“To the northwest [of Rome], Etruscan cities controlled the copper, iron, and silver mines in the so-called Metal-Bearing Hills. This metal was traded to the Greek colonies along the Italian coast, and contact with the Greek trading cities brought the Etruscans face-to-face with the Greek writing system. The Etruscans began to use the Greek alphabet to label their own goods, using their own language written in Greek characters. Despite the recognizable letters, the language itself remains a puzzle: it appears almost entirely in brief inscriptions which have not been decoded.”

—Susan Wise Bauer, The History of the Ancient World, 2007.