Cognitive Philology

Work Notes on Etruscan Mirrors & Murals II

by Mel Copeland

This is a PDF file from our website covering Etruscan Mirrors and Murals, with images compiled from the Etruscan Phrases website http://www.maravot.com/Etruscan_Phrases_a.html.

In contrast to offerings from the British Museum and University of Bologna, where their analyses, following Pallottino, are generally speculation based on guesswork relating to short funerary inscriptions, the Etruscan Phrases work is supported by a strong grammar and vocabulary based on all texts, small and large. Thus, to clear the mystery of the Etruscan language alleged by such esteemed institutions, it is imperative that the Etruscan Phrases GlossaryA.xls be audited. We mention this since the only prospect of clearing up the Etruscan Mystery is through a verifiable audit of the Etruscan Grammar recorded in Etruscan Phrases. The British Museum, University of Bologna and other "Pallottino School" works have not produced a vocabulary or grammar that can be audited, since their theory is that the Etruscan language is unlike any other known to man, not Indo-European. Etruscan Phrases claims that the Etruscan Language is similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian, an Indo-European language. It offers a grammar, declension patterns and regular, measurable shifts between Etruscan and these languages; ergo the work can be easily audited.

Most important to the work are the Etruscan mirrors and murals that contain known Classical stories and the names of the principle characters in the stories. The star of the mirrors is Helen of Troy who was the young daughter of King Tyndareüs of Sparta and abducted by the equally beautiful son of King Priam of Troy, thereby causing the Trojan War. While the entire story has captured the hearts and imaginations of generations since that event (Troy was destroyed ~1180 B.C.) we can presume through Etruscan mirrors that the event was part of their history – and they had a somewhat different recollection of it than the Greek version passed down to us.

Because the story is familiar and linking the genesis of Greek heroes and gods, containing their names and actions, we have comparative texts to use in analyzing the Etruscan language, its shifts from Greek and Latin to Etruscan. For instance the heroes of the story follow a regular shift, of dropping vowels and final consonants, etc. Heracles (L. Hercules) is Hercle (almost like the French, Hercule). Helen’s name declines: Helenai and Helenei, leading us to the declension of other nouns. Her father was Zeus who transformed into a swan and raped the goddess Nemesis THALNA (retribution) who had transformed into a goose. She laid an egg or two eggs, one of which was Helen which was found by shepherds near Sparta and taken to Tyndareüs and Leda to bring up. From the egg came Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world.

The most beautiful man at the time was Alexander, spelled ELCHSENTRE and he abducted Helen from her husband Menelaus, MENLE, the brother of King Agamemnon: ACHMEMNVN. His wife Clytemnestra is CLVTHVMVSTHA who murdered her husband in the bath upon returning from the Trojan War, and their son, Orestes (VRSTE) killed her and her lover in revenge. Athena (L. Minerva) is MENRFA; Hera (L. Juno) is VNI, her consort is Zeus (L. Jupiter) Etr. TINIA. Thetis is THETIS and THETHIS, she was a dangerous shape-changer and compelled by the gods to wed her husband Peleus, PELE; they produced the Greek hero of the Trojan War, Achilles who the Etruscans call ACHLE. The mother of Helen, Leda, is LATFA and her brothers, Castor and Polydeukes (Pollux) are CASTVR and PVLTVCEI. Their father Tyndareüs is TVNTLE. Aphrodite (Etr. TVRAN) was a cause of the Trojan War when she was judged by Alexander as “The Fairest” as written on an apple thrown into the wedding of Thetis and Peleus by Eris (Etr. ERIS). Aphrodite’s son was Eros (Etr. ERVS) – appearing in many texts. Another popular figure in Etruscan mirrors is Hermes (L. Mercury) TVRMS.

Apollo (APLV) and Artemis are represented frequently in the texts. Ajax Telemonos EIFAS TELMVNVS committed suicide after Achilles was killed, because he did not deserve Achilles’ armor. Apollo (APLV) and his sister the virgin huntress Artemis (ARTVMES) were highly active in the Trojan War. The Etruscans introduce a new character like Artemis called MEAN who crowns Alexander, awarding him the hand of Helen, though we understand from the Greek version that it was Aphrodite (Etr. TVRAN) that awarded Alexander the hand of Helen in the Judgment of Paris. MEAN appears to be a goddess of the hunt like Artemis from Lydia, recalling the old name of Lydia, Maionia (Μαιονία). This is just a tease, for the mirrors and murals carry amazing details never before known to modern man. The images, names and texts associated with the mirrors and murals set the baseline for understanding Etruscan Grammar and the words recorded in Etruscan Phrases GlossaryA.pdf. (The most current version available at http://www.maravot.com/Etruscan_Phrases_a.html.

We should hope, therefore, that there will be many linguists / scholars who will jump at the chance to clear up the Etruscan Mystery and rewrite the histories so clearly overshadowed by the Pallottino School theories, to help even the museums containing Etruscan artifacts explain a bit more about the items in their displays.

Etruscan GlossaryA.pdf an index to about 2,500 Etruscan words that are similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. Declension patterns follow those in Latin. The 2,500 words equal the repeated words in 6,000 words of the major extant texts. The texts have been frozen in time, covering ~700-400 B.C., representing a lens to understanding the early formation of Indo-European languages, particularly the early Italic-Latin-Celtic languages, such as Italian, French & Romanian / Dacian. (By 45 BC. the language was a dead language - no one understood or could write Etruscan)

This GlossaryA works together with Indo-European Table 1 which refutes theories by the Pallottino school of thought that the Etruscan language is not Indo-European and an isolate, unlike any other language. It is very close to Latin and, curiously, Romanian, Italian and French. The Latin suffix, "us" shifts to "o" as in Italian (Titus vs Tito); first person conjugation patterns are similar to French and Romanian. This GlossaryA provides a quick look at the grammatical structure of the Etruscan language, how closely it coincides with Latin. A more detailed Declension Table can be seen on the Etruscan Phrases website. These PDF documents facilitate independent confirmation of the words in GlossaryA.xls , the Grammar and Declension Table. All words can be examined from actual images of texts on the Etruscan Phrases website. Over 150 texts, with about 6,000 words can be examined at Etruscan Phrases.

The Etruscans surfaced in Italy about 1,000 B.C., reputed to have arrived from Lydia / Phrygia. The Phrygians originated near Macedonia in Thrace, according to Herodotus. One may therefore inquire whether the ancient Thracians (Dacians, Gettae, modern Romanians), spoke a language common to the Phrygians, at the time of the Trojan War and after (~1180 B.C.). The Thracians, Phrygians and Lydians (also dead languages) were allies of the Trojans, according to the Iliad. Etruscan Phrases finds a common vocabulary among Latin, Italian, French, Romanian, Etruscan and Phrygian. While French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian are considered Romance languages, showing a similar Latin heritage, Etruscan is not, of course, a Romance language, as it preceded Latin, at least in the written form (giving Rome its alphabet).

Resolution of the Etruscan Mystery may be likened to Michael Ventris' decipherment of Linear B and Jean-François Champollion's decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone - written in Egyptian hieroglypics, Demotic and Greek. The decipherment of Etruscan is a bit more challenging, since we have no multilingual Rosetta Stone, but we do have enough vocabulary and grammar to establish that Etruscan is similar to Latin, French, Italian and Romanian. (Certainly far more vocabulary and a more extensive grammar is provided in Etruscan Phrases than that used by Ventris to claim translation of Linear B as an old form of Greek)

The mirrors with the Devotional Plates may be an easy entry into an audit, for those who are hesitant to examine the larger texts, such as the Zagreb Mummy (Script Z).

Embodied Abstraction and Emotional Resonance in Chrétien's Chevalier de la Charrette

by Anatole Pierre Fuksas

«Cognitive Philology», 4 (2011)

Novels typically (and necessarily) describe character-specific emotional responses to perceptual events or memories... more Novels typically (and necessarily) describe character-specific emotional responses to perceptual events or memories and emotional decisions which underly purposeful intentional actions. Accordingly, the study of emotions is crucial to the understanding of the integrated descriptive system that joins together perceptual events, emotional modulations and proper actions in a narrative whole which aims at working in the very same way the actual human experience of nature and society does. A study focusing on meaningful episodes of Chrétien de Troyes’ Chevalier de la Charrette (vv. 362-81; 1420-44; vv. 2732-39; 3047-54) aims at showing how recent advances in neuroscience make it possible to address novelistic descriptions of emotions in a way which contributes to explaining why novels are made the way they are and why the novelistic genre evolved into a global standard for storytelling.

Embodied Abstraction and Emotional Resonance in Chrétien's Chevalier de la Charrette

by Anatole Pierre Fuksas

«Cognitive Philology», 4 (2011)

Novels typically (and necessarily) describe character-specific emotional responses to perceptual events or memories... more Novels typically (and necessarily) describe character-specific emotional responses to perceptual events or memories and emotional decisions which underly purposeful intentional actions. Accordingly, the study of emotions is crucial to the understanding of the integrated descriptive system that joins together perceptual events, emotional modulations and proper actions in a narrative whole which aims at working in the very same way the actual human experience of nature and society does. A study focusing on meaningful episodes of Chrétien de Troyes’ Chevalier de la Charrette (vv. 362-81; 1420-44; vv. 2732-39; 3047-54) aims at showing how recent advances in neuroscience make it possible to address novelistic descriptions of emotions in a way which contributes to explaining why novels are made the way they are and why the novelistic genre evolved into a global standard for storytelling.

Characters, Society and Nature in the Chevalier de la Charrette (vv. 247-398)

by Anatole Pierre Fuksas

«Critica del Testo» 12, 2-3 (2009), pp. 49-77 - semi-edited version

The analytic assessment of the vv. 247-398 from Chrétien de Troyes’ Chevalier de la Charrette makes it possible to... more The analytic assessment of the vv. 247-398 from Chrétien de Troyes’ Chevalier de la Charrette makes it possible to show that the description of the natural and social environment is proportional to the description of opportunity for actions required by the novel for the development of its main themes. Accordingly, the ecology of the medieval verse novel revolves around the knight and his courtly ethos and emerges from descriptive systems which are based on current social and cultural models. Such remarks leads to an idea of ‘realism’ which allows to explain why so-called ‘fantastic adventure novels’ and so-called ‘polyphonic social novels’ have been part of the very same literary system throughout the whole history of the genre.

The Ecology of the Sword Bridge through the Manuscript Textual Tradition of the Chevalier de la Charrette

by Anatole Pierre Fuksas

«Compar(a)isons», 26, 2 (2007), pp. 155-180 - semi-edited version

Major theorical studies approached the crucial subject of mimesis focusing on the relationship between literature and... more Major theorical studies approached the crucial subject of mimesis focusing on the relationship between literature and reality, maintaining that novels imitate reality through language, translate facts and events into semiotic acts or they establish consistent fictional worlds intersecting the so called actual or ‘real’ one. The present account maintains a different point of view, introducing an ecological theory of narrative reference. According with Gibson’s Theory of Affordances and recent findings in the field of neuroscience, namely mirror neuron, stories, and novels in particular, are addressed as being understood on the basis of individual action-related knowledge. A case study about the Chevalier de la Charrette by Chrétien de Troyes will show how novels do textually encode actions and how narrative events just referring to sensory experiences and interoceptive responses as emotions, feelings, thoughts, deductions or decisions are tightly connected, and to some extent dependent on action-related ones. Consequently, a new assessment of novels as ecological niches will be taken into account, aside implications of an ecological theory of narrative reference for philological investigation of novels in the general framework of comparative literatures.

Tiempo Texto Verdad

by Domenico Fiormonte

Published in: Sara Gómez Seibane, José Luis Ramírez Luengo (coords.), Maestra en mucho. Estudios filológicos en homenaje a Carmen Isasi Martínez. Buenos Aires, Voces del Sur, pp. 79-91.

What is the relationship between time, the philological truth (or the "true text") and canonical works, such... more What is the relationship between time, the philological truth (or the "true text") and canonical works, such as the Bible? Is textual truth related to time, space and culture, and how? And does the digital dimension open new scenarios in this millenarian struggle? In this paper I explore the theological bias of philological methodologies, which far from being neutral instruments in the hands of textual scholars have shaped, and often manipulated, the history of the transmission of our cultural heritage.