The History of Etruria: Burning of the BooksOne noted discovery of the 20th Century was the Liber Linteus, or Linen book, which was thought to be the fragments of an Etruscan book made of linen and re-used to preserve an Egyptian Mummy. The Liber Linteus can be seen in Zagreb museum. If linen was used as a medium, then this would have had even less chance of survival than papyrus. Certainly there have been examples of models of Etruscan books found in the tombs of Cerveteri. These suggest that Linen was indeed traditionally used by the Etruscans for the written word.
The Mysterious Etruscans
The question of the scope of Etruscan literature remains unanswered, but it is quite clear from other sources that it must have been quite substantial. Censorinus refers to the Annals of Etruria, and during the late Roman Republic and Early Imperial years it was considered quite fashionable for Roman Patricians to send their boys to Etruscan schools to further their education. Some of this would no doubt have been a grounding in the disciplina etrusca, but it seems unlikely that that was all that they learned. We also know that enough of the history of Etruria survived in written form even up to late Imperial times for the emperor Claudius to write a twenty volume history of Etruria. (together with an 8 volume history of the Carthaginians, both in the Greek Language) If even a fragment of this history survived today it would answer a great many questions.
Even though Claudius' history was written in Greek, the Byzantines might not have been interested in the Etruscans. Maybe they scraped the parchment for other use, and we'll find it underneath something else.