
cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
with that of the Celtic god Nechtan and the Persian and Vedic gods sharing the name
Apam Napat Apam Napat is a deity in the Proto-Indo-Iranian religion, Indo-Iranian Pantheon (gods), pantheon associated with water. His names in the Vedas, ''Apām Napāt'', and in Zoroastrianism, ''Apąm Napāt'', mean "child of the Ap (water), waters" in San ...
, perhaps all based on the
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
word ''*népōts'' "nephew, grandson." In this case, Etruscan may have borrowed the
Umbrian Umbrian is an extinct Italic language formerly spoken by the Umbri in the ancient Italian region of Umbria. Within the Italic languages it is closely related to the Oscan group and is therefore associated with it in the group of Osco-Umbrian lan ...
name ''*Nehtuns'' (Roman
Neptune Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the farthest known planet in the Solar System. It is the fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 times ...
, who was originally a god of water). Nethuns is mentioned on the
Piacenza liver The Liver of Piacenza is an Etruscan artifact found in a field on September 26, 1877, near Gossolengo, in the province of Piacenza, Italy, now kept in the Municipal Museum of Piacenza, in the Palazzo Farnese. It is a life-sized bronze model o ...
, a third-century BCE bronze model of a sheep's liver used for divinatory rites called
haruspicy In the religion of ancient Rome, a haruspex (plural haruspices; also called aruspex) was a person trained to practise a form of divination called haruspicy (''haruspicina''), the inspection of the entrails (''exta''—hence also extispicy ( ...
, as ''Neθ'', an abbreviation for his full name. As a patron god his profile, wearing a ''
ketos In Ancient Greek ''kētŏs'' (, plural ''kētē''=''kētea'', ), Latinized as ''cetus'' (pl. ''ceti'' or ''cetē'' = ''cetea''), is any huge sea creature or sea monster. According to the mythology, Perseus slew Cetus to save Andromeda from bein ...
'' (sea monster) headdress, appears on a coin of
Vetulonia Vetulonia, formerly called Vetulonium ( Etruscan: ''Vatluna''), was an ancient town of Etruria, Italy, the site of which is probably occupied by the modern village of Vetulonia, which up to 1887 bore the name of Colonnata and Colonna di Buriano: t ...
, circa 215 – 211 BCE; he is accompanied by his
trident A trident is a three- pronged spear. It is used for spear fishing and historically as a polearm. The trident is the weapon of Poseidon, or Neptune, the God of the Sea in classical mythology. The trident may occasionally be held by other marine ...
between two dolphins. NETHUNS is engraved on a bronze Etruscan mirror in the Museo Gregoriano in the Vatican.Noted by George Dennis, ''The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria'' (London) 1848, a time when Nethuns and Neptune were not yet securely linked.
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Notes


References

* ''Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicum'', VII (Zurich and Munich:Artemis) 1994. The basic professional reference. Etruscan gods Water gods {{Deity-stub