Old Italic scripts
| Old Italic | |
|---|---|
The abecedarium inscribed in the Marsiliana tablet, around 700 BC | |
| Script type | Alphabet
|
Period | 7th century – 1st century BC |
| Direction | Right-to-left script, left-to-right |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | |
Child systems | Runic, Latin alphabet |
| ISO 15924 | |
| ISO 15924 | Ital (210), Old Italic (Etruscan, Oscan, etc.) |
| Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Old Italic |
| U+10300–U+1032F | |
The Old Italic scripts are a family of ancient writing systems used in the Italian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place. The most notable member is the Etruscan alphabet, which was the immediate ancestor of the Latin alphabet used by more than 100 languages today, including English. The runic alphabets used in Northern Europe are believed to have been separately derived from one of these alphabets by the 2nd century AD.