August 15, 1999
ETRUSCAN Font (Mac Type 1, Windows TrueType), Version 1.1 is copyright (c)1994-1999 by Dave Bastian. All rights reserved.
A Hit & Run(TM) freeware offering from Dave Bastian that will probably only be appreciated by linguists and scholars--and they may find fault with my humble efforts.
DOCUMENTATION:
The Etruscans, the predecessors of the Romans, inhabited Etruria in what is now modern Tuscany and parts of Umbria (central Italy). They flourished for roughly 900 years before being absorbed into the Roman Empire along with all other Italic peoples.
Their written language comes to us in the form of over 11,000 inscriptions (the oldest of which, I'm told, is the 8th-century-B.C. Marsilian Tablet). The Etruscan alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet (probably the Chalcidian variant), and two forms are generally recognized: Early Etruscan (circa 700 B.C.) and Classical Etruscan (400 B.C. and later). The former was comprised of 26 letters, the latter of 23. Classical Etruscan, in its final form, numbered only 20 letters: 4 vowels and 16 consonants. Etruscan was usually written right to left (the opposite of English), but occasionally appears in boustrophedon style (i.e., the direction alternates with each line, right-to-left/left-to-right--much like ancient Greek. Incidentally, the Greeks plowed their fields in this fashion, so it must have made sense. Go figure).
Well, that's it for the history lesson--if you're more curious than this, there are plenty of good reference books you can study.
This font is an attempt to represent something between the Early and Classical Etruscan alphabets by assigning each character its roughly equivalent phonetic counterpart in Modern English, plus three extra characters which are the equivalent of Greek phi, theta, and chi* (designated on the MacOS keyboard as option+p, option+t, and option+c, respectively). For the most part, these approximations are perfectly adequate. You may notice some duplication; I,J, and Y, for instance, are all rendered the same, since the Etruscans made no disctinction between the sounds these Roman letters make (say it like the "ee" in "cheese"). Similarly, the character assigned to V and W works equally well if used for "F" (the character assigned to the letter F--a rough figure eight--also corresponds to "PH"). To further confuse things, the voiced and voiceless sounds b, p, d, and t, g, k were not differentiated, and letters "b" and "d" never appear in pure Etruscan inscriptions. All in all, this is a pretty faithful adaptation.
The upper- and lower-case character sets are identical (the Etruscans apparently didn't differentiate between the two).
*(In Etruscan, as in Greek, these were the aspirated stops ph, th, ch--pronounced P, T, K, with an added brief puff of air).
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INSTALLING ETRUSCAN:
MACINTOSH:
For System 7 and above, just drag both the "Etruscan" and the "Etrus" files onto your system folder icon. Finder will prompt you whether or not to add them to your Fonts folder; click OK and you're set! If you're using font management software like Suitcase, consult your user's manual for further instruction.
WINDOWS:
Windows 3.1: Open the control panel and choose FONTS
Click the ADD button, find the TrueType font, and click OK.
Windows 95 and above: Open the Windows FONT folder; click, drag, and drop the TrueType font inside.
You may use this font in any of your projects. If you find an actual use for this font, drop me a line.
DISCLAIMER:
No guarantee of any kind is made that ETRUSCAN will work on your machine. I've tested it on mine, and it works fine. Dave Bastian MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, REGARDING THIS FONT. Dave Bastian DOES NOT WARRANT, GUARANTEE OR MAKE ANY REPRESENATIONS REGARDING THE USE OR THE RESULTS OF THE USE OF THIS FONT IN TERMS OF ITS RELIABILITY, OR OTHERWISE. IN NO EVENT WILL Dave Bastian BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THIS FONT. (This notice MUST be included with any distribution).
This font is free, but it is NOT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN and remains the exclusive property of Dave Bastian.
COPYRIGHT & DISTRIBUTION INFORMATION
ETRUSCAN is copyright (c)1994-1999 by David M. Bastian. All rights reserved.
IMPORTANT: You may not distribute ETRUSCAN without PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR; also, YOU MUST INCLUDE THIS DOCUMENT. Please don�t sell it, and don�t include it on any CDs or other electronic media without permission.
FOR PERMISSION TO DISTRIBUTE IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, WRITE TO THE FOLLOWING EMAIL ADDRESS:
[email protected]
Version History--
25 April 1994: First release, on AOL.
May 15, 1999: Version 1.1 release. A few minor things, like baseline alignment, were fixed. TrueType for Windows version created.
Other free fonts available at "http://www.davebastian.com"
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