The holy goddess of sewers

It started with looking up North African terms for 'rainbow' in Berber and Arabic. I confirmed that one Arabic expression is similar to the hypothetical Etruscan expression *Tluscval arcam that might lie behind the aforementioned abbreviation tlusc arc inscribed on the Piacenza Liver where its religious significance might have something to do with a role as messenger between sky and earth. That expression is qaws al-māʔ 'bow of the water', spoken in the Maghreb. Another rainbow expression in Berber, 'bride of the jackal', led me to the Roman Virgo Caelestis, the Latin name given to the Carthaginian goddess of the sky. To the delight of my humour bone, this then led me straight to something I hadn't come across before: Cloācina, goddess of the sewers and of the Cloāca Maxima (ie. The Great Drain of Rome). Yes, the Romans had a goddess of sewers. It's very amusing but also a natural product of a polytheistic religion that maintains that all things great and small, glorious and foul, must have a deity governing it. Stinky as this tale is, something perverse within me needed to dig further.

The name of Cloācina immediately takes hold of my attention because it could be quite easily an Etruscan name. Many Etruscan names end in -na, including those of divine epithets (eg. Aracuna 'Of the hawks', a byname of the death goddess Vanth). In fact, the Cloāca Maxima herself was the ingenious invention of Etruscan engineers to efficiently take away much of the daily filth naturally produced by its inhabitants in the city. Etruscans were master architects and founders of Rome before the Latin-speaking population became dominant so it naturally makes me wonder if the name Cloācīna and the term cloāca 'sewer' could be hidden Etruscan lexical items.

Immediately when looking it up, one will find an ample number of etymologists connecting it with cluēre 'to cleanse, purify'. Perfectly sensible. But... Latin has two homophones here and the other meaning of this verb is  'to hear, be spoken of, be said'. This latter verb is without a shred of doubt traced back to Proto-Indo-European *ḱleu- but does the other verb truly go back to PIE  *ḱleuh₁-  as often claimed by Indoeuropeanists? Etymological dictionary of Latin and the other Italic languages by Michiel de Vaan lends doubt under the heading cloāca:

"Since an original sequence *klowV- would have yielded *clau- (at least, in pretonic
position), Vine 2006a: 2l7f. posits an adj. *kleuH-o- 'clear, clean' from which a
factitive pr. *kleuH-eh₂-ie/o- > *klewāje/o- > *klowā- could have been derived. This
verb might be preserved in the Servius gloss cloare, although its reliability is often
doubted. From *clowā-, the noun cloāca can then be explained. WH and Rix argue
that cluō may have been invented by Plinius to explain Cluācīna but it might also
derive from *cluwere < *klowere < *kleuH₁-e/o-. For the root, Derksen (fthc.) reconstructs *ḱlh₃-u-, whereas Rasmussen posits *ḱleh₁-u-. If one accepts such a root structure, the ablaut *kle/ou(H)- of Latin must represent a secondary full grade based on a zero grade *kluH₁- < *klHu-C-. The short vowel of Greek κλύζω remains unexplained under any account."

So given the limited cognate set (limited to Western IE languages only) and dubious attempts to derive these words using IE-based grammar, there seems to be room for another hypothesis from outside of Indo-European. Is it possible that Etruscan had a verb *cluva 'to cleanse, to purify' that led to an adjective *cluvaχ 'clean, pure'? Through *cluvaχ, we could obtain *Cluvacuna /ˈkluwəkʊˌna/ '(She) of the pure' leading to Latin Cloācīna. We'd also have the basis for Latin cloāca 'sewer', now to be understood as a loanword and nothing to do with Proto-Indo-European. The instance of cluce in the Liber Linteus could be translated as a perfective 'has purified' (< ? earlier *cluvace), a verb to be expected in a ritual text.

The Etruscan name Ramnuna

In inscription ET Vs 1.60, we find a name written out as Ramnunas. This is the Etruscan genitive of Ramnuna used as a male praenomen in this inscription. This is probably a reduction of earlier *Ramniiuna composed of *Ramniiu and the pertinentive suffix -na commonly used among other things to form family names.

At that, we can turn our attention to the Roman nomen Ramnius, likely the ultimate source of the Etruscan name. Ramnius may mean 'of the Ramnes' and the Ramnes were an ancient Italic tribe said to have been instrumental in the initial founding of Rome.

Dice, divination and a third

In Paleoglot: The dicey proof of Etruscan numerals, while a general *tendency* existed for two opposing sides on classical rolling dice to add up to seven, I explain that it wasn't a hard-fast rule in the past. Other possibilities existed.^[1] Nonetheless, quite a few Etruscanists and avid hobbyists will still leap to the over-assertive conclusion that the Etruscan dice *must* follow this pattern. From these sorts of precarious arguments, śa continues to be misinterpreted as 'four' instead of 'six', and huθ is misinterpreted as 'six' instead of 'four'.

In Paleoglot: Truth will shine forth (2), I outlined the Etruscan solar trinity that's directly shown on the Piacenza Liver by the names Tinia Cilensal ('Sun of Darkness' = Jupiter Sommanus), Tinia Θufal ('Sun of Oath' = Jupiter Fidius) and Tinia Θneθ ('Thundering Sun' = Jupiter Tonans). As far as I know, no specialists have bothered to explain these three entities as I have done, nor to even translate their names. All indicates an Etruscan solar triad, parallel to what can be found among the contemporaneous Egyptians (ie. Khepri, Ra and Amon).

Now let's take these two previous ideas and mash them together. We may understand the classical dice in question as exhibiting opposing sides that differ by a value of '3', rather than adding up to '7', making śa = 'six' and huθ = 'four'. Knowing that 'three' is a symbol of the solar triad and that Tinia was a deity governing divination and intellectual illumination much like Greek Apollo or Babylonian Shamash was, could the difference of 'three' between opposing sides of the dice then be a deliberate feature by the die-maker, conceptually linking games of chance with divination?


NOTES
^[1] Trosset, An Introduction to Statistical Inference and Its Applications with R (2009), p.16 (see link); Trager, Studies in linguistics, vol 19-22 (1968), p.65 (see link); The Athenæum: A journal of literature, science, the fine arts, music, and the drama (1874), p.146 (see link); Bonfante covertly admits uncertainty in Bonfante, Etruscan life and afterlife: A handbook of Etruscan studies (1986), p.229 (see link) when she begins, "If the arrangement of dots on Etruscan dice is the same as on ours, [...]" (italic mine).

The Pompeiian diet of the poor

When reading the article Pompeii skeletons reveal secrets of Roman family life on the BBC website and the part about the diet of the poor, we're told that the diet may not have been so impoverished as one might assume. This reminds me a lot of the theory of the original affluent society.

Despite some criticisms against the idea of a relatively more leisurely ancient lifestyle in comparison to our hectic modern environment, one can hardly pretend that the excessive modern urbanization that we now have hasn't led to a large segment of our population being all too dependent on other entities to handle food gathering and production, sometimes to the point of crippling dependence. Afterall, how many of us city-folk pick our own berries, fish our own trout or grow our own radishes? Most have lost this ancient knowledge.

We most often go to grocery stores and buy the items we need. Yet we can't do this without first earning monetary tokens from someone else. We therefore struggle in dead-end, highly demanding, even mentally or physically toxic jobs just to acquire the means to obtain food and shelter. Our complete inter-reliance on apathetic strangers through a multi-layered economic system for even the most basic necessities is somewhat unique to modernity. And it's precisely our lack of personal autonomy in so many ways that makes us, in a manner of speaking, "less wealthy" than even our Roman antecedents.

We shouldn't feign too much shock at the notion that the poor in ancient times may have had a healthier diet than what we're capable of or are willing to supply our most vulnerable population despite all our showy technology and superficial symbols.

How do you say 'earthquake' in Latin?

Wikianswers gives a delightful answer to this question:

"Unfortunately the romans weren't very knowledgable and for example had no word for Volcano. They probably gave it a generic term such as Tragedy."

Hilarious! (It would be nice if this anonymous contributor was shot against a wall by a firing squad.) A more mature answer is easy to find on the Perseus website simply by looking up 'earthquake' in their Latin dictionary.

To the contrary, we see that the Romans had several terms at their disposal describing in much detail the accompanying features of their seismic tragedies. Aside from generic concussio, other terms are borrowed from Greek:

epiclintae= an earthquake with horizontal motion
mycetias = a rumbling earthquake
ostes = an earthquake with one violent shock
palmatias = a slight earthquake
rhēctae = an earthquake that breaks the earth into fissures

After being curious myself about what Romans called an earthquake, I find my curiosity only increasing. I wonder how much of these precise terms for 'earthquake' were encouraged by the obsessive study of divination and prophecy maintained by the Etruscans who had, afterall, founded Rome and who made thorough books about their oracular findings much like their Babylonian precedents.

Different kinds of triads

A variety of triads in Etruscan and Roman mythology are available to the imagination of the mythologist. Among Romanists, one speaks of a Capitoline triad (Jupiter, Juno and Minerva), an Archaic Triad (Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus) and an Avertine Triad (Ceres, Liber and Libera). Even the festival of Suovetaurilia is split in three - a sacrifice is made of a pig, a ram and a bull to Mars in order to sanctify the land. Amongst Etruscans, we can identify the Trinity of Tinia (Tinia Cilensal, Tinia Thufal, Tinia Thneth), the Trinity of Maris (Maris Husiurnana, Maris Halna, Maris Isminthians) and the Chimeric Triad (snake, lion, goat). The list seems to go on indefinitely. Our modern understanding is no doubt blurred by the mists of time and hampered by organizational laziness. There must have been a greater structure and meaning in all of this. Something clearer, more verstaile and not so complex. But what?

In my search, I find it handy to reclassify these triads into flexible categories, recognizing that these religions were so prone to creative symbolism and lateral-thinking analogy. So I'd like to suggest some helpful groupings as follows:

Solar triad:
The sun is divided into three parts: three seasons (winter, spring-summer, autumn) and three daytime periods (morning, noon, evening). Think "Father Time". This stems from the heliocentricity of Etruscan religion.

Etruscan: Tinia Cilensal, Tinia Thufal, Tinia Thneth (Trinity of Tinia); Snake, lion, goat (Chimeric Triad).

Roman: Jupiter Summanus, Jupiter Fidius, Jupiter Tonans.

Seasonal triad:
The year is divided into three seasons (winter, spring-summer, autumn) with focus on agriculture and cyclical climate changes. Think "Mother Nature".

Etruscan: Maris Husiurnana, Maris Halna, Maris Isminthians (Trinity of Maris).

Roman: Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus (Archaic Triad); Ceres, Liber and Libera (Avertine Triad).

Astral triad:
The three brightest bodies in the sky happen to be the sun, moon and Venus (in that order). Thus: Tinia the sun, Menarva the moon and Uni the planet Venus. This is a twist on the pre-existing Babylonian triad.

Etruscan: Tinia, Uni, and Menarva (Capitoline Triad).

Roman: Jupiter, Juno and Minerva (Capitoline Triad).

The poppy pops up from nowhere

In 1862, volume 94 of the publication The North American review wrote on page 384:

"We are told that the use of the common white poppy as a soother of pain and giver of sleep, has been familiar from the earliest times; and an ingenious attempt has been made to derive the name poppy, or papaver, from papa or pap, because the plant was commonly mixed with the food of young children, to secure their sleep. This is one of those etymological postulates more ingenious than probable."

Nearly a hundred-and-fifty years later, I still can't get a straight answer on the origin of Latin papāver. If it somehow were to have something to do with the nursery term pāpa for 'food' (cf. pāpārium 'pap') as implied above, and even ignoring that such a semantic link is trying in itself, how would this poppy word have been grammatically formed from such a root? There are oddly only five terms in the Latin dictionary on Perseus ending in -ver (excluding vēr itself) which could suggest that the word was loaned from elsewhere, yet if so, establishing its source so far eludes me. What a frustrating word.

Sentina, an Etruscanized Latin name

On page 269 of Tarquinia: Archeologia e prosopografia tra ellenismo e romanizzazione, Federica Chiesa explores the history of the Etruscan gens Sentina and states in Italian:

"The brief onomastic formula of this Šethre Sentina (Ta 1.202) neither presents us with ulterior data nor relevance to our knowledge of the gens, which despite the nomen of an ethnic type, boasts exclusively Tarquinian attestation. The support is uncertain."^[1]

Frankly I'm not sure what the problem is in etymologizing this name. Firstly Sentina can be securely formed from the combination of praenomen Sentiie (TLE 113: Senties 'of Sentiie') plus the suffix of appurtenance -na. This praenomen is in turn attributable to the attested Latin name Sentius.

While I haven't read this directly, I would presume that the Latin name in turn formed, as many Latin cognomina do, from a descriptive adjective. In this case, sentus 'thorny, rough, rugged' seems like a decent match. So I see nothing Etruscan in this name aside from its highly productive suffix.


NOTES
^[1] I've translated this from the Italian: "La brevissima formula onomastica di questo Šethre Sentina (Ta 1.202) non apporta dati ulteriori nè rilevanti alla nostra conoscenza della gens, che malgrado il nomen di tipo etnico, vanta attestazioni esclusivamente tarquiniesi. Il supporto è incerto."

An etymology for 'Rome'

I think I finally got it. This etymology has eluded me for a while but with so much to look up I left it on the backburner, simmering like a spicy gumbo. Nonetheless, it frustrated me at every turn. In almost every book, there's always the same answer: "unknown origin". Worse yet, some lazy etymologists tack its origin on Etruscan without any substantiation whatsoever, often without even being qualified in this language, effectively explaining one mystery with another.^[1] How convenient. However, just last night, I had a brainwave and it all seems to have fallen into place. Here's what I believe to be the most optimal solution I can muster.

I dare say the name of 'Rome' was originally Umbrian, not Etruscan nor Latin: *Rūma. It would literally have meant '(Town of) flowing waters', from *rūmōn 'river; flowing water', a securely Indo-European formation built on the root *reu- 'to flow, to run (as of liquid)' and the derivational suffix *-mo-. When we gander at an ancient dialect map, we see that the ancestors of the Umbri probably covered the area of Etruria before the arrival of the Etruscans. It also helps that an ancient name for the Tiber, the river running into Rome, was Rumon according to Servius.^[2] I can find no possible, attested root in Etruscan at all to help us unlock its meaning nor has anyone else published anything convincing and competent to this effect, so an Etruscan origin seems the least likely in all of this.

When the Etruscans finally came, they would have adopted the Umbrian name, thus Etruscan *Ruma. Note that Etruscan has no phonemic long vowels. In fact, the Etruscan language has no phonemic contrast between u and o either. Therefore, probably being pronounced [ˈɾo.mə] (assuming u in open syllables was pronounced as high-back /o/), the early Latini would have adopted it as Rōma (its original meaning in Umbrian presumably lost or obscured at this point).

Further word associations, immaterial to the debate of Rome's etymology, such as the pun with Latin rumis 'teat' created the myth of the nursing she-wolf protecting the founding twins, Romulus and Remus. Sound good? Good.


NOTES
^[1] Gessman, The tongue of the Romans: Introduction to the history of Latin and the Romance languages (1970), p.8 (see link); Pulgram, The tongues of Italy: Prehistory and history (1958), p.256 (see link).
^[2] Servius, Aeneas 8.63 (see link): "Nam hoc est Tiberini fluminis proprium, adeo ut ab antiquis Rumon dictus sit, quasi ripas ruminans et exedens."; Servius' passage is acknowledged in Partridge, Origins: An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (1977), p.2809 (see link). The fact that the author claims "more likely from Etruscan Ruma, the name of an Etruscan clan" despite being comparatively much less secure, even after already elucidating a perfectly rational and sufficient origin through Rumon, is a puzzling but typical display of obscurum per obscurius that continues to irk me as a reader.

Searching for an etymology for Germanic *handuz 'hand'

First, let's get nonsense out of the way by letting a published author state the obvious about origins of the Proto-Germanic etymon *handuz 'hand' that are most implausible yet unfortunately popular among idle hobbyists online. In the words of A. Seidenberg in km, a widespread root for ten (1976):

"The effort to relate km or kmt to *handus, or, more generally said, to see a reference to the hands in the number words, is also ad hoc: there is not the slightest evidence, apart from similar speculations on the other numbers, that the Indo-European number words are derived from finger-counting."

These comments on poor methodology are as true today as they were then, regardless of whether this old tomfoolery is resurrected on page 316 of Mallory/Adams in The Oxford introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European world (2006 ), albeit subsequently with mild argumentation against the idea.

What then is the current etymology? Apparently no consensus exists yet. For example, The Barnhart dictionary of etymology‎ (1988) says that no cognates of hand exist outside of Germanic. While it's immediately tempting to see an origin in PIE *gʰend- 'to grasp' which yielded Latin praehendere, Greek χανδάνειν and Gothic bi-gitan, formal sound correspondences between PIE and Proto-Germanic forbid us to assume a direct connection with the Germanic root. One would expect a hypothetical PIE u-stem **gʰóndus 'grasper; hand' to end up as **gantuz in Proto-Germanic but certainly not *handuz which rather suggests a non-existent PIE stem **kondʰ-u-. Evidently, these are not the plosives we're looking for and no direct link to Proto-Indo-European appears sensible.

So I had a sudden brainwave and the more I think about it the more sense it makes, although it's frustratingly hard to substantiate. Since there are already a few known Proto-Germanic terms borrowed from Latin in the early first millenium BCE after Grimm's Law had taken place (cf. Ringe, From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (2006), p.296), it makes me wonder if one of them might have been our Germanic word in question.

For this crazy idea to stick, we require a Latin word *handus, but as the reader can tell by the asterisk, it doesn't exist (at least as far as I know). On the other hand, prae-hendere 'to seize, to grasp' does indeed exist and the prefix prae- 'before' is secondary. From this implied Latin verb root *hend-, we are certainly free to muse light-heartedly on how we can obtain *handus 'grasper' from it, and very curiously, noting on how it rhymes with the attested Latin word for 'hand', manus. It taunts me with the image of a northern Germanic community with a high degree of Latin bilingualism, inventing new words and idioms out of a faraway language. If only my Germanic-influenced Latin word *handus for proper manus were attested in Roman records, I might develop something more out of this thought.

Comments on the Etusco-Latin tupi/tōfus connection

As probably some can tell by my previous explanation of the rules of this blog, I recently received a comment that irritates me for the reasons already mentioned: stubborn to facts, condemning the very act of speculation even when facts are present, and being all-in-all too stubborn to look up viewpoints that are contrary to one's own. The internet is not just a valuable tool of self-expression but a powerful tool for research. This is why I can't understand those who will take the time to comment but never take the same amount of time to do their homework. Evidently further facts need to be known by some readers here.

First, here's a portion of the aggravating comment I received in response to the connections made between Latin tōfus and Etruscan tupi but which I promptly deleted for being unnecessarily ornary and also thoroughly invalid:

"Between you claiming (with no proof) that word X is Etruscan and an ancient Roman claiming an Etruscan origin for word Y, the latter is naturally more trusted, more reliable. Let's take this way, how many scholars quote you for words claimed of Etruscan origins and how many scholars quote, let's say, Varro?"

In no uncertain terms, this naive person is evaluating statements based on popularity (ie. 'how many times they are quoted')! And notice the word "trusted". Does that mean "trusted by European society"? "Trusted by elites"? "Trusted by published scholars approved only by a handful of reknowned institutions"? "Trusted by democractic vote"? Trusted by whom? And why should we care about the trust of others when rationally evaluating for ourselves the validity of claims? Ugh, blind credentialism at its worse. Surely Varro et alia aren't trusted a priori based on valid Logic since all statements must be evaluated regardless of their source to avoid one of the most common and ugly pitfalls of reasoning referred to as argumentatum ad hominem (literally 'argument towards the person') or simply ad hominem. How can a competent reader ignore the myriad of tall tales woven by these same classical authors regarding eponymous ethnic origins and wild legends incorporating both gods and men? Ceteris paribus, authors (regardless of who they are or when they lived) can be both correct or incorrect. At face value we can't tell. So source is patently irrelevant no matter how artfully a heckler stands on his head. Nice try though. DELETE!

A related argument, invalid for the same reasons, I had already allowed through to my commentbox:

"No offense, I find far more reliable the glosses of ancient Latin authors who might have even heard Etruscan in their lifetime than the speculations of a modern blogger based on formal resemblances."

Offense or no offense, the statement is patently ridiculous for several reasons. It makes me frankly a little annoyed that the reader apparently fails to realize something he could have looked up for himself. The most important fact is that the relationship of Latin tōfus and Etruscan tupi cannot be labeled a "modern blogger speculation" at all since blogs hadn't been invented yet ** in 1932 when Fiesel's article entitled Etruskisch tupi and lateinisch tofus had been published in Studi Etruschi **! Yes, folks. This blogger speculation has been around for at least 77 years! Again, nice try but no cigar.

As far as I've personally read, this interesting connection remains unresolved which is why I find it's important to talk about it. Speculation-haters be damned. If only certain commenters stopped feeling the need to cast stones at new ideas when ironically unwilling to look up the absurdity of their own statements and views, but then maybe that would take a bit of the spice out of scholarly life. Can't have the good without the bad, I'm afraid.

Blogger lynchmobs - Get out the pitchforks!

Given recent comments, let's overtly explain what my intentions are as a blogger and how I moderate my blog against the general intrusions of internet nonsense. Paleoglot discusses comparative linguistics (most often on Proto-IE and ancient Aegean languages), but I will often speculate about things that are of interest to me based on existing facts. Please note the following:

• Fact-based speculation and random speculation are not the same nor on a par.
• Healthy fact-based skepticism is not equal to toxic absolutive skepticism based on petty feeling.
• Speculation is not a danger to Reason for those with minds sophisticated enough to separate fact from fantasy.
• In fact, without speculation, we lack a vital step in the learning process since speculation helps us reflect on the implications of new information.
• We must have clear reasons for our objections, not just for our personal conclusions.
• I reserve the right to delete comments that I deem unconstructive (whether abusive, factless or downright nutty).
• I don't distinguish trolls from genuine but stubbornly ignorant persons - both are unworthy to have voice in an academic forum. (ie. This isn't a kindergarten.)

There are no quicker ways to make my trigger-happy finger delete your comment, besides being insulting to other commenters, than to have people repeat facts and references over and over, chastise me for merely blogging/speculating/expressing, or reducing one's rebuttals to vacuous denials of facts presented without further substantiation.

The origin of the cityname Arretium still bugs me

This etymological puzzle is starting to consume my daily thoughts. The Etruscan name for Arretium, as I mentioned earlier, appears to be Aritim, at least according to Steinbauer^[1]. I now think he's correct. However, if this is so, any distinctly Etruscan connection that Pallottino had claimed existed between the Roman urbonym Arretium and the modern German word for 'ore', Erz, is smashed. Yet there are more nagging details about these etymologies that I just don't find convincing.

For example, the claim that the Germanic words for 'ore' derive from Arretium seems like the reverse of what I personally would deduce from the evidence. It's the Germanic terms that are shorter than the name from which they purportedly derive, afterall, and this is mightily suspect to me. One would almost reckon instead that the name of Arretium derived from the Germanic words for 'ore'. And why not? It seems to me that Etruscologists are obsessed with the thought that Arretium must have been founded by Etruscans. Yet beyond the fact that the city was Etruscan from the most ancient historical times, what evidence exists that the Etruscans also established it in prehistory as opposed to taking it over from indigenous peoples like the Italic or Germanic population? All I see so far is a city positioned remotely in the interior of Italy in the northernmost region of Etruria that by all accounts has been shaped from the earliest times by not only Etruscans, but Italic-speaking and Germanic-speaking populations as well.

So I was thinking the other day, “What if 'Arretium' was originally a Germanic name?” It's a delicious thought that I can't pass up. I'm tempted to posit a form like *Arutjōn signifying 'Ore Town' (< *arutja- 'ore' plus derivational suffix *-ōn as in *bijōn- 'bee'). The city was known for its bronze and so such a name would be apt. From there, Latin-speaking people could have assimilated the name as Arretium very easily. The Etruscans would in turn have borrowed it directly from the Latin speakers, as indicated by the word-final -m. Aritim is not an analysable name in Etruscan terms, so I'm entirely convinced that it's a foreign name one way or another and that regardless of the Etruscan political history of this town, the whole thing is making me believe that the cultural mix of Arretium in prehistoric times was much more complex than currently appreciated.


NOTES
^[1] Steinbauer, "Zur Grabinschrif der Larthi Cilnei aus Aritim/Arretium/Arezzo", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 121 (1998), p.263–281 (see pdf).

Arretium versus German Erz and how this affects (or doesn't affect) Etruscan Aritimi

I found more odd gibberish from the Etruscologist Massimo Pallottino the other day. This time it's a claim of his that the cityname of a Roman city, Arretium, is in some way connected with German Erz 'ore'^[1].

This ties in to my ongoing dilemma concerning whether Aritimi in TLE 737 means 'Artemis' or 'in Arretium'. Larissa Bonfante and Erika Simon continue to publish the claim that Aritimi points to 'Artemis' instead^[2]. I have to say that I'm really finding that the status quo view that Aritimi and Artume are the same word to be implausible due to phonetic incongruence between the two terms, if not due to contextual issues as well. I've currently come to the conclusion that we have two different words with similar sounds: Aritim 'Arretium' (a Roman city) and Artume 'Artemis', the latter being obviously borrowed from the Greek name Artemis. In another Etruscan inscription^[3], a phrase reads An Aritimi meani arasince and appears to me to mean 'She (an) was raised (arasince) in Arretium (Aritimi) in youth (meani)'. There's no way that I can see on the other hand how I might be able to fit the value 'Artemis' in that sentence without it sounding contrived. And thus, these experts have lied to me again! Grrr!!!

What has held me back from splitting these two terms into separate entries so far is the phrase Aritimi-pi Turan-pi of TLE 45 which has been traditionally claimed to mean 'to Artemis and to Turan'. Without a picture available to me, I can't yet prove for myself whether the reading is correct but the letters of the Etruscan text are transcribed this way by the invaluable Helmut Rix in Etruskische Texte (1991). Grammatically, it seems to me that -pi is a postclitic with a locative connotation, much like -θi 'in'. It's elsewhere used with the oblique case form of the first person singular pronoun mi, hence mini-pi (note TLE 12 and TLE 13) which probably means 'by me'. Note however that if the translation of the aforementioned phrase were correct, we'd expect the presence of the conjunctive -c attached to the last member of the pair to convey 'and'. Considering its absence, there's reasonable doubt that the translation may be incorrect. Conversely, nothing stops me from applying the value of 'Arretium' here. The idea of Aritimi-pi Turan-pi meaning 'before Turan in Arretium' makes more grammatical sense to me. Afterall, in this way, we may then pluck out the noun phrase Aritimi Turan, which would be an epithet meaning 'Turan in Arretium' (note TLE 393: Selvanzl Enizpe-tla = 'To Selvans in (the city) Enispe'). From there, the application of a case ending or postclitic to both members of such a noun phrase is perfectly acceptable in Etruscan, as well as in Lemnian (Hulaie-śi Φukiasi-ale 'to Hulaie the Phocaean'). Sufficed to say then, I will be updating my database in the next draft modification in July so hold on tight.

Back to Pallottino's claim, if Aritim can thereby be kosherly translated as the cityname Arretium as some scholars have already previously published^[4], then how does Pallottino get from Aritim to German Erz? From what I see, he's just made another crazy claim without linguistic justification. The word Erz has also been attributed to a Proto-Germanic root *arutaz. Even so, if Aritim really meant 'Arretium', it surely is borrowed from Latin Arrētium, and has nothing at all to do with the Germanic terms for 'ore' because the second vowel, *-u- (as in OHG aruzzi), is incongruous with the phonetic reality of both the Latin and Etruscan terms. So these weakly researched comparisons between Indo-European languages and Etruscan simply have to go, I'm afraid. Caveat pensator.


NOTES
^[1] Pallottino, The Etruscans (1975), p.95 (see link): "Such contacts between Germany and Etruria are confirmed by the German word Erz, 'metal', which comes from the name of the Etruscan city of Arrētium, Arezzo, famous for its working on metal.".
^[2] Bonfante/Bonfante, The Etruscan Language: An Introduction (2002), p.80 (see link). Erika Simon merely parrots the same in De Grummond/Simon, The religion of the Etruscans (2006), p.46 (see link).
^[3] Steinbauer, "Zur Grabinschrif der Larthi Cilnei aus Aritim/Arretium/Arezzo", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 121 (1998), p.263–281 (see pdf).
^[4] See for example Steinbauer, "Zur Grabinschrif der Larthi Cilnei aus Aritim/Arretium/Arezzo", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 121 (1998), p.263–281 (see pdf). On the website etruskische.de, Steinbauer's translation is also asserted.

The celestial bodies Etruscan-style

I'm not updating my blog as frequently as I'd like to. As I said, crazy stuff is happening in my offline life and, well, let's just say that karma owes me bigtime at this point. Grrr. Anyways, I'm so distracted by things that I'm almost at a loss for content and the only thing that's springing to mind is the connection of the classically-known celestial bodies to Etruscan deities. What the hell, let's talk about it.

When you look at the days of the week, you'll notice that each day was originally associated with a deity. In English, the names of the week are based on Germanic mythos (Sunday = day of the sun, Monday = day of the moon, Tuesday = day of Tiw, Wednesday = day of Woden, Thursday = day of Thor, Friday = day of Frige and Saturday = day of Saturn). In French, the gods associated with each day are functionally the same but are derived from Roman mythology instead (Dimanche = day of the Sun, Lundi = day of the Moon, Mardi = day of Mars, Mercredi = day of Mercury, Jeudi = day of Jove, Vendredi = day of Venus, Samedi = day of Saturn). The symbolism of 'seven' was long ago associated with the seven known celestial bodies since the times of Babylon. In Roman terms, we see the following order Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. Each are represented by the Roman gods Sol, Diana, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn respectively.

So in that light, I have a simple question that still vexes my brain: What deities did the Etruscans associate with each of these known celestial bodies? Surely they must had some similar belief system of the cosmos as that of the contemporaneous cultures surrounding them. Further, if we are so bold as to reconstruct these seven celestial deities, how can we be sure that the connections that we propose are correct ones even when based on the existing artifacts? Are there subtle symbolisms on mirrors and paintings that might give us a hint, and how can we be sure of any of our interpretations?

Finding structure in the Piacenza Liver despite academic claptrap - Part 4

(Continued from Finding structure in the Piacenza Liver despite academic claptrap - Part 3.)

I know it's been a few days between Part 3 and this latest sequel but I haven't forgetten the next topic that I want to cover. It's a large one. In fact, I feel it's my duty to write about this because it's a topic that everyone else seems to conveniently forget. I want to get serious and start exploring how Etruscan religion relates to Near-Eastern traditions and I'm perturbed that I don't find this topic covered by so-called experts in the field.


Etruscologists still clueless about the big-picture of Mediterranean history

Doing a quick search for “Babylonian haruspicy” in Google Books shows me that academics knew about this curious ancient science to the east involving the gruesome inspection of sheep's livers to divine the future as far back as 1897. We can see Kroeber's published quotes on Babylonians inspecting omens from animal livers in 1923 who claims that it was Babylonians who invented the practice^[1]. To put that in chronological context, Kroeber's words were put to print years before either of my grandfathers even hit puberty yet. It's safe to say then that the knowledge of Near-Eastern haruspicy is a centuries-old fact and that since the Piacenza Liver was discovered in 1877^[2], there was more than a full century for even the most pitiful academic to realize that the entire basis of Etruscan religion was imported into Italy from the Near East. Indeed, it was discovered long ago - the Near-Eastern origin of haruspicy is readily available in general reference books such as Encyclopedia Britannica.

Yet, as of 2006, De Grummond in Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend^[3] (much like Pallottino in The Etruscans (1975) before her) has the gull to waste her readers time attempting unsuccessfully to illucidate Etruscan haruspicy not through our well-established knowledge of the identical practice in Babylon and Western Anatolia, but by devoting several pages to a most obscure allegory created by our poetic friend, Martianus Capella. This, despite it being quite clear that the main focus of his work De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii was to paint an allegory about eloquence and the love of learning, purposely personified by the two subjects of the wedding scene: Mercury and Philology^[4]. It's hardly a trustworthy, first-hand account of Etruscan haruspicy when compared to the Babylonian artifact from Sippar whose picture I've shown in Part 1. I wonder if De Grummond knows how ironic she appears when she effectively bastardizes Capella's emphasis on learning and uses it for its exact opposite, ignorance and obscurity. This 'mystery-mongering' is no different from the food industry that markets 'flavour' at the expense of nutritive substance. Whatever the shallow reason behind it, the continued avoidance of Near-Eastern religion to better explain the Piacenza Liver combined with emphases on the most obscure references around is fishy.

Even though Capella was most probably influenced by Etruscan mythology because of his references to a 16-part sky and deities “living” in these sectioned celestial spaces, we can hardly be certain what parts of his account were based on Etruscan religious tradition and what originated purely from his own imagination. While some Etruscologists persist on making Catha (as found on the Piacenza Liver) equivalent to Capella's Solis Filia 'daughter of the Sun', we should take this idle theorizing with a grain of salt. There's no proof that Capella's account must correlate 100% with what we find on the Piacenza Liver at all. Why should it? I hardly think that Capella's purpose behind De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii was to make an accurate historical account of Etruscan religion so why should we read it without reserved skepticism?


The key to Etruscan haruspicy is in Western Anatolian religion

Let's cut to the chase. The extraction of livers specifically from sheep to divine the future is so bizarre and yet so specific that it's clear that the practice that many would describe as so typically Etruscan can only be an import from the Near East. Yet if we accept that such important things like the Etruscan alphabet and haruspicy are both exogenous, what then is left which can be said to be autochthonous to Italy and which is still identifiably Etruscan? To be even more blunt: If the entire haruspical tradition is from the Near East and related closely with Babylonian or Hittite religion which share the same practices, then why aren't Etruscologists doing the sensible thing and putting away their childish toys (namely Capella's fictitious poetry) and picking up a book on Babylonian or Hittite divination practices in order to understand Etruscan religion more competently?

Adding two and two isn't hard here: Etruscan religion is effectively Western Anatolian religion because Etruscan ancestry lied largely in the former lands of Arzawa. So how then do the practices of Etruscan tradition relate to Babylonian practices? How do the gods of Etruria and the structure of the Etruscan pantheon relate to Babylonian and Hittite views?


NOTES
[1] Kroeber, Anthropology (1923), p.209 (see link).
[2] Haarmaan, Early Civilization and Literacy in Europe: An Inquiry Into Cultural Continuity in the Mediterranean World (1996), p.162 (see link).
[3] De Grummond, Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend (2006), p.49 (see link).
[4] McKeon/McKeon/Swenson, Selected Writings of Richard McKeon (1998), p.220 (see link).

Finding structure in the Piacenza Liver despite academic claptrap - Part 3

(Continued from Finding structure in the Piacenza Liver despite academic claptrap - Part 2.)

Now, you may wonder what difference it makes that the 16 sections on the border can be cleverly reduced to 14 so that there are seven deities on either side. Some of you may have read much on these 16 regions of the sky and presumed that this was just a twin-doubling of the quadridirectional sky. So if you start with the almost-universal "4-direction model" of the cosmos, ancient philosophers might have decided to double that scheme to eight directions at some point. And then by doubling it again, we get the 16 directions that the Etruscans worshipped. Why then should we be entertaining my crazy insight above if it contradicts this one? The great thing about religious artifacts is that their symbolism is normally rich with layers and history. There would be no contradiction in believing that both ideas are correct at once, that 16 divisions are merely a quadrupling of an earlier 4-direction cosmos and that the 16 deities placed on the rim of the liver model were once 14 in number. You see, while the 16-direction cosmos simply originates from a general floorplan of the cosmos, the 14 original gods I suggest may stem from mythological tales instead. At some point, we might presume that these 14 gods were made to "fit" a 16-direction cosmos by tripling Tinia, the head god of the pantheon. Tripling him had the benefit of not only linking the divided skies with the existing pantheon, but it also cleverly made it clear the immense importance he was given over all other gods, as their leader.


The connection between the outer and inner 'houses' has its limits

I wish I didn't have to say something so obvious, but the rim which lists 16 gods is largely seperate from the inner regions of the Piacenza liver model. The outer regions really only pertain to the sky and this logically means that they pertain not to haruspicy itself but rather to other known forms of divination in Etruria, namely auspicy (i.e. the interpretation of the movement of birds for omens) and brontoscopy (i.e. the interpretation of lightning as omen). It is the inner regions that directly impact on haruspicy and probably have little bearing to the other forms of divination. Since the model cleverly combines all of these divination practices together into a cosmological model, Etruscologists are left to try to piece together how it all interrelates and how it's all different. In my view so far, the purpose of this model by its creator ended at combining these divinatory practices together into a single model as a brief artistic statement of how these practices are connected by way of uncovering the future, but we're no doubt asking too much of the model to provide us with signs of their interrelationships on top of this.

When Nancy De Grummond writes "There are an additional 24 houses (nos. 17-40) on the interior of the Liver and it is not certain exactly how these relate to the 16 regions."^[1], it would appear that she's too mentally removed from the fundamental purpose and meaning of this artifact just as an autistic person is detached from the full meaning of his or her surroundings. Maybe that was a politically incorrect analogy for some of you but it gets my point across quickly.^[2]

To sum up then, we can just say that the outer regions are for auspicy and brontoscopy while the inner regions are for haruspicy. Simple? Good.

Usil and Tivr inscribed underneath are not part of the model!!!

There is a common assumption by current scholars that usils and tivr, two lonely words inscribed beneath the model, are to be counted along with the other regions on the top side of the model.^[3] Upon my own reflections on this artifact, I can now assert confidently that this is false. For one thing, if this were true, we'd expect that both words would be marked in the genitive, but only one is (usil-s) while the other is in the unmarked nominative case (tivr). This assumption is even more empty because it's only based on an older erroneous assumption that the word usil must mean "sun". To add to the dubiousness of that claim, the word came to first be connected with "sun" words in Indo-European like Sabine ausel (< PIE *séh₂wl̥) before it was realized that Etruscan just isn't an Indo-European language. Sadly, this lie is still propogated in modern books. The only "proof" offered in favour of this hypothesis are a couple of mirrors that show a man named Usil with an aura on his head (see pic), but of course an aura doesn't conclusively prove that this character is automatically a sun god (as opposed to, say, a god of sunset, god of light, god of a particular star, etc., etc., etc.). If this is all university academics can come up with, we need to start failing more students.

The fact is that the word cannot sensibly have that value in the Liber Linteus texts where we find the word and its derivatives in reasonable abundance. I feel safe in the value I've now given usil as "setting (of the sun, moon or stars)"^[4]. If you pay attention to the results of my dictionary pdf, you may in fact have already figured out what the phrase tivr usils refers to. However for now, keep in mind that the line on the underside merely signifies an east-west line (the decumanus) that is meant to divide the top side of the artifact into two distinct halves of north and south. And to add historical intrigue, let's just musingly say that if you knew what that phrase meant, as I do now, you would see why it turns Etruscan haruspicy "upside-down", so to speak. Hehe. I'll explain more on this funny story later perhaps.

(Continue reading Finding structure in the Piacenza Liver despite academic claptrap - Part 4.)


NOTES
[1] De Grummond, Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend (2006), p.49 (see link).
[2] A silly question on the side: Is there a connection between the isolationist, narrow-focus "ivory tower" mindset of university academics and the behavioural characteristics observed in autism spectrum disorders? I smell a thesis!
[3] Bonfante, Etruscan Life and Afterlife: A Handbook of Etruscan Studies (1986), p.224 (see link). See also De Grummond's commentary and drawing of the underside of the artifact in De Grummond, Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend, (2006), p.44 (see link).
[4] I already wrote my in-depth reasons as to why equating usil with "sun" is impossible in my March 2007 entry entitled Etruscan 'usil': It ain't the "sun".

Finding structure in the Piacenza Liver despite academic claptrap - Part 2

(Continued from Finding structure in the Piacenza Liver despite academic claptrap - Part 1.)

I want to get beyond the same old explanation of the Piacenza Liver that I consider woefully insufficient in this day and age. To me, republishing information that is both several decades old and that continues to be filled with unanswered questions for so long is inexcusably shameful. I naturally start thinking that authors who do this are more concerned with social acceptance, fame and money than with rational honesty in the topic they represent. I'm sick and tired of reading a nauseatingly identical account of the Etruscan religion no matter what book I read. It seems this is the prevailing trend and the anti-scientific, self-defeatist excuse is always the same: "Etruscans are a mystery. We may never know". Speaking idealistically at least, scholars who are true scholars are captivated by their own study. They have a passion for it. Their love of learning compels them to find better answers and to search out new discoveries, not to play a game of Academic Telephone and effectively plagiarize the works of one's antecedents without even a shred of enlightened commentary to add. Perhaps it's believed that the average layman won't notice that few new ideas have really been published on Etruscan civilization since at least the 1970s. Few really care about Etruscans, the people. The only thing that makes headlines is their "mystery"; the popular media dehumanizes our ancestors all the time like this and in the process dehumanizes us.

So these rants are for those few that are genuinely bored with the "same ol' explanation" and want to finally connect the dots about what Etruscan cosmology is really all about. Let's talk first about some important and fascinating patterns that we may readily see in the Piacenza Liver artifact but which don't make their way into print for reasons that are beyond me.

The unspoken asymmetry

Goddess know's why, but for some reason, academics have failed to clue in that their nicely drawn diagrams that purportedly show a sky divided into sixteen equal parts, additionally cross-correlated with Martianus Capella's strange poetry about the cosmos, are not reflecting the material reality of the artifact that it was originally meant to explain. A picture is worth a thousand words, so let me draw you my own diagram of the issue that I'm talking about:


Evidently there is a snag in the status quo model but mum's the word about this blatant asymmetry in any literature on the topic. (The Academic Game of Telephone, as I said earlier. No one wants to be the nail that gets hammered down afterall.) The reason why the usual model can't explain it is because they keep ignoring, sometimes purposely due to nationalistic rhetoric, the fact that haruspicy was brought to Italy from Western Anatolia (modernday Turkey but known in ancient times as Arzawa) and that its traditions are steeped in Babylonian worldview as I made crystal clear using poignant photos in Part 1. Rather than acknowledge this simple fact, you may notice that De Grummond, Jannot, Pallottino, Bonfante and most other Etruscologists try far too hard to drag in Roman and Greek materials no matter how irrelevant to distract us from the importance that Ancient Near East religions play in breaking the largely artificial mystery of Etruscan religion.

It's rather interesting to me in a mathematical sense that once we count the sections labeled Tin Cilen, Tin Thuf and Tins Thne (situated in the "north" of the model) as merely three aspects of a single deity, one of these naughty asymmetries disappears and we end up with seven deities equally distributed on both sides of the east-west axis. Of course, the assymetry of the cardo line may require a more involved explanation that historians narrowly educated in only Greco-Roman history are probably not qualified to provide us.

(Continue reading Finding structure in the Piacenza Liver despite academic claptrap - Part 3.)

Finding structure in the Piacenza Liver despite academic claptrap - Part 1

I have an inkling to revisit the Etruscan Piacenza Liver artifact after reading some painful passages from a recently published book by Nancy De Grummond. I think I have a few new insights now and I need to speak out.



Reading De Grummond is like fingers to a chalkboard for me

"A good bit is known about the Etruscan concept of the structure of heaven and the location of the gods in the universe," or so exaggerates Nancy De Grummond in Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend^[1]. The cold truth however is quite different and soon after she undermines her authority on the subject, as have others before her who are similarly over-boastful: "Roman writers tell us the names of six of the gods who might throw lightning, using Latin designations: [...] We do not know who the other three were." I guess we don't know "a good bit" afterall unless "a good bit" is meant to signify "a subatomic crumb". These nine gods, the novensiles by all accounts (Roman accounts, at least) are part of the basic structure of the Etruscan worldview. So if we don't know their names or what their functions were, what in Hades' name do any of us know about Etruscan beliefs? Keep in mind that De Grummond is the same academic who claims that the gender of Etruscan deities are often "ambiguous"^[2], implying that she feels she can simply conceive of Etruscan deities however it suits her arguments. As such, she has convinced me that she has an anarchistic streak that has contempt for finding structure in ancient religion. But then again, so do all the other Etruscologists since how else can we explain how it's possible for so many experts to spin in the mud for decades without producing any real breakthrough in our understanding of Etruscan language and culture? I remain a hardened skeptic for a reason.

Going beyond academic claptrap

So in order to get passed this new-agey, anti-structure nonsense, we need to do some damage control. First off, it's naive to rely solely on Martianus Capella as De Grummond does to fill pages in her book. He was Roman, for one thing, not Etruscan, and he flourished in the fifth century CE, long after the Etruscans had been culturally assimilated into the Roman majority. Whatever Capella knew about Etruscan religion was second-hand knowledge at best. This is not to say that he can say nothing about Etruscan religion, but we do need to examine that poetic text with a bit of caution.

While De Grummond is too busy copy-and-pasting De Nuptiis Philologiae Et Mercurii (On the Marriage of Mercury and Philology) without any sort of insightful commentary, the rest of us should first be looking at the Piacenza Liver itself to see what it says about the structure of the Etruscan cosmos, before gazing onward to outside sources for potential red herrings. Second of all, her overreliance on Greco-Roman factoids to crack the Etruscan mystery makes it seem as though she is genuinely ignorant of the simple fact that the practice of haruspicy is derived neither from Italy nor from Greece but from the Near East. It's really dizzying to me to think that an "expert" has failed to learn this. So in effect, she looks to the wrong cultures when she should be making comparisons to Hittite and Babylonian religion. She's so wildly off the mark that it's hard for me to read her books without grumbling under my breath. When you note the similarity of the Piacenza Liver with a Babylonian artifact dated to the early second millenium (shown below), you'll understand where my tormented frustration is coming from in regards to De Grummond's research skills.


The connection between the Babylonian artifact and the Etruscan artifact is clear and undeniable. So I think there might be a more advanced way to look at the Piacenza Liver that brings in line various modern facts of ancient history and in a way that's more comprehensive.

(Continue reading Finding structure in the Piacenza Liver despite academic claptrap - Part 2.)

NOTES
^[1] De Grummond, Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend (2006), p.44 (see link).
^[2] See De Grummond/Simon, The Religion of the Etruscans (2006), p.3: "It expresses vividly the Etruscan tendency to be vague or ambivalent about the gender and other characteristics of a particular deity."

Selvans Canzate: a 'pure guess'

Today, let's compare contradictory statements from two people and see who wins the argument. Think of it as an entertaining cockfight in the streets of Chennai. Place your bets, people! In the quotes below, I highlight important statements in red font. Larissa Bonfante and her father cowrote the following in The Etruscan Language: An Introduction, Revised Editon (2002), p.205:

• "Selvans (Silvanus) - The Etruscan name of the god, which perhaps comes from the Latin, appears twice on the Piacenza Liver, once next to that of Fufluns, near Letham. He was worshipped: many votive offerings, in particular bronze statuettes, bear inscriptions with dedications to Selvans. He is referred to with a variety of epithets: canzate, enizpeta, sanchuneta. Most interesting is the dedication to Selvansl Tularias, 'Selvans of the Boundaries' (Source 50), since the principal function of Selvans seems to be the protection of boundaries. He does not appear in scenes of Greek mythology."

To say that it "perhaps" comes from Latin is like saying, in my view, that evolution "perhaps" exists. Selvans assuredly comes from Latin Silvanus which is in turn formed from a Latin word silva "forest" and that would help explain why he does not appear in Greek mythological scenes, right? Alas, I sigh, but no matter. Let's continue on and see what Tim Cornell says in The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-265 BC) (1995), p.46:

• "For example, a bronze votive statuette in the British Museum bears the following dedication to the god Selvans:
  
  ecn turce larthi lethanei alpnu selvansl canzate
  
  ('this gave Larthi Lethanei a gift(?) to Selvans Canzate(?)'). Scholars disagree about the meaning of alpnu, some preferring an adverb ('gladly') to a direct object ('gift'), while the meaning of the final word is completely unknown. That it is a divine epithet is a pure guess."

Oh-oh. A pure guess, you say? Does that mean that Etruscan specialists like Bonfante, De Grummond, Pallottino and a cornucopia of other noteworthy names backing up the idea of this Selvans Canzate are just blowing a lot of hot air? That's a delicious idea! I like it! Tim Cornell is a professor and specialist of Roman history, teaching out of the University of Manchester, so you'd think that he can tell a fact from a conjecture better than anyone. I for one believe that he can and has.