the four Etruscan vocables which occur most frequently in the inscriptions. They are-

We have now reached the first stage of our inquiry. I shall presently recall your attention to these four words, the meanings of which were correctly surmised some eighty years ago.

During the next half-century numerous Etruscan inscriptions were discovered and classified. They were discussed in many learned books, but no real progress was made towards the elucidation of the Etruscan mystery. The key was not found. At last, in the year 1847, a discovery was made not one whit less important in its way than the memorable discovery of the Rosetta stone. The Princess

of Canino had the good fortune to find in a newly excavated tomb on her estate a pair of ivory dice. These dice, which are now in the Cabinet des Médailles at Paris, were inscribed with six Etruscan words, one word on each of the six faces. These words are:

MACH, HUTH, CI, SA, ZAL, THU.

This discovery naturally excited the greatest interest, as it was at once perceived that these six words could only be the first six Etruscan digits. Bunsen repeatedly declared his conviction that these dice would prove to be the key to unlock the secret of the Etruscan language. Numerous attempts have been made to connect these six words with the numerals used by other races of ancient Italy. All these attempts, however, have failed so conspicuously that eminent scholars, such as Prof. Max Müller and Prof. Corssen, have doubted whether these words are numerals at all. Prof. Corssen goes further; he thinks it quite out of the question that they can be numerals. He is of opinion that the words on the dice are closely akin to Latin. He thinks they are to be arranged and translated as follows:

Mr. Ellis pertinently observes that with this arrangement of the words the sentence is good Gaelic, and means:

"Mac Dougal gave this."

It is equally good Armenian with the sense

"Magus cuts the recompense of his vow.'

Lastly, Lord Crawford takes the words as a mixture of Gothic and Greek, and translates them as a sort of gambler's prayer :— "May these sacred dice fall double sixes."

Everything, in short, can be made out of anything if once the needful license be allowed. We have only to choose our language, arrange our words, allow ourselves as much phonetic license as may be needful, and then the interpretation follows.

Whether, however, any such wild guess-work can be at all permitted,-whether it is possible that these six words can be anything else than Etruscan numerals, this is the question which must be positively settled before we go further. The importance of this question cannot be overrated. It decides absolutely the nature of the Etruscan language.

On the tombstones of all races four facts are commonly recorded -name, parentage, marriage, and age.

Among the thousands of Etruscan epitaphs there are naturally many which record the age attained by the deceased person. Such inscriptions can easily be picked out from the rest by their containing figures similar to the well-known Roman figures. Here, for instance, are a few instances of such inscriptions:

In all these cases the figures which denote the age are preceded by the word AVILS. There can be no doubt that this word AVILS means "aged." Also the word LUPU, which is sometimes introduced, must mean "be died." We obtain therefore, these three formulæ for expressing the age of the deceased :—

(1) A. B. avils XXIX

(2) A. B. lupu avils XVII
(3) A. B. avils LXX lupu

In all the formula the word AVILS is immediately followed by the figures.

Now, sixteen epitaphs have been found in which this word AVILS is followed, not by figures, but by words. Omitting, for the sake of brevity, the names of the deceased, which always precede the record of the age, the sixteen epitaphs are as follows:

2.

3.

1. lupu avils machs zathrums

avils machs semphalchls lupu

avils machs mealchlsc

There can be no reasonable doubt that the words in italics, which exactly take the place of the usual figures in the three formulæ for denoting age must be Etruscan numerals.

In all known languages, numbers between twenty and one hundred are constructed on the same model. Let us take, for instance, the English numbers

Twenty four,

Thirty two,
Forty threc.

We see that in every case there is a short word, called the digit, and a longer word called the decade. The digits, two, three, and four, are dissimilar in form. The decades, twenty, thirty, and forty, have a common suffix -ty, which means "ten." The first syllables of the decades are digits which have undergone slight phonetic modifications. If we now examine our Etruscan numerals, it is casy to pick out the decades and the digits. The words MEALCHLSC, MUVALCHLS, CEALCHLS, CELCHLS, SEMPHALCHLS, CEZPALCHALS, ZATHRUMS, and CIEMZATHRMS can only be decades; while the words MACHS, HUTHS, CIS, THU-NESI, ESALS, and SAS must be digits. Here then, without any reference to the dice, we have got six words purporting to be Etruscan digits. It is obvious that inscribed dice, and inscriptions on coffins recording people's ages, can have no words in common except digits. If there is an agreement of a fair proportion, say four or five, of the two sets of words which purport to be digits, the proof is overwhelming that both the words on the dice and the words in the epitaphs are really numerals, and nothing else.

The correspondences are these

The last digit is probably a compound denoting either 7, 8, or 9. As to the others, the agreements are as remarkable as the differences. The chief difference is the regular addition of a final s in the epitaph digits. This can very easily be accounted for. The dice digits must be the cardinal numbers, one, two, three, four, five, six. Taking AVILS to mean ætatis, the epitaph digits would be ordinals, and the final s would be the ordinal suffix, corresponding to th in the English ordinals four-th, fif-th, and six-th.

We may therefore take it as beyond dispute that we have really got hold of the first six Etruscan digits, and also of at least ten other numerals lower than one hundred. The philological importance of this result can hardly be exaggerated. Jacob Grimm, the great comparative philologist, has laid down the law that numerals take the first rank as evidences of the affinities of language. There are few who will venture to gainsay him.

But here comes a great difficulty; a difficulty so great, that for more than a quarter of a century it has rendered useless the key to the Etruscan language which the dice have supplied. How are we to ascertain the order in which these six words are to be arranged? Any one of the six words on the dice might denote any one of the first six numbers. There are fifteen possible arrangements-all different. How shall we allot the six words to the six digits? Our six keys are of no use till we know how to place them in the six key-holes. It is possible to evade this difficulty by beginning with the decades instead of the digits. Taking our sixteen epitaphs, it is manifest that two of them (Nos. 5 and 12) contain only dice digits, and therefore relate to children not more than six years of age. In one epitaph (No. 14) the word SESPHS is shown by the effigy of the deceased to denote the age of a lad in his teens, while another (No. 13) is anomalous, since the word TIVRS might mean "tenth," or it might mean "days," "weeks," or "months." Setting these four epitaphs aside, there remain twelve inscriptions which certainly contain decades. These decades are of two kinds. We have—

MEALCHLSC

MUVALCHLS (thrice)

CELCHLS, or CEALCHLS (thrice)

SEMPHALCHLS

CEZPALCHLS

ZATHRUMS

ZATHRMSC

CIEMZATHRMS