Cube of Tuscania
The Cubes of Tuscania (formerly the Cubes of Toscanella ) are two Etruscan artifacts from the 5th to 1st centuries BC. And served as dice . The cubes were named after their probable place of origin Tuscania and are now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris . The number of eyes is engraved on the dice as numerals in Etruscan script . In this respect, the dice are of great importance for the deciphering of Etruscan numerals and the classification of the Etruscan language .
discovery
The cubes were discovered by Domenico Campanari in February 1848 and come from Tuscania or neighboring Vulci . Both places are in the Italian region of Lazio and were important Etruscan settlements. Tuscania was called Toscanella from the Middle Ages until 1911. The dice then came into the possession of Honoré Théodoric d'Albert de Luynes (1802–1867), who bequeathed them to the French state in 1862 as a gift. Since then, the dice have been kept in the National Library of France under the archive names Luynes.816 and Luynes.817 . The dice were first mentioned and described in 1848 in the Bullettino dell'Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica .
description
The cubes are made of ivory and have an edge length of about 2.4 cm, whereby the edges are of different lengths and their dimensions vary from 2.3 to 2.5 cm. The dice therefore only roughly correspond to a geometric cube . The side surfaces are not squares and any opposite sides have almost the same shape and size. With regard to their arrangement on the side surfaces and the writing, the engravings on both cubes are identical. They are the only Etruscan dice that have characters and not eyes engraved on them.
Inscriptions
The inscriptions are in Etruscan script . The letters are arranged from right to left according to Etruscan writing habits. Since the Etruscans adopted the letters from a Western Greek alphabet , deciphering them is not a problem. The inscriptions on opposite sides form a total of three pairs, which are transcribed:
thu - huth | zal - mach | ci - śa.
Letters in the engraved form were from the 5th to the 1st century BC. In use. However, the meaning of the numerals cannot be stated immediately, because there is a lack of bilingualism in which a text with numerals is written in Etruscan and in another language, and there is also no Etruscan text in which numbers are simultaneously written in numerals with digits and appear in numeric words with letters.
interpretation
The following overview shows the assignments of numerals to numbers from 1 to 6 by different authors.
| author | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4th | 5 | 6th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bullettino (1848) | do | thu | zal | huth | ci | śa |
| Alf Torp (1905) | thu | zal | ci | śa | do | huth |
| Emil Goldmann (1929) | do | thu | ci | śa | huth | zal |
| Hans Lorenz Stoltenberg (1943) | thu | zal | ci | huth | do | śa |
| Karl Olzscha (1957) | thu | zal | ci | huth | do | śa |
| Ambros Smart (1969) | thu | zal | ci | śa | do | huth |
| Mauro Cristofani (1973) | thu | zal | ci | huth? | do | śa? |
| Angelo Savelli (1976) | thu | huth | zal | do | ci | śa |
| Massimo Pallottino (1984) | thu | zal | ci | huth? | do | śa? |
| Helmut Rix (1985) | thu | zal | ci | huth | do | śa |
| Alessandro Morandi (1991) | thu | zal | ci | huth | do | śa |
| Luciano Agostiniani (1995) | thu | zal | ci | śa | do | huth |
| Massimo Pittau (1997) | thu | zal | ci | huth | do | śa |
| Bonfante and Bonfante (2002) | thu | zal | ci | śa | do | huth |
The identification of thu with 1, zal with 2, ci with 3 and mach with 5. Correspondingly, on both dice there is 1 opposite huth, 2 opposite 5, and 3 opposite śa. The two most common arrangements of opposing numbers in Etruscan dice are (1–6, 2–5, 3–4) and (1–2, 3–4, 5–6) and follow the addition rule “The sum of the pips is 7” and the Subtraction rule "The eye difference is 1". The subtraction rule could only apply if huth is neither 4 nor 6, but 2, as Savelli (1976) suspected. If the inscriptions follow the rule of sums, huth can be identified with 6 and śa with 4.
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Numerical values according to the addition rule "The total is 7"
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Numerical values according to the subtraction rule "The eye difference is 3"
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However, the order of the numbers could also follow a different rule. According to Olzscha (1957) the identification of huth with 4 and śa with 6 with (1–4, 2–5, 3–6) would fulfill a subtraction rule of the form “The eye difference is 3”. This is supported by the fact that other Etruscan cube types were found. However, in southern Etruria , where the two dice come from, only dice with the arrangements (1–6, 2–5, 3–4) or (1–2, 3–4, 5–6) have been discovered. Until about 500 BC In this region, dice were made exclusively according to the subtraction rule “The eye difference is 1”. Then both rules were used and from 350 BC onwards. Chr. There are only cubes according to the addition rule. An Etruscan cube with the arrangement (1–4, 2–5, 3–6) has not yet been discovered. However, numerous Etruscologists hold on to the identification of huth with 4 and śa with 6 and justify this etymologically on the assumption that Etruscan is one of the Indo-European languages or at least was strongly influenced by them.
literature
- Bullettino dell'Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica. Rome 1848, pp. 60 and 74. ( online )
- Alf Torp : Etruscan notes. Nabu Press, Charleston 2011, reprint of 1905 original, ISBN 9781246416893 .
- Emil Goldmann : Contributions to the teaching of the Indo-European character of the Etruscan language. Salzwasser-Verlag, reprint of the original from 1929, 2016, ISBN 9783846072851 , pp. 86–120.
- Hans Lorenz Stoltenberg : The meaning of the Etruscan number names. In: Glotta . Greek and Latin Language Magazine. Volume 30, 1943, pp. 234-244.
- Karl Olzscha : Script and Language of the Etruscans. In: Historia . Ancient History Journal. Volume 6, Issue 1, 1957, pp. 34-52.
- Ambros Josef Pfiffig : The Etruscan Language. Attempt to present an overall picture. Akademische Druck- und Verlags-Anstalt, Graz 1969, p. 123 f.
- Mauro Cristofani : Introduzione allo studio dell'etrusco. Olschki, Florence 1973.
- Angelo Savelli: I dadi del Museo civico e il problema dei numerali estruschi. In: Strenna storica bolognese. Volume 26, 1976, pp. 271-290.
- Massimo Pallottino : Etruscology: History and Culture of the Etruscans. New edition. Springer, Basel 1984, p. 461 f.
- Helmut Rix : Writing and Language. In: Mauro Cristofani (ed.): The Etruscans. Belser Verlag, Stuttgart 1985, pp. 210-238.
- Alessandro Morandi: Nuovi Lineamenti di Lingua Etrusca. Erre Emme, Rome 1991, pp. 81-86.
- Luciano Agostiniani : Sui numerali etruschi e la loro rappresentazione grafica. In: AION Linguistica . Volume 17, 1995, pp. 21-65.
- Massimo Pittau : La Lingua Etrusca: Grammatica e Lessico. Insula Edizioni, Nuoro 1997, ISBN 888611107X , pp. 72-76.
- Giuliano Bonfante , Larissa Bonfante : The Etruscan Language. An Introduction. 2nd Edition. Manchester University Press, Manchester / New York 2002, ISBN 0719055407 , pp. 96-97.
- G. Artioli, V. Nociti, I. Angelini: Gambling with etruscan dice: A tale of numbers and letters. In: Archaeometry . Volume 53, Issue 5, Oxford 2011, pp. 1031-1043. ( pdf )
See also
Web links
- Bibliothèque nationale de France: Luynes . 816 Luynes. 817 (French)
- Massimo Pittau : I numerali etruschi (Italian)