EPIGRAPHIC SOURCES

Lucretius implied the composition of intricate formulae in Etruscan verse scrolls (retro volventem carmina, “songs from scrolls unrolled backwards”, since Etruscan was written right-to-left 7.381-2).

Virtually all long Etruscan texts are religious in theme; most are fragmentary and can only be partially translated (see L. Bonfante 2006). The Capua “tile” (ET TC, ca. 480 BCE), a ritual calendar of archaic type once posted in a necropolis sanctuary outside Capua, was part of a stacked set of terracotta plaques; its miniature inscription is written such that the plaque (or its reader) must be turned 180 degrees to read alternate lines. It names specific sacrifices and offerings to be performed on given dates (March-October preserved, see Cristofani 1995).

The Zagreb linen book (“Liber linteus”, ET LL; van der Meer 2007; Turfa 2008) was discovered in Egypt, torn into strips and wrapped on a young woman’s mummy (first c. BCE). Funerary images show folded linen books on the biers of priests and on a bedside chest in the Tomb of the Reliefs at Cerveteri (Roncalli 1980, 1985). Although woven as early as the fourth century, the book’s script is dated ca. 200-150 BCE, and associated with the region of Perugia. Dates are preserved from June to September for animal sacrifices, food offerings and other ceremonies for several gods, including Nethuns, Thesan, Tin, Vetis/Veive, Satr and Uni (Neptune, Dawn, Jupiter, Veiovis, Saturn, Juno).

For the city cult of “the sacred priesthood of the citadel and of the community” (van der Meer 2007: 51-4) priests are instructed hathrthi repinthi-c sacnicleri Roman ritual ploughing to mark off the pomerium, a city’s religious boundary (Edlund-Berry 2006).

Stones or cippi inscribed with symbolic surveyor’s crosshairs, or the word tular, “boundary marker”, are found in Etruria and Adriatic Italy, and also near Carthage, where Etruscans exiled by Sulla had settled (Rendeli 1993; Steingraber 2000: 302; Bonfante & Bonfante 2002: 183-5). The tular markers and Cortona tablet all pre-date the Social War (90-88 BCE) and first-century Roman land reforms, and constitute evidence for a strong tradition of limitatio (cultic rituals for determining and sanctifying the division and apportionment of land) unbroken since the archaic period. A third-century cippus from Cortona (ET Co 8.2), inscribed twice with the phrase tular rasnal (“boundaries of the Etruscan people”), links this practice with the state and ethnic identity (Lambrechts 1970; Morandi 1987-8; Edlund-Berry 2006).