The difficulty and obscurity in which the Etruscan language is involved are owing to the nature of the inscriptions and monuments which have been discovered. Those records, to which reference has already been made when speaking of the Umbrian and Sabello-Oscan, were of a ceremonial or legal character; they therefore contained connected phrases and sentences, varied modes of thought and expression. Monuments such as the Eugubine or Bantine Tables contribute not a little towards a vocabulary of the languages, and still more to a knowledge of their structure and analogies. This, however, is not the case with the Etruscan monuments of antiquity which have been hitherto discovered. They are, indeed, numerous, but they exhibit little variety. They are sepulchral records of a complimentary kind, or titles inscribed on statues and votive offerings. Hence the same brief phraseology continually recurs, and the principal portions of the inscriptions are occupied by proper names. The most important, because the largest, Etruscan record which has been hitherto discovered, is one which was found near Perugia, A. D. 1822.[32] This inscription contains one hundred and thirty-one words and abbreviations of words, and of these no fewer than thirty-eight are proper names. Of the rest, a vast number are either frequently repeated, or are etymologically connected. These have not proved sufficient to enable any philologist (although many have attempted it) to give a satisfactory and trustworthy explanation of its contents. A comparison of the Perugian with the Eugubine inscription shows the existence of similarity between some of the words found in both of them; and this is exactly what we should _à priori_ expect to result from the theory of the Etruscan being a compound of the Pelasgian and Umbrian. In the Perugian inscription, words which resemble the Umbrian forms are more numerous than those which seem to have an affinity for the Pelasgian. Indeed, the language in which it is written appears almost entirely to have lost the Pelasgian element. The same observation may be made with respect to the Cortonian inscription:[33]— Arses verses Sethlanl tephral ape termnu pisest estu; _i. e._ Avertas ignem Vulcane victimarum carne post terminum piatus esto; Avertas ignem Vulcane in cinerem redigens qui apud terminum piatus esto. Probably, therefore, both these belong to a period at which the old Umbrian of the conquered tribes had been exercising a long-continued influence in corrupting the pure Pelasgian of the conquerors. One example of the Etruscan alphabet is extant. It was discovered in a tomb at Bomarzo, by Mr. Dennis,[34] inscribed round the foot of a cup, and probably had been a present for a child. The letters ran from left to right, and are as follows:— [Illustration: ph ch th u t s r s p n m l i th h z v e c a] It will be seen from this specimen that the Etruscan language was deficient in the letters Β Γ Δ Ξ Ψ Η Ο Ω.