Etruscan mythology Etruscan religion comprises a set of stories, beliefs, and religious practices of the Etruscan civilization, heavily influenced by the mythology of ancient Greece, and sharing similarities with concurrent Roman mythology and religion. As the Et ...

, Nethuns was the god of

well A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. Th ...

s, later expanded to all

water Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as a ...

, including the sea. The name "Nethuns" is likely

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical ...

with that of the Celtic god Nechtan and the Persian and Vedic gods sharing the name

Apam Napat Apam Napat is a deity in the Indo-Iranian pantheon associated with water. His names in the Vedas, ''Apām Napāt'', and in Zoroastrianism, ''Apąm Napāt'', mean "child of the waters" in Sanskrit and Avestan respectively. '' Napāt'' ("grandson" ...

, perhaps all based on the

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...

word ''*népōts'' "nephew, grandson." In this case, Etruscan may have borrowed the

Umbrian Umbrian is an extinct Italic language formerly spoken by the Umbri in the ancient Italian region of Umbria. Within the Italic languages it is closely related to the Oscan group and is therefore associated with it in the group of Osco-Umbrian ...

name ''*Nehtuns'' (Roman

Neptune Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the farthest known planet in the Solar System. It is the fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 time ...

, who was originally a god of water). Nethuns is mentioned on the Piacenza liver, a third-century BCE bronze model of a sheep's liver used for divinatory rites called

haruspicy In the religion of ancient Rome, a haruspex (plural haruspices; also called aruspex) was a person trained to practise a form of divination called haruspicy (''haruspicina''), the inspection of the entrails ('' exta''—hence also extispicy ...

, as ''Neθ'', an abbreviation for his full name. As a patron god his profile, wearing a '' ketos'' (sea monster) headdress, appears on a coin of Vetulonia, circa 215 – 211 BCE; he is accompanied by his

trident A trident is a three- pronged spear. It is used for spear fishing and historically as a polearm. The trident is the weapon of Poseidon, or Neptune, the God of the Sea in classical mythology. The trident may occasionally be held by other marine ...

between two dolphins. NETHUNS is engraved on a bronze Etruscan mirror in the Museo Gregoriano in the Vatican.Noted by George Dennis, ''The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria'' (London) 1848, a time when Nethuns and Neptune were not yet securely linked.
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Notes

References

* ''Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicum'', VII (Zurich and Munich:Artemis) 1994. The basic professional reference. Etruscan gods Water gods {{Deity-stub