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Old Italic
Theabecedarium inscribed in theMarsiliana tablet, around 700 BC
Script type	Alphabet
Period	7th century – 1st century BC
Direction	Right-to-left script, left-to-right
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Greek (Euboean variant) Old Italic
Child systems	Runic,Latin alphabet
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Ital(210), ​Old Italic (Etruscan, Oscan, etc.)
Unicode
Unicode alias	Old Italic
Unicode range	U+10300–U+1032F[1]
This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

TheOld Italic scripts are a family of ancientwriting systems used in theItalian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place. The most notable member is theEtruscan alphabet, which was the immediate ancestor of theLatin alphabet used by more than 100 languages today, includingEnglish. Therunic alphabets used inNorthern Europe are believed to have been separately derived from one of these alphabets by the 2nd century AD.^[2]

The Old Italic alphabets ultimately derive from thePhoenician alphabet, but the general consensus is that theEtruscan alphabet was imported from theEuboeanGreek colonies ofCumae andIschia (Pithekoūsai) situated in theGulf of Naples in the 8th century BC; thisEuboean alphabet is also called 'Cumaean' (after Cumae), or 'Chalcidian' (after itsmetropolisChalcis).^[3] The Cumaean hypothesis is supported by the 1957–58 excavations ofVeii by theBritish School at Rome, which found pieces of Greek pottery indicating that contacts between theEtruscan city of Veii and the Greek colonies of Cumae and Ischia have existed ever since the second half of the 8th century.^[3] Other scholars posit a different hypothetical Western Greek alphabet that was even older than those attested to have given rise to the Etruscan letters.^[3] Whatever the case, the Etruscans added thec, theq and the combination ofvh orhv (for /f/) in order to spell sounds that did not exist in Ancient Greek.^[4] The development and usage of their own Greek-derived alphabet arguably marked the end of theVillanovan culture and ushered in the EtruscanOrientalising period.^[4]: 19

As the Etruscans were the leading civilization of Italy in that period, it is widely accepted that they spread their alphabet across the peninsula, and the other Old Italic scripts were derived from theirs.^[4] Scholars provide three reasons: Etruscans and non-Etruscans had strong contacts in the 8th and 7th centuries, surviving inscriptions from other languages appear later (after the end of the 8th century) than the earliest Etruscan ones (first amongst theUmbrians,Faliscans,Latins, andSabines to the south, in the 6th century also in thePo Valley and amongst theCisalpine Celtic,Venetic andRaetic tribes), and the letters used in these texts are evidently based on the Etruscan version of the Western Greek alphabet.^[4] However, some of them, including the Latin alphabet, retained certain Greek letters that the Etruscans themselves dropped at a rather early stage.^{[citation needed]}

The Old Italic alphabets were used for various different languages, which included someIndo-European ones (predominantly from theItalic branch, but also inGaulish and probably in inscriptions interpreted asProto-Germanic) and some non-Indo-European ones (such asEtruscan itself).^[5]

The following table shows the ancient Italic scripts that are presumed^{[by whom?]} to be related to the Etruscan alphabet. Symbols that are assumed to be correspondent are placed on the same column. Many symbols occur with two or more variant forms in the same script; only one variant is shown here. The notations[←] and[→] indicate that the shapes shown were used when writing right-to-left and left-to-right, respectively.

Warning: For the languages marked [?] the appearance of the "Letters" in the table is whatever one's browser'sUnicode font shows for the corresponding code points in theOld Italic Unicode block. The same code point represents different symbol shapes in different languages; therefore, to display those glyph images properly one needs to use a Unicode font specific to that language.

Phoenician
Letter [←]
Value	ʾ	b	g	d	h	w	z	ḥ	ṭ	y	k	l	m	n	s	ʿ	p	ṣ	q	r	š	t
Western Greek[6][7]
Letter [→]
Value	a	b	g	d	e	w	zd	h	tʰ	i	k	l	m	n		o	p	s	k	r	s	t	u	ks	pʰ	kʰ
Transcription	Α	Β	Γ	Δ	Ε	Ϝ	Ζ	Η	Θ	Ι	Κ	Λ	Μ	Ν	Ξ	Ο	Π	Ϻ	Ϙ	Ρ	Σ	Τ	Υ	X	Φ	Ψ
Etruscan – from 7th century BC[8][9]
Marsiliana [←]
Archaic (to 5th c.) [←]
Neo (4th to 1st c.)[←]
Value	a		k		e	w	ts	h	th	i	k	l	m	n			p	ʃ	k	r	s	t	u	s	ph	kh	f
Transcription	a		c		e	v	z	h	θ	i	k	l	m	n			p	ś	q	r	s	t	u	ṡ	φ	χ	f
Oscan – from 5th century BC[10]
Letter [←]
Value	a	b	g	d	ɛ[a]	w	ts	h		i	k	l	m	n			p			r	s	t	u				f	o	e[a][b]
Transcription	a	b	g	d	e	v	z	h		i	k	l	m	n			p			r	s	t	u				f	ú	í
Lepontic – 7th to 5th century BC
Letter [?][→]	𐌀				𐌄	𐌅	𐌆		𐌈	𐌉	𐌊	𐌋	𐌌	𐌍		𐌏	𐌐	𐌑		𐌓	𐌔	𐌕	𐌖	𐌗
Value
Transcription	A				E	V	Z		Θ	I	K	L	M	N		O	P	Ś		R	S	T	U	X
South Picene – from 6th century BC
Letter [?][→]	𐌀	𐌁	𐌂	𐌃	𐌄	𐌅		𐌇		𐌉	𐌊	𐌋	𐌌	𐌍		𐌏	𐌐		𐌒	𐌓	𐌔	𐌕	𐌖				𐌚	𐌞	𐌝	𐌟
Value
Transcription	A	B	G	D	E	V		H		I	K	L	M	N		O	P		Q	R	S	T	U				F	Ú	Í	*

Missing from the above table:

• Venetic
• Faliscan
• Umbrian
• North Picene
• Rhaetic (Raetic)
• Camunic

VariousIndo-European languages belonging to theItalic branch (Faliscan and members of theSabellian group, includingOscan,Umbrian, andSouth Picene, and other Indo-European branches such asVenetic) originally used the alphabet. Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian,North Picene, and South Picene all derive from an Etruscan form of the alphabet.^[11][12]

TheNucerian alphabet is based on inscriptions found in southern Italy (Nocera Superiore,Sorrento,Vico Equense and other places). It is attested only between the 6th and the 5th century BC.The most important sign is the /S/, shaped like a fir tree, and possibly a derivation from thePhoenician alphabet.^{[citation needed]}

Attested in almost 400 inscriptions from mainly theTrentino andSouth Tyrol regions of Northern Italy, andNorth Tyrol (Austria) in two distinct alphabets: the alphabet ofSanzeno, and the alphabet of Magrè (nearSchio). It was used to write theRhaetic language.^[13][14][15]

Alphabet of Este: Similar but not identical to that of Magrè,Venetic inscriptions.^{[citation needed]}

Inscribedabecedaria and other short inscriptions found onrock drawings in Valcamonica.^[16]

21 of the 26 archaic Etruscan letters were adopted forOld Latin from the 7th century BC, either directly from theCumae alphabet, or via archaic Etruscan forms, compared to the classical Etruscan alphabet retaining B, D, K, O, Q, X but dropping Θ, Ξ, Ϻ, Φ, and Ψ.^[17]

The South Picene alphabet, known from the 6th century BC, is most like the southernEtruscan alphabet in that it usesQ for /k/ andK for /g/.⟨.⟩ is a reduced⟨o⟩ and⟨:⟩ is a reduced⟨8⟩, used for/f/.^[18]

The Old Italic alphabets were unified and added to theUnicode Standard in March 2001 with the release of version 3.1. The Unicode block for Old Italic is U+10300–U+1032F without specification of a particular alphabet (i.e. the Old Italic alphabets are considered equivalent, and the font used will determine the variant).^[19]

Writing direction (right-to-left, left-to-right, orboustrophedon) varies based on the language and even the time period. For simplicity most scholars use left-to-right and this is the Unicode default direction for the Old Italic block. For this reason, the glyphs in the code chart are shown with left-to-right orientation.^[20]

Wikimedia Commons has media related toOld Italic script.

• Euboean alphabet
• Alphabets of Asia Minor
• Linear A
• Linear B
• Old European script
• Trojan script

• Bonfante, Giuliano;Bonfante, Larissa (2002).The Etruscan Language: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press.ISBN 0-7190-5539-3.
• Mullen, Alex (2013).Southern Gaul and the Mediterranean: Multilingualism and Multiple Identities in the Iron Age and Roman Periods. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-1-107-02059-7.

• "Etruscan Texts Project". U. Mass. Archived fromthe original on 30 March 2005.A searchable online database of Etruscan inscriptions
• "Old Italic"(PDF).Unicode.org.
• "The Etruscan alphabet".Omniglot.com.
• "Old Italic alphabets".Omniglot.com.
• "Etruscan".AncientScripts.com.
• "Oscan".AncientScripts.com. Archived fromthe original on 25 October 2015. Retrieved13 November 2006.
• "Unicode Fonts".www.wazu.jp.

• Languages of ancient Italy
• Obsolete writing systems
• Palaeography

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