Abstract

A few inscriptions dated to the 6th c. BCE show that non-Hellenic people lived on the island of Lemnos, in the northern Aegean Sea. These texts exhibit a distinct Etruscan flavor (phonological system, vocabulary, morphology), but Lemnian differs in several ways from the Etruscan written in Italy. The spelling rules and the archaeological data suggest that the Etruscans of Tuscany and those of Lemnos could have been separated quite early.