Rasenna: Journal of the Center for Etruscan Studies

Volume 1 | Issue 1 Article 4

2008

Review of L.B. van der Meer, Liber LinteusZagrabiensisMiles BeckwithIona College

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Recommended CitationBeckwith, Miles (2008) "Review of L.B. van der Meer, Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis," Rasenna: Journal of the Center for Etruscan Studies:Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article 4.Available at: http://scholarworks.umass.edu/rasenna/vol1/iss1/4

Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis. The Linen Book of Zagreb: A Comment on theLongest Etruscan Text. By L.B. VAN DER MEER. (Monographs on Antiquity.)Louvain:Peeters,2007.Pp.ix,210.

ReviewedbyMILESBECKWITH,IonaCollege

The Etruscan language is known from three sources: 1) a small number ofancient glosses and comments in classical writings; 2) thousands of (mostly)shorttextswrittenonavarietyofdurablematerials(stone,pottery,etc.);and3)one‘book’,theLiberLinteus.Thisbook,thelongestsingleEtruscantexttocomedowntous,waswrittenonasheetoflinenwhichwasatsomepointshreddedand used in Egypt to wrap the mummy of a wealthy woman who had diedsometimeinherforties.Around1849,MihaeldeBarićboughtthemummyandbroughtittoZagrebwhereithasresidedeversince;hencethetextisknownastheLiberlinteus,theLinenBookofZagreb,theZagrebMummyText,etc.InscholarlyliteratureitisusuallynotedsimplyasLL.

Fortyyearswouldpassbeforethetextwasevenidentified,butsincethattimeour understanding of it has improved steadily. Significant advances in ourunderstanding of the text were made by a number of early researchers,culminatingintheworkofKarlOlzschainthemid1930s.OlzschacomparedtheLL to other early Italic texts such as theUmbrian Iguvine Tables and the Latin‘MarsHymn’knownfromCato.OlzschawasabletogiveabroadinterpretationofthetextshowingthattheLLwasaliturgicaltextdescribingcertainsacrificestobe performed to various gods throughout the year. Although many of thespecifictranslationsofindividualtermsproposedbyOlzschahavenotstoodthetestoftime,hisbroadunderstandingofthetexthasprovensound.

Inthelastthirtyorfortyyears,ourunderstandingofEtruscanhasincreasedsubstantially with the publication and work done on the Etruscan Pyrgibilinguals,thepublicationofHelmutRix’sextremelyusableeditionofEtruscantexts(Rixetal.1991),andwiththesimplehardworkofanumberofdedicatedscholars. Among these scholars is L.B. van derMeer (henceforth VdM)whoseimportantworkonEtruscanmirrorsandontheBronzeLiverofPiacenzaiswellknowninthefield.HisnewbookontheLLcomesatanimportanttime.WiththepublicationofKoenWylin’sfine treatmentof theEtruscanverb, there isnowagrowingcommunisopinioonanumberofdifficultmatters,andVdMnotesinhis‘Acknowledgements’thathenowfeels‘readytotackleoneofthemostdifficulttopicsinEtruscology...‘(vii).

VdM’s book contains thirteen content chapters (I‑XIII). Additional chapterscover miscellaneous material: XIV ‘Appendices’ (171‑178—which lists severalother longEtruscan inscriptions alluded to in the text),XV ‘Bibliography’ (179‑

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187),XVI ‘Indices’ (188‑196) andXVII ‘List of Illustrations’ (197‑198).Althoughnot listed in the table of contents, the book closes with a lovely set of platesshowingeachofthestripsofLLinbeautifulcolorphotographs(199‑210).

Thefirsttencontentchaptersarebriefandcontainbackgroundinformation:I‘Introduction’ (1‑2);II ‘History’ (3); III ‘Date’ (4); IV‘Mummy,Papyrusand theLiberLinteus’(5‑9);V‘LibriLintei’(10—apluralnotagenitive—brieflyalludingtoreferencesinclassicalliteraturetolinentexts);VI‘MaterialAspects’(11‑12);VII‘Textile’(13‑14);VIII‘Text’(15‑27);IX‘Structure’(28‑41);X‘Status,AuthorityandPriests’(42‑44).Thecontentsofmostoftheaboveshouldbeobvious,butafewbriefwordsareneededtogiveasenseofchaptersVIIIandIX.

ItisonlyinchapterVIIIthattheactualanalysisoftheLLbegins.Thischapterisdividedintosevensections.HereVdMlaysouthismethodology(VIII.1)anddiscussessomeof thebroaderaspectsof thetext (e.g.,VIII.4 ‘Coherence’,VIII.5‘Poetics’).ItisalsoherethatVdMmakeshisfirstslightlycontroversialpoint:hearguesthatthetextaswehaveitwascomposedverylate,andhewilllaterarguethat the text was composed in direct response to the Senatus Consultum deBacchanalibus in186B.C.E.(see,e.g.69‑74,170).Theargumentisinterestingbutunproven. The ninth chapter introduces the broad structure of the text. Here,VdM discusses the calendar and organization of the text (IX.1 and IX.2), theritualsperformed(IX.4),andthedeitiesthatcanbeconfidentlyidentified(IX.5).

The realmeatof thebook,however, is in chapterXI,which isnotonly thelongestchapter in thebook,but is in fact twiceaslongasallof theproceedingchapters combined. Here a word‑by‑word analysis of the text is given. ManystudiesoftheLLhavefocusedonthosepassagesthatareclearestattheexpenseof themoredifficultpassages(e.g.,Rix1991).Givenhis longer treatment,VdMhas chosen to do a word‑by‑word analysis beginning with Column 1 andworking through the entire text.Thishas certain advantages for theuser, bothbecause of the transparent structure of his analysis (to find a discussion of agiventermonehasonlytolookatitsfirstoccurrence),andbecausemanyminortermsaredescribedherewhicharenottreatedinothersources.ThisishowVdMdescribeshisownanalysisintheopeningofchapterXI:

Eachsyntagmaorstringofwords(sentence,phraseorcommand)andeachwordthatcanbeisolatedintheLiberlinteus(LL)willbecommentedonandifpossible,tentativelytranslated.… So, of each lexeme the semantic category (noun; verb), the morphology (declension orconjugation),thecontext(partofa syntagma), theoccurrenceelsewherein theLLtext,andetymologywillbepresented.(44)

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Toa large extentVdMhas succeeded inproducingan extremely importantwork.Thereis,however,adownsidetoVdM’sword‑by‑wordapproach:attimeshisexaminationbecomesmyopic,focusingon lexical termswithouta thoroughanalysisof the syntactic andphrasal structures. Since, inmanyways, ourmostsignificant advances in Etruscan studies have been the result of carefullydelineatingthestructureofeachsentence,isolatingwhichwordsarenounsandwhichareverbs,skimpingonthisanalysiscausesVdMtooverlookafewcrucialpoints.

For example, VdM translates the formula śacnicstreś cilθś śpureśtreśc enaś(restoredat2.1‑2,repeated2.3‑4+)as‘bythesacredfraternity/priesthoodofcilθ,andbythecivitasofenaś’,atranslationnotsignificantlydifferentfromwhatcanbe found in other handbooks.His arguments for the translation of eachwordseemsound;however,hefailstopointoutclearlythesyntacticevidence—thatisthe parallel structure here—an observation that would add support for hisconclusion.Moreover, the formulaneeds tobe analyzedalongwith the similarśacnicleri cilθś śpureri meθlumeric enaś,which VdM passes over almost withoutcomment.Ultimately,adetailedsyntacticdiscussionherewouldnotinanywaychange his translation, but in other places more attention to syntactic detailwouldbehelpful.Forinstance,thediscussionoftheproblematicnunθenθbeginswithabriefnoteon thevarious translationsin thepublished literature,namely‘offer’, ‘invoke’,etc.(68),butthisandafewotherverybriefcommentsisallweget.Whatisneededhereisathoroughdiscussionofthevariantforms,nunθenθversus nunθen versus nunθene, and an attempt to connect more carefully thepassage inwhich theverboccurs to thebroader context around it. Is thisverbconnected to theprayers (hence ‘invoke’) ormore closely connected tovariousnominalobjects(suchasthecletram‘cart’[velsim.],hence‘anoint’[asperWallace2008:101‑2,251])?Foranydetaileddiscussionofthesedifferentverbalformsonewillneed to consult StienbauerorWylin, but since these scholarsdonot agreealwaysamongthemselves,someoverviewherewouldhavebeenhelpful.

Thesyntacticdiscussionthatispresentcouldbeclearerattimes.Forinstance,at one pointVdMargues that ‘svecmay be a person, probably a priest, as thewordisfollowedbyan(‘who’)’(87).Butonlyafewpagesbeforehehasarguedthat the problematic word vacl is best interpreted as ‘libation’ even though itoccursinasimilarsyntagma:vaclanścanince...(80).Onemightenvisionseveralargumentative approaches to explain this issueandpursuing themherewouldhavebeenhelpful.

Still, since so much of the recent work on Etruscan has happened on thecontinentbeyondthepurviewof theEnglish‑speakingworld,VdM’snewbookshouldserveasagoodintroductiontomanyoftheproblemsofthetextoftheLL.

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VdMpresentsandsummarizessecondaryliteratureeffectively.Overall,heusesgood judgment in his overview of the problems and in his interpretations ofindividual words, but there are times when even he falls into the trap of‘guessology’(touseFacchetti’sterm[Facchetti2005:373]),e.g.‘lecmaybeakintoItalic lec’ (65), but nothing in the context suggests this, orworse, his commentthatsnuiuφ‘remindsusofsvutaf ... ‘(100);wellmaybeso,butithardlyseemslikeacloseenoughmatchtobeofanyrealvalue.Ultimately,VdM’sgoalseemstohavebeentoaddacommentforeverywordalthoughattimesitmighthavebeenbesttosimplynotethatthemeaningofwordisatthispointunknown.

VdMisathisbestwhenheuseshisknowledgeofarchaeologicalevidencetosupport his linguistic interpretations. Especially good is his discussion of faśle(65),whichhearguesmeans ‘oil’.Heshowshowthis interpretation isstrongerthan the other proposals that are now circulating.Crucial to his argument is asmallred‑figureaskoswith the inscriptionmifaśenatataśtulaluś (Rix,EtruskischeTexte, Sp 2.36), which he notes is a kind of vessel often used for oil. Alsointeresting is his long discussion (57ff.) of the word cisium, which he takes tomean‘tripleoffering’basedpartlyonitsovertsimilaritytotheword‘three’butbasedmorestrikinglyonhisdiscussionofanumberofEtruscanaltarswiththreecup‑likeindentations.Finally,inthisregardishisslightlyconvolutedanalysisoftheiconographyofthedivinetermfarθan,leadinghimtosuggestthatthewordmayrefertoa‘tabugod’.Ultimately,thisbringsVdMtothesuggestionthattheLL is connected to the Roman ban on bacchanalian rites. Again, although thediscussion is quite interesting, the absence of definitive evidence leaves thisintriguingdiscussionintherealmofspeculation.

TheimportanceofVdM’scontribution,however,cannotbeunderstated.Thisvolumewillbe the foundationofallfuturestudiesof theLLbecauseofVdM’sowncontributionsandbecausesomuchpreviousscholarshiphasbeencollectedinoneplace.

DepartmentofEnglishIonaCollegeNewRochelle,NY10801mbeckwith@iona.edu

REFERENCESFACCHETTI,GIULIOM.2005.The InterpretationofEtruscanTextsand itsLimits.

JournalofIndo‑EuropeanStudies33.359–388.OLZSCHA,KARL.1939.InterpretationderAgramerMumienbinde.Leipzig:Dieterich.

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RIX,HELMUT. 1991.Etruscoun,une,unu “te, tibi, vos” e lepreghieredei ritualiparallelinelliberlinteus.ArcheologiaClassica43.665–691.

RIX HELMUT, ET AL. 1991. Etruskische Texte. Editio minor. Bd. I. Einleitung,Konkordanz,Indices;II.Texte.Tübingen:GunterNarr.

STEINBAUER, DIETERH. 1999. Neues Handbuch des Etruskischen. St. Katharinen:ScriptaMercaturae.

WALLACE,REX.2008.ZikhRasna:AManualofEtruscanLanguageand Inscriptions.AnnArbor,MI:BeechStavePress.

WYLIN, KOEN. 2000. Il verbo etrusco: Ricerca morfosintattica delle forme usate infunzioneverbale.Roma:Bretschneider.