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History's Hinge - 'Ain Jalut

[Bart]

September 02, 2006

Hub of Etruscan civilisation found
By Martin Penner

Archaeologists believe that they have found the ruins of the religious and political centre of the Etruscan civilisation.
The Etruscans lived in the area between Rome and Florence from the 8th century BC until they were absorbed by Romans about 600 years later. 
 
The heads of Etruria?s 12 city states would meet to discuss their affairs every spring at a holy place called the Fanum Voltumnae. It was never clear where the Fanum was but archaeologists from Macerata University believe they have found it at a site near the hill town of Orvieto, 60 miles (96km) north of Rome.

Extensive digs at the site revealed the walls of a central temple, two important roads and part of the perimeter wall of a major shrine, all built in the tufa stone used by the Etruscans. ?It has all the characteristics of a great shrine, and of that great shrine in particular,? said Simonetta Stopponi, Professor of Etruscan studies at Macerata University.

So far the team has not found an inscription referring to the Etruscan god Voltumna, which would confirm the site of the shrine.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2338963,00.html

[Bart]

Etruscan holy city discovered


One of the most famous pieces of Etruscan art, the Apollo di Veio statue, which was restored in 2004 and can now be seen in Rome .

   Fledgling Rome 'trembled' when leaders of the 12 cities met (ANSA) - Rome, September 7 - Italian archaeologists believe they have found the mysterious sanctuary which was the religious and political centre of the Etruscan civilisation. The Etruscans were an ancient people known to have lived in the area of Italy between Rome and Florence from the 8th century BC until they were absorbed by Rome about 600 years later. For centuries they dominated the fledgling city on the Tiber and even supplied its first kings. But most traces of the Etruscan civilisation, which produced sophisticated art, were obliterated as Roman grew into an empire .

   The Etruscan world was organised around a federation of 12 city states. Each spring the political and religious leaders from the cities would meet at a holy place called the Fanum Voltumnae to hold a council. Here they would discuss military campaigns, civic affairs and pray to their common gods. Chief amongst these was Voltumna, god of the underworld. Until now it has never been clear where the Fanum, which means sanctuary, was located and historians have been looking for it for at least six centuries .

   Now, after extensive digs at a site near the hill town of Orvieto, 60 miles north of Rome, a team of archaeologists from Macerata University is sure the mystery has been solved. They have found the walls of a central temple, two important roads and part of the perimeter wall of an extensive shrine, all built in the tufa stone used by the Etruscans. They have also uncovered fragments of 6th century BC ceremonial vases used for religious rites. "It has all the characteristics of a very important shrine, and of that shrine in particular," said Simonetta Stopponi, professor of Etruscan studies at Macerata University. Listing some of those characteristics, she mentioned "the scale of the construction, its intricate structure and layout, the presence of wells and fountains and the central temple building". MISSING INSCRIPTION .

   So far the team has not found an inscription referring to the god Voltumna. This would prove beyond all doubt that the place is the famed Fanum Voltumnae. In the meantime, excavations continue and Stopponi thinks such an inscription could be found when digs resume next summer .

   Also supporting the claim that this is the Fanum Voltumnae is the fact that the area was used continuously for religious purposes right from the 6th century BC up to the 15th century. In fact Roman temples were built on it in later centuries and the last church was erected there in the 12th century. Roman historian Livy mentions the Fanum Voltumnae several times in his works. He describes the meetings that took place there between Etruscan leaders. He refers in particular to a meeting in which two groups applied to assist the city of Veio in a war it was waging. The council's answer was no, because Veio had declared war without first notifying it. Livy also says that Roman merchants who travelled to a huge fair attached to the meeting acted as spies, reporting back on Etruscan affairs to authorities in the fledgling city state of Rome. "When the Etruscan League met, people in Rome - which was still quite small - began to tremble," Stopponi said .

ETRUSCANS AS TOURIST MAGNET

   Italy's Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli believes the Etruscan sites dotted around the countryside north of Rome offer an important opportunity to develop tourism in the area .

   The Etruscan city of Veio, one of Italy's most spectacular but neglected archaeological treasures, is now part of a government bid to focus interest on the ancient Etruscans .

   On September 19 Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli is scheduled to visit the digs at Veio, where archaeologists recently brought to light the oldest examples of painting in Western civilisation .

   Experts unearthed a tomb dating to the seventh century BC, the oldest ever to have emerged from the ground at the buried Etruscan city north of Rome. It contained wall paintings of five red, roaring lions and a flock of yellow-tinged waterbirds .

   Rutelli intends to work closely with local administrators to boost tourism in the area .

   "If any other country in the world had a site like Veio, it would feature as their star attraction. Italy has so much artistic wealth and, too often, we just take this for granted," he said .

http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2006-09-07_1076959.html

[Solomon]

Who were they?


Map showing the extent of the Etruscan civilization and the twelve Etruscan League cities.

Herodotus records the legend that the Etruscans came from Lydia:
   
   The customs of the Lydians are like those of the Greeks, except that they make prostitutes of their female children. They were the first men whom we know who coined and used gold and silver currency; and they were the first to sell by retail. And, according to what they themselves say, the games now in use among them and the Greeks were invented by the Lydians: these, they say, were invented among them at the time when they colonized Tyrrhenia. This is their story: [...] their king divided the people into two groups, and made them draw lots, so that the one group should remain and the other leave the country; he himself was to be the head of those who drew the lot to remain there, and his son, whose name was Tyrrhenus, of those who departed. [...] they came to the Ombrici, where they founded cities and have lived ever since. They no longer called themselves Lydians, but Tyrrhenians, after the name of the king's son who had led them there.

A DNA study seems to confirm their difference.

An initial genetic study of the Etruscans finds that they were more related to each other than to the population of modern Italy; i.e., they qualify as a partially distinct genetic pool, or "people." Moreover, this pool contained between about 150,000 to 200,000 women. Dividing these numbers by the 36 cities in the three Etruscan leagues obtains an average of between 4167 and 6944 women per community. Selecting an arbitrary family size of four gives a most approximate Etruscan population of 600,000 to 800,000 persons in about 36 communities of an average between 16,668 and 27,776 persons each. These populations are sufficiently dense and sufficiently urban to have accomplished everything the Etruscans were supposed to have accomplished. While this study gives an insight into the genetic composition of the Etruscans, and excludes a mass migration from Anatolia, it cannot resolve the linguistic controversy: An invasion of an elite imposing itself over authochthonous subjects often leads to linguistic changes without leaving genetic traces.

It's also shown that there is a link between Etruscans and populations of Anatolia.

The prevalent view today is that Rome was founded by Etruscans and merged with Italics later. In that case Etruscan cultural objects are not influences but are a heritage.

The main criterion for deciding whether an object originated at Rome and travelled by influence to the Etruscans, or descended to the Romans from the Etruscans, is date. Many, if not most, of the Etruscan cities were older than Rome. If we find that a given feature was there first, it cannot have originated at Rome. A second criterion is the opinion of the ancient sources. They tell us outright that certain institutions and customs came from the Etruscans.

[Diving Doc]

Sounds like the Etruscans had the same mentors as the Greeks. There are a great number of sociological parallels, isn't that so Holmes?
Doc

[Solomon]

The Pyrgi Tablets, found in an excavation of a sanctuary of that town in Italy, a port of the southern Etruscan town of Caere, are three golden leaves that record a dedication made around 500 BC by Thefarie Velianas, king of Caere, to the Phoenician goddess ?Ashtart.
These writings are important not only for providing a bilingual text that allows us to use our knowledge of the Phoenician language to read Etruscan, but provides evidence of Phoenician/Punic influence in the Western Mediterranean. This document helps to provide a context for Polybius's report (Hist. 3,22) of an ancient and almost unintelligible treaty between the Romans and the Carthaginians, which he dated to the consulships of L. Iunius Brutus and L. Tarquinius Collatinus (505 BC).

The Phoenician Text

        L-rbt l-ʕ?trt.
        To the lady Ashtaret.

        ʔṣr qd? ʕz, ʕ? pʕl, w-ʔ? ytn Tbryʔ Wln? mlk ʕl Ky?ryʔ.
        This is the holy place, which was made, and which was donated by Tiberius Velianas who reigns over the Caerites.

        B-yrḥ zbḥ ?m?, b-mtnʔ b-bt, wbn tw.
        During the month of the sacrifice to the Sun, as a gift in the temple, he built an aedicula.

        K-ʕ?trt ʔr? b-dy l-mlky ?nt ?l?, b-yrḥ Krr, b-ym qbr ʔlm
        For Ishtar raised him with her hand to reign for three years in the month of Churvar, in the day of the burying of the divinity.

        W-?nt lmʔ? ʔlm b-bty ?nt km ḥkkbm ʕl.
        And the years of the statue of the divinity in the temple [shall be] as many years as the stars above.

Since the Phoenician text has long been known to be a Semitic language (related to such languages as Hebrew, Canaanite, Ugaritic, Arabic and Akkadian), its decipherment was achieved very early.

As noted above, on the origin of the Etruscans, Herodotus:
They no longer called themselves Lydians, but Tyrrhenians, after the name of the king's son who had led them there.

Tyrrhenians

The Tyrrhenians (Attic Greek Turrēnoi) or Tyrsenians (Ionic Tursēnoi, Doric Tursānoi) is an exonym used by Greek authors to refer to a non-Greek people.

The origin of the name is uncertain. It is only known to be used by Greek authors, but apparently not of Greek origin. It has been connected to tursis, also a "Mediterranean" loan into Greek, meaning "tower" (see there). Direct connections with Tusci, the Latin exonym for the Etruscans, from Turs-ci were also attempted (Heubeck Praegraeca 65 f.) See also Turan, tyrant.

Hesiod (Theogony 1015) has

    And they [the sons of Circe ] ruled over the famous Tyrsenians, very far off in a recess of the holy islands.

The Homeric hymn to Dionysus (verses 7f.) has Tyrsenian pirates seizing Dionysus,

    Presently there came swiftly over the sparkling sea Tyrsenian pirates on a well-decked ship ? a miserable doom led them on.

In the 6th to 5th centuries BC, the name referred to the Etruscans, for whom the Tyrrhenian Sea is named. There is a Greek-Etruscan bilingue at Delphi from this period where the Etruscan tribal name Velthanes is rendered as Tyrrhenoi in Greek. In Pindar (Pythian Odes 1.72), the Tyrsanoi appear grouped with the Carthaginians as a threat to Magna Graecia:

    I entreat you, son of Cronus, grant that the battle-shouts of the Carthaginians and Etruscans stay quietly at home, now that they have seen their arrogance bring lamentation to their ships off Cumae.

The name is also attested in a fragment by Sophocles (Inachus, fr. 256).

The name becomes increasingly associated with the generic Pelasgians. Herodotus (1.57) places them in Crestonia in Thrace, as neighbours of the Pelasgians. Similarly, Thucydides (4.106) mentions them together with the Pelasgians and associates them with Lemnian pirates and with the pre-Greek population of Attica.


The Stele of Lemnos

Lemnos remained relatively free of Greek influence up to Hellenistic times, and interestingly, the Lemnos stele of the 6th century BC is inscribed with a language very similar to Etruscan. This has led to the postulation of a "Tyrrhenian language group" comprising Etruscan, Lemnian and Raetic.

There is thus linguistic evidence that there was indeed at least a linguistic relationship between the Lemnians and the Etruscans. The circumstances of this are disputed; while the majority of scholars would ascribe Aegean Tyrrhenians to the Etruscan expansion from the 8th to 6th centuries, putting the homeland of the Etruscans in Italy and the Alps particularly because of their relation to the Alpine Raetic population.

A minority would derive the Etruscans from a 10th century invasion from the Aegean and Anatolia imposing itself over the Italic Villanovan culture, claiming an Anatolian affiliation of the Etruscan language. This latter school of thought may point to the legend of Lydian origin of the Etruscans referred to by Herodotus (1.94), and the statement of Livy that the Raetians were Etruscans driven into the mountains by the invading Gauls. Proponents of the majority opinion may point to the very scanty evidence of a linguistic connection of Etruscan even with Indo-European, let alone Anatolian in particular, and to Dionysios of Halicarnassos who decidedly argues against an Etruscan-Lydian relationship.


A possible Etruscan sea people

The Merneptah Stele (also known as the Israel Stele or Victory Stele of Merneptah) is the reverse of a stele originally erected by the Ancient Egyptian king Amenhotep III, but later inscribed by Merneptah in the thirteenth century BCE. The stela was made to commemorate a victory in a campaign against the Labu and Meshwesh Libyans and their Sea People allies, but a short portion of the text is devoted to a campaign in the Levant.

An Egyptian inscription at Deir al-Madinah records a victory of Ramesses III over Sea Peoples, including some named Tursha (spelled [twr?3] in Egyptian script). These are probably the same as the earlier Teresh (found written as [tr?.w]) of the Merneptah Stele, commemorating Merneptah?s victory in a Libyan campaign at about 1220 BC. This may be too early for the Trojan War. Some have connected the name to the city Taruisas, Troy.

The seafaring Etruscans may simply have sought brides from among their client or host populations, accounting for the mitochondrial DNA. At the other end of the spectrum of possibilities, perhaps some Trojans emigrated to Etruria, accounting for the different names. We have no evidence as to what language they spoke. They could have assimilated to Etruscan culture, just as the Etruscans assimilated to the Romans. The latter assimilation was thorough. The population of modern Tuscany is the closest of the moderns to the Etruscans, but that is not very close. The moderns do not evidence the higher degree of kinship to Anatolia or north Africa, and they are more related to the Basques than the ancients.

[Bart]

London, Feb 15

   One of anthropology's most enduring mysteries, the origins of the ancient Etruscan civilisation may finally have been solved, strangely with a study of cattle.
   Culturally distinct and technologically advanced, the Etruscan civilisation, with their non-Indo-European language, inhabited central Italy from about the 8th century BC, before being assimilated into Roman culture around the end of the 4th century BC.

   However, for centuries, archaeologists, geneticists and linguists have debated their origin.

   In the 5th century BC, the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus claimed that the Etruscans had arrived in Italy from Lydia, now called Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey.

   For their study, Marco Pellecchia at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Piacenza, Italy, and colleagues analysed mitochondrial DNA in modern herds of Bos Taurus cattle in the north, south and central regions of Italy.

   The genetic material is often always passed down the female line from mother to offspring.

    Findings revealed that almost 60 percent of the mitochondrial DNA in cows in the central Tuscan region of the country where the Etruscan civilisation is thought to have arisen was the same as that in cows from Anatolia and the Middle East.

   On the contrary, there was little or no genetic convergence between cows from the north and south of Italy and those from Turkey and the Middle East.

   Pellecchia said, so far no archaeological or genetic traces of Etruscan culture have been found elsewhere between Turkey and Italy.

   This combined with their famed nautical prowess gives credence to the belief that Etruscans and their cattle arrived in Italy by sea, and not by land, New Scientist quoted him as saying.

   The findings appear in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

http://www.dailyindia.com/show/114810.php/Origin-of-the-Etruscan-civilisation-may-have-finally-been-solved

[Bart]

Origins of the Etruscans: Was Herodotus right?

April 3, 2007 - By Nicholas Wade

   Geneticists have added an edge to a 2,500-year-old debate over the origin of the Etruscans, a people whose brilliant and mysterious civilization dominated northwestern Italy for centuries until the rise of the Roman republic in 510 B.C. Several new findings support a view held by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus - but unpopular among archaeologists - that the Etruscans originally migrated to Italy from the Near East.

   Though Roman historians played down their debt to the Etruscans, Etruscan culture permeated Roman art, architecture and religion. The Etruscans were master metallurgists and skillful seafarers who for a time dominated much of the Mediterranean. They enjoyed unusually free social relations, much remarked on by ancient historians of other cultures.

   Etruscan culture was very advanced and very different from other Italian cultures of the time. But most archaeologists have seen a thorough continuity between a local Italian culture known as the Villanovan that emerged around 900 B.C. and the Etruscan culture, which began in 800 B.C.

   "The overwhelming proportion of archaeologists would regard the evidence for eastern origins of the Etruscans as negligible," said Anthony Tuck, an archaeologist at the University of Massachusetts.

   Even so, a nagging question has remained. Could the Etruscans have arrived from somewhere else in the Mediterranean world?

   One hint of such an origin is that the Etruscan language, which survives in thousands of inscriptions, appears not to be Indo-European, the language family that started to sweep across Europe sometime after 8,500 years ago, developing into Latin, English and many other tongues. Another hint is the occurrence of inscriptions in a language apparently related to Etruscan on Lemnos, a Greek island. But whether Lemnian is the parent language of Etruscan, or the other way around, is not yet clear, said Rex Wallace, an expert on Etruscan linguistics at the University of Massachusetts.

   An even more specific link to the Near East is a short statement by Herodotus that the Etruscans emigrated from Lydia, a region on the eastern coast of ancient Turkey. After an 18-year famine in Lydia, Herodotus reports, the king dispatched half the population to look for a better life elsewhere. Under the leadership of his son Tyrrhenus, the emigrating Lydians built ships, loaded all the stores they needed, and sailed from Smyrna (now the Turkish port of Izmir) until reaching Umbria in Italy.

   Despite the specificity of Herodotus's account, archaeologists have long been skeptical of it. There are also fanciful elements in Herodotus's story, like the Lydians' being the inventors of games like dice because they needed distractions to take their minds off the famine. And Lydian, unlike Etruscan, is definitely an Indo-European language. Other ancient historians entered the debate. Thucydides favored a Near Eastern provenance, but Dionysius of Halicarnassus declared the Etruscans native to Italy.

   What has brought Italian geneticists into the discussion are new abilities to sequence DNA and trace people's origins. In 2004, a team led by Guido Barbujani at the University of Ferrara extracted mitochondrial DNA from 30 individuals buried in Etruscan sites throughout Italy.

   But this study quickly came under attack. Working with ancient DNA is extremely difficult, because most bones from archaeological sites have been carelessly handled. Extensive contamination with modern human DNA can swamp the signal of what little ancient DNA may still survive. Hans-Jurgen Bandelt, a geneticist at the University of Hamburg, wrote that the DNA recovered from the Etruscan bones showed clear signs of such problems.

   But a new set of genetic studies being reported seems likely to lend greater credence to Herodotus's long-disputed account. New and independent sources of genetic data suggest that Etruscan culture was imported to Italy from somewhere in the Near East.

   One study is based on the mitochondrial DNA of residents of Murlo, a small former Etruscan town whose population may not have changed all that much since Etruscan times.

   When placed on a chart of mitochondrial lineages from Europe and the Near East, the people of Murlo map closest to Palestinians and Syrians, a team led by Torroni and Alessandro Achilli reports in the April issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics.

   In Tuscany as a whole, the Torroni team found 11 minor mitochondrial DNA lineages that occur nowhere else in Europe and are shared only with Near Eastern people.

   Another source of genetic data on Etruscan origins has been developed by Marco Pellecchia and Paolo Ajmone-Marsan at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Piacenza. Tuscany has four ancient breeds of cattle. Analyzing the mitochondrial DNA of these and seven other breeds of Italian cattle, Ajmone-Marsan found that the Tuscan breeds genetically resembled cattle of the Near East. The other Italian breeds were linked northern Europe.

There is supposed to be more of the article here,  http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/03/arts/snetrus.php?page=2 but it wouldn't load for me. - Bart

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/03/arts/snetrus.php