R.S.P. Beekes makes a strong case that the Tyrsenian peoples and languages, including the Etruscans, originated in northwest Asia Minor. He offers evidence that the ancestors of the Etruscans originally lived near the Old Lydians (referred to as Mēiones in the Iliad), and that both peoples were displaced by Phrygian invasions around 1200 bce. [See Beekes (2003) for a very detailed case drawing on ancient sources, including Herodotus, Histories 7.74, and on a modern linguistic analysis of place names.
Anne Mahoney’s review of his thesis in Etruscan Studies (Vol 11, No. 1, Jan. 2008) finds these assertions convincing. All citations of Beekes here refer to his 2003 article] Dionysius of Halicarnassos spells out these connections, calling a personified Tyrrhenos “a Lydian by birth from what was formerly called Meonia.” [Beekes, 41. However, Dionysius does not connect Tyrrhenos to the Etruscans.]
The Mēiones were driven south and eventually came to be called Lydians, while the Etruscans were forced out to the coastal islands, and eventually settled in central Italy. [Herodotus has them leaving because of hunger, departing from the harbor at Smyrna. Much later, the Argonautica (4.1760) refers to “Tyrrhenians” driving out the Thracian-speaking Sinti and settling on Lemnos.] Beekes cites classical sources that place Tyrsenoi on Lesbos, Lemnos, Samothrace, and in Kyzikos on the mainland. He says that ancient writers seem to conflate the Pelasgoi and Tyrsenoi. He quotes the observation by Herodotus that the people of Plakiē and Skylakē spoke the same language as the Tyrsenoi. [Beekes, 37-40] But Beekes does remark that Greek writers use the past tense in referring to the Eastern Tyrsenoi (in Asia Minor). [Beekes, 25. The Kumdanli inscription in Pisidia mentions three Tyrsenoi (103), but it is late (2nd century) and far to the south, between Karia and Lykia.]
Beekes introduces another line of evidence showing that the name of the Etruscan leader Tarkhon is related to the Luwian/Hittite storm god Tarhun. [Beekes, 30; 25] He notes that the poet Lykophron pairs “Tyrsenos” and “Tarkhon” as leaders of the Etruscan emigration to Italy, and describes them as princes of Mysia (the region east of Troy), which so happens to be the place where Herodotus says the Lydians originated. [Alexandra 1248; Beekes, 14. He adds (20) that the Lydian language is “the most deviating of the Anatolian languages.” Does its divergence relate it in any way to Tyrsenian? Beekes refers (30) to a study showing “that Etruscan shows most connections (loanwords) with Lydian,” again pointing to their ancient proximity in NW Asia Minor.]
Later, the Aeneid recounts how Aeneus is driven from Troy and eventually settles in Italy, where his Trojan contingent allies with the Etruscans, and are involved in the founding of Rome. Both Virgil and Isidoros name Maeonia as the Etruscan place of origin. Centuries before, Hesiod wrote that the children of Kirkē ruled over “the famous Tyrsenians, very far off in a recess of the holy islands,” in proximity to the Latin peoples. [Theogony 1015]
Beekes proposes that the Etruscan emigration to Italy took place gradually, in phases. [Beekes, 42; 26] I think he is right that “the Etruscans came [to Italy] long after the Indo-Europeans and settled there,” and that Tuscany was not a “withdrawal area” where indigenous people took refuge from intruders, but a country that foreign settlers found desirable, and were able to seize. [Beekes, 33] The Egyptian listing of the Teresh / Turush as one of the Sea Peoples makes this scenario plausible.
One of Beekes’ compelling points is the widely attested constellation of names for the Tyrsenoi / Tyrrhenians. The oldest source for the ethnonym is the Merneptah Stela of Egypt, which lists among the Sea Peoples the Teresh or T(w)R (w)Sh. [Beekes, 35. See also “The Teresh, the Etruscans and Asia Minor.” Anatolian Studies 23, Cambridge University Press, Dec. 2013] Much later, Strabo refers to Tyrrhenian pirates who prevented Greeks from colonizing Sicily. [Geography, 6. 2. 2, quoting Ephorus of Kyme] And of course the Tyrrhenian Sea of western Italy refers to the Etruscans.
But the initial T in all these names drops out in Rasena, the Etruscan self-name, and the same goes for their alpine cousins in Rhaetia—if these names are in fact related to Tyrsenoi. The name “Etruscan” itself derives from Greek Tyrsenoi > Latin Turs-ci > Etrusci and Etruria. [Beekes, 7]
Beekes also examines two Hittite names for Troy. One was Wilusas, which entered Greek as Ilios, whence the title Iliad. The other was Truisas / T(a)ruisas, which on Greek tongues became Troiē, and later Troy. [Beekes, 12] In both cases the Greeks dropped the Anatolian -sa suffix, just as they did in transforming the country name Māsas to Māionia. [Beekes follows Kretschmer in proposing (20) that “Māsa may have been the land of Mā. As is well known, Mā was the name of the Mother Goddess who was venerated in those lands.”] But Beekes rejects the idea that T(a)ruisa corresponds to Tyrsenoi. He is not saying that the Trojans were Tyrsenoi, but that the latter lived nearby. (His idea is that the Trojans may have spoken a form of Lydian.)
As for the Pelasgians of the Iliad, Beekes states that they were Tyrsenians, and that “Pelasgoi” originally meant “indigenous.” He breaks down how the meaning of “Pelasgian” shifted and even reversed over time to mean “Greeks.” [Beekes, 44-45; 50-51]
Recent genome data indicate that the Etruscans had a similar genetic profile to the surrounding Latins and Oscans. [Casimo Posth et al, “Anatolian Neolithic farmers, European hunter-gatherers, and Bronze Age pastoralists from the Pontic-Capsian steppe.” 2021: 3] These findings are problematic for both of the most popular theories for Etruscan origins identified by the authors of this study: an Anatolian/Aegean origin, following earlier Greek sources including Herodotus and Hellanikos of Lesbos; or “an autochthonous development as described in the first century BCE by the historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus,” which in modern archaeological terms would simply make them a local development of the Villanovan culture in Tuscany. [Casimo Posth et al, 2021: 1]
Either scenario involves the survival of a non-Indo-European language despite ethnic amalgamation with Indo-European peoples, including the Central European Urnfield culture that precedes even the Proto-Villanovans; and a sizeable admixture, by as much as half, of the steppe-pattern genomes. These findings don’t prove that the Etruscan language was indigenous to Italy, but they do represent an unusual survival of a non-Indo-European language, itself an immigrant culture, despite extensive intermarriage. This language would have had to survive for centuries longer under the indigenous-to-Italy / relict-language hypothesis (through the exogenous Bell Beaker and Urnfield cultures of the bronze age) than it would in the proposed Etruscan migration out of the NE Aegean. The latter necessarily entails adoption of a language brought in by a minority of settlers, who ethnically amalgamated with local people to the point of indistinguishability, while retaining their distinct culture and language. It’s a rather unusual scenario.
A salient element of Etruscan culture was the “unusually high” position of women in comparison to Indo-European-speaking cultures. [Beekes, 33] Many ancient writers commented on Etruscan sex equality, which is also visible in Etruscan art, and the persistence of the matronymic alongside the patronymic into Roman times. [See my 2015 article “Etruscan Women and Social Structure” for examples and references] Other distinctly Asiatic elements include the double axe and hepatoscopy, a well-known Etruscan form of divination, which had its roots in Mesopotamia, especially Babylonia. [Beekes, 36, enumerates many other possible borrowings.] I would add boots with turned-up toes, a known Anatolian signature since Hittite times.
There’s one more piece: a 2007 study shows that Tuscan cattle breeds have a mtDNA signature “which is found neither in the rest of Italy nor in Europe,” but corresponds to Anatolian and Near Eastern genome patterns. [Marco Pellecchia et al. “The mystery of Etruscan origins: novel clues from Bos taurus mitochondrial DNA.” Proceedings of Biological Science, May 7, 2007. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2189563/ The authors also claim “Near Eastern” ancestry in the Etruscans themselves, but this is contradicted by more recent studies.] They quote the Roman philosopher Seneca: Asia Etruscos sibi vindicat (“Asia claims the Etruscans back”). The Romans were convinced of their neighbors’ Anatolian antecedents.
