Etaonsh wrote:

> I found your post on Gaulish and
> Lepontic runes [...]

Gauls and Leponti had nothing to do with runes.

The Celtic inscription of Northern Italy and Switzerland are in a form of
the Etruscan alphabet, which is nearly Latin inscription.

> felt that the 'troll' matter needed
> sorting out first. [...]

(Notice that John Cowan did not call *you* a troll, but talked about your
"trolls", which means "provocations". Although I can agree that "trolls" or
"provocations" aren't the nicest term to call other people's opinions, that
didn't look like an ad personam attack on you.)

> [...] What interested
> me particularly about the Gaulish
> runes I looked at was the similarity
> between the Celtic cross symbol
> Marco brought up, and the Gaulish
> 'theta.'

And if you put the two symbols side by side, they bear a striking similarity
with the wheels of my bicycle. C'mon, Etaonsh, this is not Atlantis!

That letter, as all the other letters in the Greek/Etruscan/Italic
alphabet(s), derive(s) from the same North Semitic alphabet that is the
origin of all the alphabets used in Europe and Near East.

> In alphabetic terms, the
> Celtic cross can be seen as
> representing the superiority of
> pre-Roman Imperial, at least in the
> representation of 'th' by one letter
> - thus the fact that Roman
> 'civilisation' was not entirely a
> progressive experience.

I guess that it is just a coincidence that Latin had no /th/ or /þ/ phoneme
to use that letter for, right?

_ Marco