The Etruscans called themselves the Rasenna; the early Italians knew them as the Tusci or Etrusci. The Greeks denominated the race as Turrhenoi or Tursenoi, and the ancient Latin name was Tursci. The engraved records of the Etruscans have hitherto successfully defied all attempts at interpretation. Now that the Assyrian and Egyptian records have been read, these Etruscan inscriptions present the only considerable philological problem that still remains unsolved. But that it remains unsolved has not been for want of effort. A vast amount of ingenuity and of erudition has been wasted in attempts to explain the inscriptions by the aid of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Phœnician, Arabic, Ethiopic, Chinese, Coptic, and Basque have all been tried in vain. It may be safely affirmed that few of these attempts have been regarded as satisfactory by any person except their authors. A comparison of the Etruscan inscriptions with the characters of the Finno-Turkic language, a form of speech employed by those inhabiting the region lying between the Ural and the Altai Mountains, has, I believe, resulted with the first and only success that has ever attended such investigations. [Illustration] SOMMERVILLE COLLECTION. [Illustration: 548] [Illustration: 546] [Illustration: 553] [Illustration: 558] [Illustration: 555] [Illustration: 554] PHŒNICIAN SCARABEI AND INTAGLIOS. PHŒNICIA. Alas, we have to dig deep and toil to learn all we want to know so much about these people who 2500 years ago inhabited that narrow mountain-guarded strip of land looking westward on the same emerald sea that to-day breaks on the shore of what is now Syria. They have consigned us no books, no pamphlets, no journals, not a page--only here and there do we unearth a graven stone, an inscribed cylinder and Scarabeus; and with these stone fragments of that nation’s literary bequests we will hope to obtain some idea of the history of Phœnicia--Phœnicia, whose people, not content with mounting five thousand feet to the temple of the Casian Jupiter, to see the sun upon the morning horizon, floated away on their frail barks on the deep waters, seeking light, knowledge, and gain. Mythology was their religion, which, like the subjects and styles of their engraved stones and gems of iridescent antique paste, was borrowed from Assyria, Greece, and even somewhat from the myths of the people among whom many of them settled. Herodotus speaks of the Phœnicians as a branch of the Semitic or Aramæan nations; they originally dwelt on the shores of the Erythrean Sea. They also occupied islands in the Persian Gulf, among others Aradus and Tylus, where temples in Phœnician architecture were found; and it is known that the Phœnicians left these islands and colonized in the Ægean and Mediterranean Seas before the time of Joshua, 1444 B. C.