Content area
Full Text
Le lamine di Pyrgi: Le bilingue etrusco-fenicia e il problema delle origini etrusche. By SERGIO BATTAGLINI. Rome: IL CALAMO, 2001. Pp. 86, euro12.91 (paper).
This brief book is ultimately an essay in linguistic taxonomy. Its chief concern is to place the Etruscan language in relation to Caucasian and Indo-European by solving lexical problems in the longer and shorter Etruscan texts from Pyrgi. The second chapter, concerning the Etruscan texts, is the longest (30 pages). The third chapter, on the Phoenician text, assumes fairly close equivalencies between the two versions. A brief fourth chapter compares the longer and shorter Etruscan texts and reconsiders the identification of the deity to whom the dedication was made. The fifth chapter briefly summarizes the author's position on the classification of the Etruscan language. The bibliography (twenty-one items) is followed by hand drawings and transliterations of the three texts. Facing p. 10 is a color plate showing legible images of the three gold lamina.
The author's starting point is the theory of transitional languages advanced by the influential Italian linguist Alfredo Trombetti (1866-1929). According to Battaglini, Trombetti categorized Etruscan as a transitional language linking the Caucasian family...