Gorius derives every thing Etruscan from Egypt or Phœnicia. These countries he considers as the original seats of the Pelasgi, who, being driven out of them, settled in Achaia, Thrace, Arcadia, and Lydia, and from these regions gradually, and at different times, passed into Italy[22].
A similar system has been adopted by Lord Monboddo.—From a resemblance in their letters and language to those of the Greeks, he believes the Etruscans to have been a very ancient colony of the roaming Pelasgi who left Arcadia in quest of new settlements. These Pelasgi, however, he maintains, were not themselves indigenous in Arcadia, as they issued originally from Egypt, where there was a district and a city of the name of Arcadia[23].
Mazzochi follows the oriental theory, but does not venture to determine from what eastern region the Etruscans emigrated. He merely affirms, that they spread from the east, under which term he includes regions very remote from each other—Assyria, Armenia, Canaan, and Egypt[24]. He also thinks that they came directly from the east, without having previously passed through Lydia or Arcadia: For, if they had, the monuments of these latter countries would exhibit (which they do not) still stronger remains of oriental antiquity than those of the Etruscans. This descent Mazzochi attempts to confirm by the most fanciful derivations of words and proper names of the Etruscan nation from the eastern languages, especially from the Hebrew and Syriac. Thus one of the most extensive plains in Italy, and the spot where, in all probability, the oriental colony first landed, is near the æstuary of the Po. This plain they naturally called Paddan, one of the names of the level Mesopotamia, and the appellation of the district soon came to be transferred to the river Padus or Po, by which it was bounded. It occurred to the author, however, that the Eridanus was the more ancient name of the Po; but this only furnishes him with a new argument. Eraz, it seems, signifies in Hebrew, a cedar, or any sort of resinous tree, and the orientals, finding a number of trees of this nature on the banks of the Po, and Z being a convertible letter with D, they could [pg 24]not fail to call the river, near which they grew in such abundance, the Eridanus[25].
Bonarota has deduced the origin of the Etruscans from Egypt—a theory which has chiefly been grounded on the resemblance of the remains of their arts with the monuments of the ancient Egyptians[26].
Maffei brings them directly from Canaan, and supposes them to have been the race expelled from that region by the Moabites, or children of Lot. The river Arnon, (whence Arno,) flowed not far from that part of Canaan, where Lot and Abram first sojourned; one of its districts was called Etroth, (whence Etruria); and on the banks of the Arnon stood the city Ar, a syllable which is a frequent compound in Etruscan appellatives. The Etruscans erected their places of worship on hills or high places—they formed corporeal images of their divine beings like the idolatrous race from whom they sprung—but above all, their divinations and profession of augury, identified them with those original inhabitants of Canaan, of whom it is said, “that they hearkened unto observers of times and unto diviners”[27].
By far the most voluminous, but at the same time one of the most fanciful writers concerning the Etruscans, is Guarnacci, who maintains, that they came directly from the east, and were stragglers who had been dispersed by Noah’s flood, or, at the very latest, by the confusion at Babel. The Umbri and Aborigines, according to him, were the same people, under a different denomination, as the Etruscans: They gradually spread themselves over all Italy, and some tribes of them, called, from their wandering habits, Pelasgi, at length emigrated to Greece and Lydia; so that, whatever similarity has been traced in the language, religion, manners, or arts, of the Greeks and Etruscans, is the consequence of the Etruscan colonization of Greece, and not, as is generally supposed, of Italy having been peopled by Pelasgic colonies from Arcadia or Peloponnesus[28].
In general, the oriental system has been maintained in opposition to all other theories, chiefly on the ground that the Etruscans, like many eastern nations, wrote from right to left, and that, like the Hebrews, they often marked down only [pg 25]the consonants, leaving the reader to supply the auxiliary vowels.
The oriental theory, in all its modifications, has been strenuously opposed by a number of learned Italian, French, and German antiquaries, who have contended for the northern and Celtic origin of the Etruscans, and have ridiculed the opinions of their predecessors as if they themselves were about to promulgate a more rational system. Bardetti, while he admits a colonization of Italy from foreign quarters, prior even to the Trojan war, maintains, that it was inhabited by a primitive population long before the landing of the Lydians or Pelasgi: That previous to the arrival of the latter tribe at the mouth of the Po, which happened 300 years before the siege of Troy, there had been no navigation to Italy from Egypt, or any other country: That, therefore, this primitive population must have come by land, and could have been no other than bands of Celts who were the immediate posterity of Japheth, and who, having originally settled in Gaul, descended to Italy from the Alps by Rhetium, Tirol, and Trent. Their first seats were the regions along the banks of the Po; the earliest tribes of their population were called Ligurians and Umbrians, and from them sprung the Etrurians, and all the other ancient nations of Italy[29].
A system nearly similar has been followed by Pelloutier[30], Freret[31], and Funccius[32], and has been adopted, with some modifications, by Adelung, and also by Heyne[33], who, however, admits that other tribes besides the Gallic race, may have contributed to the population of Etruria[34].
This theory, whether deducing the Etruscans from the Celts of Gaul or from the Teutonic tribes of Germany, is too often supported by remote and fanciful etymologies; and, so far as depends on authority, it chiefly rests on an ambiguous passage of the ancient historian Boccus, (quoted by Solinus,) where it is said, Gallorum veterum propaginem Umbros esse, and taken in connection with this, the assertion of Pliny, Umbrorum gens antiquissima Italiæ existimatur[35].