The Literature

      The Etruscans wrote from right to left (anti-clockwise or backward system) but also from left to right (clockwise or progressive system). Rarely they used the system that consists of alternating the two senses, a line to the right and one to the left.

      They did not use capital letters and did not separate the words, which increased our difficulty in understanding the writing. But knowing little under the morphology profile, only some elements of general character. We know they formed the feminine, plural and genitive (indeed the genitives, because there are not double reinforces) accusative, locative.

      But small spaces illumining the dark area of the verbs. It does not go any better with the numbers, those, which we know, are the first six, after the discovery of an ivory dice in Tuscany (the Etruscans played dice). We only know that the number system was decimal.

      To look at real and proper literary production, unfortunately all has been lost, but we have much evidence that this material existed. Still at the beginning of the Roman Empire, remained much material on the Etruscans and certainly a large part was in the Etruscan language, sufficient because the Emperor Claudio could write 20 books of the history of the Etruscans, the Tyrrhenika. Also Varrone made references to the source of Etruscan history, he quoted the Tuscae Historie.

      In other words some scenes painted on a Vulci tomb narrated historic episodes, in which Etruscan soldiers fought the Roman soldiers. These scenes suppose a historical tradition, from the moment that the fresco is of the 340-310 B.C. about almost two centuries later than the event painted.

      Other than this, additional cases leave to suppose that there existed a written Etruscan historiography, such literature was certainly a relevant role in forming a nation, born from different faraway communities, similar to the Homeric poems that created a strong sentimental in various groups of the first Greeks.