The first real advance towards their interpretation was made by Otfried Müller (_Die Etrusker_, 1828), who pointed out that though their alphabet was akin to the Etruscan their language was Italic. Lepsius, in his essay _De tabulis Eugubinis_ (1833), finally determined the value of the Umbrian signs and the received order of the Tables, pointing out that those in Latin alphabet were the latest. He subsequently published what may be called the _editio princeps_ in 1841. The first edition, with a full commentary based on scientific principles, was that of Aufrecht and Kirchhoff in 1849-1851, and on this all subsequent interpretations are based (Bréal, Paris, 1875; Bücheler, _Umbrica_, Bonn, 1883, a reprint and enlargement of articles in Fleckeisen's _Jahrbuch_, 1875, pp. 127 and 313). The text is everywhere perfectly legible, and is excellently represented in photographs by the marquis Ranghiasci-Brancaleone, published with Bréal's edition. _Language._--The dialect in which this ancient set of liturgies is written is usually known as Umbrian, as it is the only monument we possess of any length of the tongue spoken in the Umbrian district before it was latinized (see UMBRIA). The name, however, is certainly too wide, since an inscription from Tuder of, probably, the 3rd century B.C. (R. S. Conway, _The Italic Dialects_, 352) shows a final -_s_ and a medial -_d_-, both apparently preserved from the changes which befell these sounds, as we shall see, in the dialect of Iguvium. On the other hand, inscriptions of Fulginia and Assisium (ibid. 354-355) agree very well, so far as they go, with Iguvine. It is especially necessary to make clear that the language known as Umbrian is that of a certain limited area, which cannot yet be shown to have extended very far beyond the eastern half of the Tiber valley (from Interamna Nahartium to Urvinum Mataurense), because the term is often used by archaeologists with a far wider connotation to include all the Italic, pre-Etruscan inhabitants of upper Italy; Professor Ridgeway, for instance, in his _Early Age of Greece_, frequently speaks of the "Umbrians" as the race to which belonged the Villanova culture of the Early Iron age. It is now one of the most urgent problems in the history of Italy to determine the actual historical relation (see further ROME: _History, ad. init._) between the [Greek: 'Ombroi] of, say, Herodotus and the language of Iguvium, of which we may now offer some description, using the term Umbrian strictly in this sense. Under the headings LATIN LANGUAGE and OSCA LINGUA there have been collected (1) the points which separate all the Italic languages from their nearest congeners, and (2) those which separate Osco-Umbrian from Latin. We have now to notice (3) the points in which Umbrian has diverged from Oscan. The first of them antedates by six or seven centuries the similar change in the Romance languages (see ROMANCE LANGUAGES).