Lemnian language

Lemnian is an extinct, non-Indo-European language of the Tyrsenian family, attested in a small number of inscriptions from the Greek island of Lemnos dating to the second half of the sixth century BC. Its most important source is the Lemnos Stele, a stone slab discovered in 1885 bearing a funerary text carved alongside a human head in relief, supplemented by a shorter inscription found at Hephaistia on the island in 2009. Lemnian shares striking grammatical and lexical similarities with Etruscan, including a matching dative case ending and closely comparable numerals, which places it firmly alongside Etruscan and Rhaetic in the Tyrsenian family and points to a pre-Indo-European linguistic layer that most researchers now think originated in Italy before some of its speakers reached the Aegean. The language disappeared after Lemnos was conquered by Athens in the late sixth century BC, when Attic Greek replaced it as the island's spoken language.