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Etruscan Alphabet
The Etruscan alphabet was used by the Etruscans, an ancient civilization of central and northern Italy, to write Etruscan language, their language, from about 700 BC to sometime around 100 AD. The Etruscan alphabet derives from the Euboean alphabet used in the Ancient Greece, Greek colonies in southern Italy which belonged to the "western" ("red") type, the so-called Western Greek alphabet. Several Old Italic scripts, including the Latin alphabet, derived from it (or simultaneously with it). Origins The Etruscan alphabet originated as an adaptation of the Euboean alphabet used by the Euboea, Euboean Greeks in their first colonies in Italy, the island of Pithekoussai and the city of Cumae in Campania. In the alphabets of the West, X had the help:IPA, sound value , Ψ stood for ; in Etruscan: X = , Ψ = or (Rix 202–209). The earliest known Etruscan ''abecedarium'' is inscribed on the frame of a wax tablet in ivory, measuring , found at Marsiliana (near Grosseto, Tuscany). It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Runic Alphabet
Runes are the Letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see ''#Futharks, futhark'' vs ''#Runic alphabets, runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were primarily used to represent a sound value (a phoneme) but they were also used to represent the concepts after which they are named (ideographic runes). Runology is the academic study of the runic alphabets, runic inscriptions, runestones, and their history. Runology forms a specialised branch of Germanic philology. The earliest secure runic inscriptions date from at latest AD 150, with a possible earlier inscription dating to AD 50 and Tacitus's possible description of rune use from around AD 98. The Svingerud Runestone dates from between AD 1 and 250. Runes were generally replaced by the Latin alphabet as the cultures that had used runes underwent Christianisation, by approximately AD 700 in central Europe and 1100 in northern Europe. Ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qoppa
Koppa or qoppa (; as a modern numeral sign: ) is a letter that was used in early forms of the Greek alphabet, derived from Phoenician qoph (). It was originally used to denote the sound, but dropped out of use as an alphabetic character and replaced by Kappa (Κ). It has remained in use as a numeral symbol (90) in the system of Greek numerals, although with a modified shape. Koppa is the source of Latin Q, as well as the Cyrillic numeral sign of the same name ( Koppa). Alphabetic In Phoenician, qoph was pronounced ; in Greek, which lacked such a sound, it was instead used for before back vowels Ο, Υ and Ω. In this function, it was borrowed into the Italic alphabets and ultimately into Latin. However, as the sound had two redundant spellings, koppa was eventually replaced by kappa (Κ) in Greek. It remained in use as a letter in some Doric regions into the 5th century BC. The koppa was used as a symbol for the city of Corinth, which was originally spelled in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San (letter)
San () is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. Its shape is similar to Latin and Greek Mu (Greek letter), mu (), and can be described as a sigma () turned sideways. It was used as an alternative to sigma to denote the sound . Unlike sigma, whose position in the alphabet is between Rho (letter), rho and Tau (letter), tau, san appeared between Pi (letter), pi and Qoppa (letter), koppa in alphabetic order. In addition to denoting the archaic character, the name "san" also came to be used for sigma itself. Historical use Sigma and san The existence of the two competing letters sigma and san is traditionally believed to have been due to confusion during the adoption of the Greek alphabet from the Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician script, because Phoenician had more sibilant sounds than Greek had. According to one theory, the distribution of the sibilant letters in Greek is due to pair-wise confusion between the sounds and alphabet positions of the four Phoenician sibilant sign ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digamma
Digamma or wau (uppercase: Ϝ, lowercase: ϝ, numeral: ϛ) is an Archaic Greek alphabets, archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. It originally stood for the sound but it has remained in use principally as a Greek numeral for 6 (number), 6. Whereas it was originally called ''waw'' or ''wau'', its most common appellation in classical Greek is ''digamma''; as a numeral, it was called ''episēmon'' during the Byzantine era and is now known as ''stigma (letter), stigma'' after the Greek ligature, Byzantine ligature combining σ-τ as ϛ. Digamma or wau was part of the original archaic Greek alphabet as initially adopted from Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician. Like its model, Phoenician Waw (letter), waw, it represented the voiced labial-velar approximant and stood in the 6th position in the alphabet between epsilon and zeta. It is the consonantal doublet of the vowel letter upsilon (), which was also derived from waw but was placed near the end of the Greek alphabet. Digamma or wau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tuscany
Tuscany ( ; ) is a Regions of Italy, region in central Italy with an area of about and a population of 3,660,834 inhabitants as of 2025. The capital city is Florence. Tuscany is known for its landscapes, history, artistic legacy, and its influence on high culture. It is regarded as the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance and of the foundations of the Italian language. The prestige established by the Tuscan dialect's use in literature by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini led to its subsequent elaboration as the language of culture throughout Italy. It has been home to many figures influential in the history of art and science, and contains well-known museums such as the Uffizi and the Palazzo Pitti. Tuscany is also known for its wines, including Chianti, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Morellino di Scansano, Brunello di Montalcino and white Vernaccia di San Gimignano. Having a strong linguistic and cultural identity, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grosseto
Grosseto () is a city and a ''comune'' in the central Italian region of Tuscany, the capital of the province of Grosseto and the main city of the Maremma region. The city lies from the Tyrrhenian Sea, at the centre of an alluvial plain on the Ombrone river. It is the most populous city in Maremma, with 82,284 inhabitants. The comune of Grosseto includes the ''frazioni'' of Marina di Grosseto, the largest one, Roselle, Principina a Mare, Principina Terra, Montepescali, Braccagni, Istia d'Ombrone, Batignano, Alberese and Rispescia. History The origins of Grosseto can be traced back to the High Middle Ages. It was first mentioned in 803 as a fief of the Counts Aldobrandeschi, in a document recording the assignment of St. George's Church to Ildebrando degli Aldobrandeschi, whose successors were counts of the Grossetana Mark until the end of the 12th century. Grosseto steadily grew in importance, owing to the decline of Rusellae and Vetulonia until it was one of the princip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marsiliana
Marsiliana, known also as Marsiliana d'Albegna, is a village in Tuscany, central Italy, administratively a frazione of the comune of Manciano, province of Grosseto. At the time of the 2001 census its population amounted to 246. Geography Marsiliana is about 40 km from Grosseto and 18 km from Manciano. It is situated in southern Maremma, along the ''Maremmana'' Regional Road halfway between Manciano and the Tyrrhenian Sea at Albinia. The old centre of Marsiliana is situated on the top of a hill overlooking the river Albegna. History The territory of Marsiliana is known for the presence of Etruscan civilization, Etruscan archaeological sites: the most important one is the area of ''Banditella'', where a necropolis of more than one hundred tombs (8th-6th century BC) was discovered in 1908. The village developed at the foot of the hill after the ''Riforma fondiaria'' (land reform) in the 1950s. Buildings * ''Maria Regina del Mondo'', main parish church of the village, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wax Tablet
A wax tablet is a tablet (other), tablet made of wood and covered with a layer of wax, often linked loosely to a cover tablet, as a "double-leaved" diptych. It was used as a reusable and portable writing surface in classical antiquity, antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages. Cicero's letters make passing reference to the use of ''cerae'', and some examples of wax-tablets have been preserved in waterlogged deposits in the Roman Britain, Roman fort at Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall. Medieval wax tablet books are on display in several European museums. Writing on the wax surface was performed with a pointed instrument, a stylus. A straight-edged spatula-like implement (often placed on the opposite end of the stylus tip) would be used as an eraser. The modern expression of ''"a clean Slate (writing), slate"'' equates to the Latin expression ''"tabula rasa"''. Wax tablets were used for a variety of purposes, from taking down students' or secretaries' notes to recording bus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abecedarium
An abecedarium (also known as an abecedary or ABCs or simply an ABC) is an inscription consisting of the letters of an alphabet, almost always listed in order. Typically, abecedaria (or abecedaries) are practice exercises. Non-Latin alphabets Some abecedaria include obsolete letters which are not otherwise attested in inscriptions. For example, abecedaria in the Etruscan alphabet from Marsiliana (the Tuscan town) include the letters B, D, and O, which indicate sounds not present in the Etruscan language and are therefore not found in Etruscan inscriptions. Others, such as those known from Safaitic inscriptions, list the letters of the alphabet in different orders, suggesting that the script was casually rather than formally learned. Some abecedaria found in the Athenian Agora appear to be deliberately incomplete, consisting of only the first three to six letters of the Greek alphabet, and these may have had a magical or ritual significance. A deliberately incomplete abeced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Campania
Campania is an administrative Regions of Italy, region of Italy located in Southern Italy; most of it is in the south-western portion of the Italian Peninsula (with the Tyrrhenian Sea to its west), but it also includes the small Phlegraean Islands and the island of Capri. The capital of the region is Naples. Campania has a population of 5,575,025 as of 2025, making it Italy's third most populous region, and, with an area of , its most densely populated region. Based on its Gross domestic product, GDP, Campania is also the most economically productive region in Southern Italy List of Italian regions by GDP, and the 7th most productive in the whole country. Naples' urban area, which is in Campania, is the List of urban areas in the European Union, eighth most populous in the European Union. The region is home to 10 of the 58 List of World Heritage Sites in Italy, UNESCO sites in Italy, including Pompeii and Herculaneum, the Royal Palace of Caserta, the Amalfi Coast, the Longobardian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cumae
Cumae ( or or ; ) was the first ancient Greek colony of Magna Graecia on the mainland of Italy and was founded by settlers from Euboea in the 8th century BCE. It became a rich Roman city, the remains of which lie near the modern village of Cuma, a ''frazione'' of the ''comune'' Bacoli and Pozzuoli in the Metropolitan City of Naples, Campania, Italy. The archaeological museum of the Campi Flegrei in the Aragonese castle contains many finds from Cumae. History Early The oldest archaeological finds by Emil Stevens in 1896 date to 900–850 BC and more recent excavations have revealed a Bronze Age settlement of the ‘pit-culture’ people, and later dwellings of Iron Age Italic people, Italic peoples whom the Greeks referred to by the names Ausones and Opici (whose land was called :it:Opicia, Opicia). The Greek settlement was founded in the 8th century BCE by emigrants from cities of Eretria and Chalcis in Euboea, next to an Opici, Opician settlement. The Greeks ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
