, felthur hathisnas. The earliest known are incised on plain pots of black ware, and several of these take the form of what are known as abecedaria, or alphabets. Strictly speaking, some of these alphabets are of Hellenic origin, and do not give the forms of the Etruscan letters as they are known to us; but as the latter are derived from the Greek (western group), probably through Cumae (see above, p. [295]) these inscriptions would naturally represent their original forms in Etruria.
In 1882 an amphora was discovered at Formello near Veii,[[2327]] on which this Greek alphabet is written twice from left to right, together with a retrograde Etruscan inscription, and a “syllabary” or spelling exercise. The alphabet is as follows: α, β, γ, δ, ε, ϝ, ζ, h, θ, ι, κ, λ, μ, ν,
, ο, π, Ϻ, ϙ, ρ, σ, τ, υ,
, φ, ψ. This is the most complete abecedarium extant, containing twenty-six letters and illustrating the archaic Greek forms of the twenty-two Phoenician letters in their Semitic order. The four additional ones are υ,
( = ξ), φ, and ψ ( = χ). The character