by Lulzim Osmanaj
Summary
Etruscans called themselves Dardani, linking them with Trojans, Pelasgians, Illyrians, and Balkan Dardanians as branches of one early Balkan-Aegean people—not separate ethnic groups as modern categories assume. Ancient sources (Homer’s Iliad, where Dardanians equal Trojans and followers of Aeneas; Egyptian records of “Drdny” as Troad allies at Kadesh, 1274 BC) and an Etruscan inscription (Rix Af 8.1–8.8) show settlers dedicating to “the borders of the Dardanians” and naming themselves “Dardanivm” after the mythical ancestor Dardanus.
Literary tradition places his homeland in Arcadian Peloponnese (tied to Pelasgian/Thracian-Phrygian groups), while Virgil relocates it to Italy so Aeneas’s arrival becomes a return to ancestral soil, legitimizing Rome. Academia has overlooked these onomastic, linguistic, and archaeological connections; the silence leaves the non-Indo-European character of the Etruscans and their shared substratum unexamined.
Pelasgians, Illyrians, Dardanians, Trojans and Etruscans
Ancient sources preserve a series of connections between the populations of the Aegean, Balkan and Italian regions that do not easily fit into today’s ethnic divisions. In the Homeric tradition, the Dardanians are presented in direct connection with the Trojans, while later traditions link the Dardanians with the lineage of the Trojan dynasty. At the same time, ancient sources use the term Pelasgians for various populations of the Aegean world, making it one of the most complicated designations of ancient ethnography.
In this context, the evidence for the Balkan Dardanians and the Illyrians takes on particular importance. They prove in themselves that the Trojans, Dardanians, Illyrians, Pelasgians and Etruscans constituted a single people; however, the existence of recurring connections in ancient traditions requires that the relationships between them be examined through onomastics, historical linguistics, archaeology and the sources of ancient authors, and not only through ethnic categories created much later.
Therefore, the question that arises for historical research is: are we dealing with completely separate peoples, or different branches and communities of a much earlier Balkan-Aegean substratum, in which Pelasgian, Illyrian, Dardanian, Trojan and Etruscan traditions were intertwined? This is an issue that the academy of sciences and modern historians have overlooked until now.
Reference Chicago: Homer, Iliad, II, III, VII, XVI; Helmut Rix, [work cited on the page shown], 8.1–8.8; Brill’s New Pauly, s.v. “Dardani” and “Dardanus”. Colonna 1980: 4).
The inscriptions run backwards and read as follows (Rix 1991: Af 8.1-8.8):
The call is silent Dardani
“Marcus Unata Zutas (dedicated) to the borders (of the territory) of the Dardanians to Dionysus, 1000 (paces).”
In this text, then, the Etruscan settlers in question call themselves “Dardanivm” (characterized by the Latin plural -om in the genitive -om in the Etruscan guise) after Dardanus, the mythical ancestor of Aeneas (Der Neue Pauly, s.v. Dardanidae). Now, in the form of Drdny, the latter ethnonym is recorded for the first time as an indication of the Hittite allies from the Troad in the Egyptian memorial of the battle of Kadesh (1274 BC).
Furthermore, the Dardanians are synonymous with the Trojans in Homer’s Iliad (III, 456; VII, 348), and are more specifically used here for the followers of Aeneas (Iliad II. 819 ff.).
The ultimate homeland of their mythical ancestor, the Dardanians, is reported by literary sources to have been located in Arcadia of the Peloponnese, which is consistent with our assumption that the inhabitants of the Troas were related to the Thracian-Phrygian or Pelasgian population groups of Middle Helladic Greece.” Whatever the extent of this latter deduction, there is no doubt that Virgil’s location for the ultimate homeland of the Dardanians is Italy.
To legitimize the power of Rome and to show that the return of Aeneas (the descendant of Dardanus) to Italy was not a conquest, but a “return to the homeland of the ancestors” (antiquam exquirite matrem – seek the ancient mother).
Source
Woudhuizen, Fred C. Etruscan as a Colonial Luwian Language. Linguistica Tyrrhenica III. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, Sonderheft 128. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck, 2008. p.54
