Etruscan

Etruscan (ISO 639-3: ett) was a non-Indo-European language of Etruria and parts of northern and central Italy, attested from about the seventh century BCE into the early Roman imperial period. Its alphabet was adapted from a western Greek model and was written from right to left; Etruscan writing in turn influenced alphabets of ancient Italy, including the ancestry of the Latin alphabet. More than ten thousand inscriptions survive, but most are short names, dedications, ownership statements, or funerary formulas, so the script is readable while much vocabulary and grammar remain uncertain. Major longer sources include the linen Liber Linteus preserved as mummy wrappings, the Tabula Cortonensis, the Capua tile, and the Etruscan–Phoenician Pyrgi tablets. Many specialists group Etruscan with Raetic and Lemnian in the Tyrsenian family, although the prehistoric relationships remain debated; Latin gradually replaced Etruscan, leaving no modern descendant.