However, Albert Grenier thought that the “Hellenic character” of Etruscan writing could have been present before the Greek colonization of Southern Italy. The 1885 discovery of two funeral steles near Kaminia, on the island of Lemnos and facing the coasts of Asia minor, that bear inscriptions written in a Greek alphabet, but in a language close to Etruscan (“etruscoid”) rekindled the debate.309 Marcel Cohen writes that
the strokes definitely give the impression that the Etruscan alphabet is related to Greek, [but the characters] give the impression that they are relics of an ancient writing from another system.310
Since Lemnos was Hellenized only 150 years later, those steles were probably made by Tyrsenians from the north of the Aegean Sea. So,
the spawning of the Etruscan civilization in Tuscany, in the 8th century BC, would therefore be the result of a long presence (four centuries) during which Tyrsenian warriors of Etruria, mercenaries or conquerors, progressively established their domination over the country.311
34
From Etruscan to Latin
It is generally believed that the 8th century is the earliest possible date for the creation of the Latin alphabet. Indeed, the oldest Latin inscriptions don’t go back further than the end of the 7th century. It is notably the case for the Lapis Niger found in 1899 on a stele of the Roman Forum, which could date to the 6th century, and for the Etruscan-made golden fibula found in Palestrina, in southern Lazio, that dates to around 600 BC. But there’s few Latin inscriptions that go further back than the 1st century BC. “This writing was originally used for religious and magical purposes,” writes Raymond Bloch, who adds that “this writing was easily thought to have a divine origin.”312
The Romans supposedly got their writing (that originally only comprised twenty letters) from the Etruscans, after a few modifications done by the Tuscans. The populations in the south of the peninsula (the Messapians in Apulia and Calabria, the Osci in Lucania and Messina) got it straight from the Greeks. If the Latin people were directly inspired by the Greeks, they would actually have had graphemes that could have helped them distinguish the voiced occlusive velar /g/ from the voiceless one /k/. The fact that in the earlier inscriptions, those two value were represented by C seems to indicate that their model wasn’t the Greek alphabet, but the Etruscan alphabet in which those two values are not differentiated. This theory, which is the more popular one, remains controversial nonetheless. Indeed, the Etruscan alphabet doesn’t use the letters o, b and d, which casts doubt on the likelihood of the borrowing. The Roman alphabet was then expanded in the 3rd century BC by adding the letter G. This letter was created by adding a stroke to C. It was further expanded in the 1st century BC by adding the letters Y and Z. They were added to make transcribing from Greek easier. So, in the classical period, the Latin alphabet had twenty-three letters.
However, the literacy rate of the Roman population in of the 1st century AD supposedly peaked at 20 %.313
The Möjebro runestone (Uppland), illustrated by a horse rider brandishing a sword. The inscription “FrawaradaR anahaha is larginaR” is written from right to left.
The Järvsta runestone (Sweden), dating to the 11th century. It evokes the memory of a king named Þjóðmundr.
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Notes
[←1 ]
Eric A. Havelock, Aux origines de la civilisation écrite en Occident, François Maspéro, Paris 1981, p. 12.
[←2 ]
Bernard Sergent, Les Indo-Européens. Histoire, langues, mythes, Payot, Paris 1995, p. 386.
[←3 ]
Henry d’Arbois de Jubainville, Les druides et les dieux celtiques à forme d’animaux, Honoré Champion, Paris 1906.
[←4 ]
Caesar, De bello gallico, 1, VI, c. 14, § 3.
[←5 ]
Christian J. Guyonvarc’h, “La conversion de l’Irlande au christianisme et à l’écriture,” in Connaissance des religions, June 1990, p. 22. See also Georges Dumézil, “La tradition druidique et l’écriture: le vivant et le mort,” in Jacques Bonnet (ed.), Georges Dumézil, Pandora/Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris 1981, pp. 325–338.
[←6 ]
Life of Numa, XXII, 2.
[←7 ]
Lycurgus, XIII, 1–2.
[←8 ]
Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859), who was one of the precursors of scientific runology (Über die deutsche Runen, Dieterich, Göttingen 1821) still thought that the sixteen sign Fuþark was the oldest one. That theory has been dropped for a long time now. Jakob Hornemann Bredstorff (1790–1841), followed by Ludwig F. A. Wimmer (1839–1929), was the first one to demonstrate as early as 1822 that the sixteen sign Fuþark is but a transformation of the original twenty-four rune Fuþark.
[←9 ]
See Aslak Liestøl, “The Viking Runes: The Transition from the Older to the Younger ‘Fuþark’,” in Saga-Book, 20/4, University College, London 1981, pp. 247–266; Michael Schulte, “The Transformation of the Older Fuþark: Number Magic, Runographic or Linguistic Principles,” in Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 2006, pp. 41–74; Michael Schulte, “Neue Überlegungen zum Aufkommen des jüngeren Fuþarks,” in Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 2009, pp. 229–251; Michael Schulte, “Der Problemkreis der Übergangsinschriften im Lichte neuerer Forschungbeiträge,” in John Ole Askedal et al. (Hg.), Zentrale Probleme bei der Erforschung der älteren Runen. Akten einer internationalen Tagung an der Norwegischen Akademie der Wissenschaft, Peter Lang, Frankfurt/M. 2010, pp. 163–189; Michael P. Barnes, “Phonological and Graphological Aspects of the Transitional Inscriptions,” ibid., pp. 191–207.
[←10 ]
René L. M. Derolez, Les dieux et la religion des Germains, Payot, Paris 1962, p. 175.
[←11 ]
Terje Spurkland, Norwegian Runes and Runic Inscriptions, Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2005, pp. 5–6.
[←12 ]
The phonetic value of each rune was first determined by Sophus Bugge (1883–1907).
[←13 ]
However, some runes’ names could have been modified in the Christian period because some of them were considered to be too “pagan.” See Maureen Halsall, The Old English Rune Poem. A Critical Edition, Toronto University Press, Toronto 1981, p. 15. After the 10th and 11th centuries, runic inscriptions frequently include Christian phrases. Yet, even after Scandinavia was converted to Christianity, some clerical texts still express some distrust and hostility towards runic signs, like Sólarljóð (“Song of the sun”), a book on religious edification written at the beginning of the 13th century, which mentions “bloody runes” (blóðgar rúnir) and letters “painted with evil signs” (fáðar feiknstofum).
[←14 ]
Lucien Musset, Introduction à la runologie, Aubier-Montaigne, Paris 1965, p. 131. Musset’s work was in part written based on some of Fernand Mossé’s notes. The second edition, which was slightly expanded and improved dates from 1976.
[←15 ]
Ibid., p. 140. Edgar C. Polomé also believes it is “undeniable that the names transcribed [in the manuscripts] are in all likelihood derived from a common origin, which enabled Wolfgang Krause to make a plausible list of Ancient Germanic names” (“The Names of the Runes,” in Alfred Bammesberger, ed., Old English Runes and their Continental Background, Carl Winter, Heidelberg 1991, pp. 421–438, quoted here p. 422).
[←16 ]
On the runic poems, see the important summary of Alessia Bauer, Runengedichte. Text, Untersuchungen und Kommentare zur gesamten Überlieferung, Fassbaender, Wien 2003. See also René L. M. Derolez, Runica Manuscripta: The English Tradition, De Tempel, Brugge 1954.
[←17 ]
Karl Hauck (1916–2007) initiated in 1985 the publication of a colossal seven volume corpus on the entirety of the bracteates found to this day. Three more volumes were added since 2004. Hauck’s theories, which associate type C bracteates with the worship of Óðinn and Baldr (Balder) were criticized, especially by Kathryn Starkey, Edgar C. Polomé and Nancy L. Wicker. See Nancy L. Wicker and Henrik Williams, “Bracteates and Runes,” in Futhark. International Journal of Runic Studies, 3, 2012 [2013], pp. 151–213. See also Morten Axboe, Brakteatstudier, Det Kongelige Nordiske Oldskirftselskab, København 2007.
[←18 ]
Maurice Cahen, “Origine et développement de l’écriture runique,” in Mémoires de la Société de linguistique de Paris, 1923, 1, p. 5.
[←19 ]
Elmer H. Antonsen goes as far as to think that many objects that date back to the 4th or 5th century could just as well actually go back to the first two centuries AD (“On Runological and Linguistic Evidence for Dating Runic Inscriptions,” in Klaus Düwel and Sean Nowak, Hg., Runeninschriften als Quellen interdisziplinärer Forschung. Abhandlungen des Vierten Internationalen Symposiums über Runen und Runeninschriften in Göttingen vom 4.–9. August 1995, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1998, pp. 150–159; Runes and Germanic Linguistics, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin-New York 2002, p. 167). See also Ulla Lund Hansen, “Die ersten Runen,” in Wilhelm Heizmann and Astrid van Nahl (Hg.), Runica — Germanica — Mediaevalia [Festschrift Klaus Düwel], Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2003, pp. 394–398; Wolfgang Beck and Roland Schuhmann, “Die ältesten Runeninschriften im Kontext (sprach)wissenschaftlicher Editionen,” in Futhark. International Journal of Runic Studies, V, 2014, pp. 7–24.
[←20 ]
See Mindy MacLeod and Bernard Mees, Runic Amulets and Magic Objects, Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge 2006, p. 23.
[←21 ]
Bengt Odenstedt, “The Inscription of the Meldorf Fibula,” in Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsches Literatur, 1983, pp. 153–161; “Further Reflections on the Meldorf Inscription,” in Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsches Literatur, 1989, pp. 77–85.
[←22 ]
Klaus Düwel, “The Meldorf Fibula and the Origin of Runic Writing,” in Clairborne W. Thompson (ed.), Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Runes and Runic Inscriptions, special edition of the Michigan Germanic Studies, printemps 1981, pp. 8–14; Klaus Düwel and Michael Gebühr, “Die Fibel von Meldorf und die Anfänge der Runenschrift,” in Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsches Literatur, 1981, pp. 159–175.
[←23 ]
Bernard Mees, “Runes in the First Century,” in Marie Stoklund, Michael Lerche Nielsen, Bente Holmberg and Gillian Fellows-Jensen (ed.), Runes and their Secrets. Studies in Runology, Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen 2006, p. 211.
[←24 ]
See Bernard Mees, “A New Interpretation of the
Meldorf Fibula Inscription,” in Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 1997, pp. 131–139; Klaus Düwel, “Die Fibel von Meldorf. 25 Jahre Diskussion und kein Ende — zugleich ein kleiner Beitrag zur Interpretationsproblematik und Forschungsgeschichte,” in Stefan Burmeister, Heidrun Derks and Jasper von Richthofen (Hg.), Zweiundvierzig. Festschrift für Michael Gebühr zum 65. Geburtstag, Marie Leidorf, Rahden/Westf. 2007, pp. 167–174.
[←25 ]
See Martina Dietz, Edith Marold and Hauke Jöns, “Eine frühkaiserzeitliche Scherbe mit Schriftzeichen aus Osterrönfeld, Kr. Rendsburg-Eckenförde,” in Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt, 1996, pp. 179–188.
Runes and the Origins of Writing Page 12
