“Etruscan - Repeated attempts to decipher this language have led little further than the numbers one to six.”
“I hope the computer is working on this one now. Tons of great history that hasn’t been “read” in almost 2,000 years. Emperor Claudius (Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus) was the last known person to be able to read it, and he died in 54 AD”
I’m with you. Wonder how Claudius learned it? Wonder if there are any of the scrolls he learned it from still about?
Claudius was, from an early age, an avid scholar who actually taught it to himself, in other words, deciphered the code that no one since has been able to.
As for the scrolls, I sure hope at least some of the ones he read from have been saved, they contain a treasure trove of early government workings that Claudius used to his advantage when he became emperor.
Etruscan is actually kinda readable in a limited sense—the majority of inscriptions are formulaic funerary dedications, and we’re able to understand those fairly well. Through ancient glosses and educated guesswork we’ve pieced together 200 or so words and a few tentative bits of grammar. The longer texts are the real sticking point.
This program might not crack Etruscan though. It sounds like it relies on comparative linguistic techniques and needs a better-known related language to work. We don’t have that for Etruscan.
Incidentally, Claudius’s wife Urgulanilla was Etruscan. And the last known mention of the language being used was when Rome fell in the mid-400s and Etruscan priests were called on to offer sacrifices. It was probably just a liturgical language at that point though.
We do have one scroll that was used to wrap a mummy. It’s the longest extant Etruscan text:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Linteus