EUGUBIAN, or Eugubine Tables, Tabulce Eugu-binoe, inscribed tablets in bronze, found in 1444 at La Schieggia, near Gubbio {Eugubiurn), in the duchy of Urbino. These tablets are seven in number, five of them containing inscriptions in Umbric, mixed with Etruscan, and the remaining two inscriptions in Latin characters. They were at first believed to be of very high antiquity; but it is now pretty generally agreed that they are not more ancient than the fourth century before the Christian era. The learned reader will find copies of these remarkable monuments in Dempster’s Etruria Regalis (vol. i. p. 91, et seqq.), and also some curious details respecting them in the supplement to that work by the senator Buonarotti (vol. ii. p. 101). According to Lanzi, they refer entirely to the mode of sacrifice, the particular forms of prayer, and other religious rites of certain Umbrian communities, who were united in a sort of federal bond; but the explanations of the learned Italian are much too arbitrary and hypothetical to be of any authority; and, in point of fact, we are still as ignorant of the language of these inscriptions as when the tablets were first discovered, nearly four centuries ago. (See article Etruscans.) But as the character has proved less untractable than the text, an Etruscan alphabet has been constructed, by means of which we are enabled to read the words which as yet we cannot interpret. Previously to the time (1732) when Bourguet undertook this difficult task, several persons had attempted it, and failed. But, by carefully comparing the tablets in the Roman character with those in the Etruscan, the ingenious Frenchman discovered that the former were a compendium of the latter, and that many words were common to both sets; and, having obtained this key, he succeeded, by pursuing the comparison he had instituted, in constructing an alphabet which, though far from being complete, was yet much more perfect than any 7 which had preceded it. Since the time of Bourguet, however, no further progress has been made in this confined but interesting field of inquiry; and as the language has hitherto baffled every artifice of interpretation, the contents of these curious monuments of antiquity still remain undeciphered. The discovery of a bilingual inscription, which is not an impossible event, would, however, furnish the needful key, and lead directly to the solution of an enigma alike vexatious and interesting to the scholar. Should this ever happen, or should some rare effort of sagacity or miracle of fortune unexpectedly put any inquirer on the right road without such aid, we venture to prognosticate that the language of these inscriptions will be found to be radically Celtic, perhaps a dead dialect of that language, intermixed with terms of Pelasgic origin. That the Umbri were Celts, or at least of Celtic origin, there can be little doubt; and it seems equally certain that the Etruscans, who ultimately predominated over all the other tribes which from time to time had settled in [7:9:398]Etruria, were also, in part at least, of northern descent. It would therefore be strange indeed if in these inscrip* tions, five of which are in the Umbric mixed with the Etruscan character, no traces were found of that primitive language which successive immigrations from the north must have diffused over a considerable portion of the great plain of Italy. The Eugubine Tables were first published by Smetius, 1588; then by Gruter, Inscript, vol. i. p. 142. (Bourguet, Dissert. Mem. Cort. tom. i. p. 1; Dempster, De Etruria Regali, ubi supra; and Lanzi, Saggio di Lingua Etrusea. See also Beitrage zur Deutung der Euguhinischen Tafeln von Lassen. Bonn, 1833.) (a.)