Table of Contents
The Etruscans ruled much of Italy before Rome, and their language was long a puzzle. On this site they are rarely the main subject, but they keep appearing in comparisons: Donnelly sets their arches, bronzes, temples and funeral customs beside those of America and Egypt, Scott-Elliot places them among the Atlantean races, and others link them with the Sea Peoples. I gathered those comparisons here.
Atlantean kin
In Scott-Elliot’s scheme, the Etruscans descend from the Akkadians, the Atlantean race that spread east from the Mediterranean. On The Story of Atlantis he writes:
The early Etruscans, the Phœnicians, including the Carthaginians and the Shumero-Akkads, were branches of this race, while the Basques of to-day have probably more of the Akkadian than of any other blood which flows in their veins.
W. Scott-Elliot, The Story of Atlantis
Donnelly takes a different route to a similar place. On The Oldest Son of Noah he calls them “that mysterious people” whose bronze implements agreed exactly in style with those he thought came from Atlantis, and he reports Isaac Taylor’s paper on Etruscan numerals: two dice found in a tomb carried words instead of pips, and those words matched the first six numbers of the Altaic branch of the Turanian languages. The oldest son of Noah sums this up as placing the Etruscans in the Turanian family.
Arches and bronze
The false arch is Donnelly’s favorite comparison. On The Central American and Mexican Colonies he quotes Rawlinson:
Etruscan vaults are of two kinds. The more curious and probably the most ancient are false arches, formed of horizontal courses of stone, each a little overlapping the other
Rawlinson, Origin of Nations, quoted by Ignatius Donnelly
The Story of Atlantis and Karnak both note that this kind of arch is identical in Central America, in the oldest buildings of Greece and in Etruscan remains. The Bronze Age in Europe adds that Etruscan bronzes contained lead, unlike the pure bronzes the Phoenicians traded to the north, and that the Etruscans knew iron. On The Egyptian Colony, Etruscan gold jewellery is ranked with the Egyptian and Greek as the finest of the ancients.
Temples, divination and the dead
On The antiquity of some of our great inventions, Donnelly notes that divination was the “ars Etrusca”, and that the Etruscans set their temples squarely to the cardinal points, as did the Egyptians, the Mexicans and the Mound Builders. The Indentity of the Civilizations of the Old World and the New finds the Etruscan belief that evil spirits fought over the dead among the Mosquito Indians, and The Irish Colonies from Atlantis compares the Irish wake with the funeral feasts of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans.
Gods, Sea Peoples and a bear
Poseidon names Nethuns as the Etruscan sea god, later merged with Poseidon and Neptune. The Sea Peoples and the Philistines suggests that the Tjeker may have been related to the Trojans or the Etruscans of Italy. The name even reaches the animals: How the Bear Lost His Tail traces cave bears and brown bears back to the Etruscan bear, Ursus etruscus.
Related pages
- The Story of Atlantis
- The Oldest Son of Noah
- The Central American and Mexican Colonies
- The Bronze Age in Europe
- The antiquity of some of our great inventions
- The Indentity of the Civilizations of the Old World and the New
- The Sea Peoples and the Philistines
- Poseidon
For every page I tagged with Etruscans, see the Etruscans tag archive.
