Translating an Etruscan Votive Inscription

A Bronze Statuette from San Casciano dei Bagni (Continuity of Magic from East to West, Part 3A Addendum)

Back in 2016, a friend of mine, who has sadly passed since, sent me an article about archaeologists unearthing a stele at Poggio Colla, near the town of Vicchio in Tuscany. The stone bore an inscription of which the headline announced:¹

Etruscan Code Uncracked

My friend said, possibly jokingly:

Okay, Stieg, give ’em a hand here.

My response was I just needed a good picture of it. This might seem like false bravado, but, as we shall see, I was able to put it to the test about a year ago. More on that in a bit.

The article detailed the find from a monumental temple. The object is now known as the Vicchio Stele. And said although there were 70 letters in the inscription, which they assumed was dedicatory or votive, they could only recognize the word 𐌉𐌊 (ki), “three”.² 𐌊 (⟨k⟩) is actually pretty rare in Etruscan, and we generally see the word for three as 𐌉𐌂 (ci), but there can be several orthographic variants for any given word. 𐌂 (⟨c⟩), 𐌊 (⟨k⟩), and 𐌒 (⟨q⟩) all have the exact same phonetic value; /k/.

Several years later, in 2022, one of the coolest archaeological discoveries was an excavation at San Casciano dei Bagni, Italy. The town sits 43 miles (70 kilometers) southeast of Siena. Just as with Aquae Sulis (Modern Bath), hot springs were found there, and baths were built over them. Horace refers to them as the Fontes Clusini in a 20 BCE discussion of which baths he should visit.³

[…] inuidus aegris
qui caput et stomachum supponere fontibus audent
Clusinis […].

[…] envying those invalids, who have the courage to expose their head and breast to the Clusian springs […].

Latin Clusium comes from Etruscan 𐌍𐌉𐌔𐌅𐌄𐌋𐌂 (Clewsin), also known as 𐌔𐌓𐌀𐌌𐌀𐌂 (Camars), a powerful city of the Etruscan Dodecapolis (600–500 BCE). And also, as at Bath, Chamalières, Parioli, and many other springs, it was also a sacred site. As such, votive items were deposited in the water, and this finally, is the matter of the archaeological find, which consisted of 24 bronze statuettes and thousands of coins.

In the course of searching for more information on them, I saw a video in which I could see a clear Etruscan inscription on the skirt of a headless female figure holding a snake and a patera. I transcribed it (reading right-to left as in the image) as:

So, transliterated that’s:

au scarpe au welimnal persac cwer fleresh hawensl

Which I broke down as:

• Au[le]: (male given name)
• Scarpe: (male given name “pointed”)
• Au[le]: (male given name)
• Welimnal: (family name “presser”) + of
• Persac: (name “Perseus?”) + and
• cwer: statue
• fleresh: (the) deity + of
• hawensl: propitiate + for

Taken All together:

Aule Scarpe and Aule Welimnal Perse [give this] statue of the deity for propitiation.

I shared these findings with a professor of Etruscology, who said this seemed like a pretty good analysis. She also pointed me to a set of videos of a conference presenting various elements of the finds from the spring at San Casciano dei Bagni. One interesting thing regarding the votive statues — apparently their weights were multiples of each other.⁴ This clearly reflects the bargaining aspect of religion the Etruscans seem to have passed on to the Romans.

I learned the statue in question dated to the mid-second century BCE. Although I’d seen it headless, they found the head, with a crown representing the towers of a city. Adriano Maggiani, professor of Etruscology and Italic antiquities at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, drew conclusions differing slightly from mine. His transcription and the beginning of what has been named S. Casciano Inscription no. 3 were the same. But he gives the overall translation:⁵

Aule Scarpe son of Aule and of a Persian Welimnei [gave it] as a sacred thing to the Goddess of the Spring.

Maggiani provides some important additions here. First, Persia is a toponym rather than a personal name. Persia does not refer to what we now call Iran. Etruscan has a penchant for dropping vowels from the second syllables of words and there’s also an alternation between 𐌔 (⟨s⟩) and 𐌑 (⟨sh⟩), so it’s actually Perushia, or what we now know as Perugia.

Even the Greeks attempted to analyze the name of Persia (the other one) as relating to Perseus, so I think I can be forgiven here. Additionally, there are at least two inscriptions from this site where a different version of the same word is given 𐌄𐌋𐌉𐌔𐌓𐌄𐌐 (Persile) meaning “of Perushia”. This is also the earliest inscription bearing the Etruscan name of this area.

Cwer is uncertain, with the meanings being assumed from context. “Statue”, “sacred thing” and “gift” are given as possible interpretations. I think Maggiani’s addition of “as a” is unnecessary.

I admit I was reaching to get “for propitiation” from hawensl. I could find no words beginning with haw- instead finding 𐌍𐌄𐌅𐌀 (aven), which coupled with the -sl ending gave this meaning. None of the glossaries I’ve looked at have hawensl. According to Maggiani, there are five dedications to the Flere of Hawens. There are another two from San Casciano dei Bagni, I had no access to, and also apparently the devices of this statue — the patera and snake — match images of the deity so named.⁶

Still, I must disagree slightly with Maggiani’s reading. We can’t interpret the –c as both a coordinating conjunction (“and”) and at the same time an adjectival ending changing Perushia into Perushian. So instead I’d go with:

Aule Scarpe Aule’s son of the Welimnei the Perushian [gives this] sacred thing to the Goddess of the Spring.

This interpretation makes more sense. It fits with a type of name we see across ancient Europe where someone’s full name is given as:

[idionym], [patronym], of [tribe name], of [village name]

For example, the Gaulish name:⁷

Segomaros Villonios Toutiús Nemausatis
Segomaros [son] of Villú, of [the] tribe of Nemausus (Nimes)

However, instead of these four names, this inscription gives us five. All the other types of names seem to be accounted for, so what’s Scarpe? I interpret it as a cognomen.

Cognomena, as originally used, addressed an issue with Roman names: the limited number of praenomina — essentially given names. Even with a nomen it became difficult to discern which Marcus you were referring to, so cognomina were added. Initially, these described physical or personality traits.

In the example of Gaius Mucius Scaevola, there may have been many other Gaiuses among the Mucii, and so he was called Scaevola — “left-handed” — to distinguish him from the others. These names proved so useful, they came to be used by themselves, and this guy was simply identified as Scaevola.

We know the Etruscans used this type of name, for example 𐌄𐌈𐌓𐌖𐌐𐌀 (Apurt’e), meaning “the lucky”. We can see in Inscription 3, not only are there two Aules and the name is therefore fairly common, but also it’s common enough the abbreviation Au is sufficient. Both Maggiano and I interpreted Scarpe as a name, and given its meaning, “pointed”, it also seems to fit the idea of a nickname based on a trait: Aule, “the Sharp” so:

Aule “the Sharp” Aule’s son of the Welimnei the Perushian [gives this] sacred thing to the Goddess of the Spring.

Even though the inscription elides the words, I’ve also ventured here “give” should be in the present tense, matching the donat form formulaically used on the Roman votives inheriting this tradition.

This also casts an interesting light on the Chimera of Arezzo, which is inscribed only with:

𐌋𐌉𐌅𐌂𐌔𐌍𐌉𐌕
tinscwil
[a] gift for Tinia

The object is another votive, but similar to the pig from Pompeii — one from a private lararium. The reason? Votives for deposition in public shrines need to say who the donor is.

As for the Vicchio Stele, it seems it was inscribed on a kind of sandstone that’s easily degraded, so getting a good picture really is the challenge, rather than translation.

Notes

1. Rossella Lorenzi, Etruscan Code Uncracked, Archaeology (website), 2016.
2. Ibid.
3. Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace), Epistulae (Letters) I.15.9 (Addressed to Numonius Vala), 20 BCE.
4. Dentro il sacro (Inside the Sacred), January 2023.
5. S. Casciano Inscription no. 3, Adriano Maggiani, “Le iscrizioni etrusche su votivi di bronzo La divinità e i suoi devoti” (“The Etruscan inscriptions on bronze votives, The deity and her devotees”), Dentro il sacro (Inside the Sacred), January 2023.
6. Ibid.
7. Heather Rose Jones, “Name Constructions In Gaulish”, 2001, citing Pierre-Yves Lambert, La Langue Gauloise, 1995.