In the example just cited, light is thrown on Etruscan political organization by the inscriptions on the fresco, and it is in fact to inscriptions in the Etruscan alphabet (Fig. 2.8) that we owe most of what we know about Etruscan politics. For, paradoxically, though Etruscan, as a non-Indo-European language, is technically indecipherable (in the sense that the longest inscriptions in it cannot be entirely translated), valid inferences can be made about some of the short ones. For example, one of the inscriptions on the wall of the Tomb of Orcus at Tarquinia, discovered in 1868 (Fig. 2.9), reads in part _zilath : amce : mechl : rasnal_, at first sight a most unlikely combination of letters. Another Tarquinian inscription, this time from a sarcophagus in the local museum (splendidly installed in the fifteenth century Vitelleschi palace) reads in part _zilath rasnas_. If we extrapolate from the Roman practice of recording on funerary monuments the official career (_cursus honorum_) of the deceased (beginning with the highest offices held), it appears likely that the term _zilath_ refers to a magistracy. It occurs often, and, when it occurs in a series, it occurs early; this warrants the inference that it refers to an important magistracy. Certain late Latin inscriptions from Etruria refer to a _praetor Etruriae_. Might not the _zilath_ be the Etruscan official corresponding to the Roman praetor? This is the more likely since the words _rasnal_, _rasnas_ closely resemble the word _Rasenna_, which a Greek historian tells us is what the Etruscans called themselves in their own language. There remains the word _mechl_. A similar word, _methlum_, occurs next to the word _spur_ in a curious text, the longest we have in Etruscan, written on the cloth of a mummy wrapping now preserved in the museum of Zagreb, in Jugoslavia. The context appears to list the institutions for whose benefit certain religious ceremonies were performed. Several names of offices are accompanied, and probably modified, by the words _spureni_, _spurana_. It looks as if the word means “city.” Suppose the other institution, the _methlum_, mentioned next to the _spur_, were of larger size. Might it not be the Etruscan for “League”? The Tomb of Orcus inscription, then, might mean, “He was the chief magistrate of the Etruscan League.” It is by inferences like these that we force a language technically indecipherable to tell us something about the political organization of the mysterious people who spoke and wrote it.