Studi Etruschi

Una proposta interpretativa per il termine zivas

Koen Wylin

Abstract

This article reconsiders the Etruscan form zivas. In the past, zivas has mostly been translated as a participial form (“living”), although recently some scholars considered the form as a genitive (“for the family”). Now, supported by the fact that zivas occurs mainly in inscriptions dealing with the construction or rearrangement of tombs, I believe that zivas could be a plural form of the stem zi-, thus having a juridical content. This interpretation not only fits with the cited building inscriptions, but can also be applied to the use of zivas in the Liber Linteus and to the form zivai in the famous Lemnos inscription.