- Richard Daniel De Puma –
in a better position to begin to understand the meaning of this word as part of Etruscan
funerary ritual (see also Chapter 33). First, it must be noted that the term śuθina occurs
on other kinds of objects besides mirrors, including bronze vessels, candelabra, incense
burners, cistae, helmets and spear-points. There are also items of jewelry and, among the
earliest appearances of śuθina, several Attic vases from Southern Etruria. Several of the
metal objects, including some of the mirrors, also give the owner’s name.^59 The other
interesting phenomenon concerning this kind of inscription is that, except for the late fi fth
century bc Attic vases found mostly at Cerveteri, almost all the items come from Etrusco-
Hellenistic tombs in the area between Orvieto and Lake Bolsena.^60 A single tomb-group
might contain numerous objects that have been “śuθinized.” The Metropolitan Museum
of Art’s Bolsena tomb-group, acquired in 1903, presents ten objects (bronze and silver
vessels, a bronze mirror, a silver strigil, a gold ring, etc.) with, for the most part, carefully
engraved or punched śuθina inscriptions.^61 This was the tomb of a wealthy woman and
apparently she, or her surviving family members, took precautions to discourage anyone
from removing these objects from the tomb.
It is also important to realize that mirrors, and many other kinds of objects, were
intentionally damaged (by bending, folding, perforating, etc.) even when not inscribed
with śuθina. In the case of mirrors, Nancy de Grummond has provided a useful list of
eleven examples that appear to have been intentionally mutilated as part of the funerary
ritual.^62 No doubt more will be added to her list as more mirrors are carefully examined
and published in the CSE. De Grummond proposes some provocative reasons why mirrors
might have been purposely damaged and uses an excellent example in the Museo Faina at
Orvieto to elucidate her points.^63
If we are beginning to appreciate the ways mirrors functioned in Etruscan society,
both in the everyday lives of women and in their preparations for death, we may come
to a better understanding of their rituals and beliefs. Some recent examinations of
specifi c tombs are shedding light on mirror functions that we had not suspected. For
example, Alexandra Carpino recently examined the specifi c placement of mirrors in
a series of carefully excavated tombs in the Monterozzi necropolis (Calvario area and
Fondo Scataglini) at Tarquinia.^64 A close examination of 31 Etruscan tombs, several that
contained mirrors,^65 is of utmost importance for understanding mirror funerary functions
and, in many ways, it demonstrates how much precious information we have lost due
to the haphazard or clandestine recovery of so many other mirrors. Admittedly, these
Tarquinian tombs represent a very small sample of the thousands of known Etruscan
tombs, and they belong to a single site at a single phase in Etruscan history. Still,
given the fact that we have so few undisturbed tombs to study and that so few were
methodically excavated and recorded in the nineteenth century, these Tarquinian tombs
take on added signifi cance. Fortunately, these tombs, which date from the late fourth
to early second century bc, were all relatively intact. Therefore, the archaeologists who
worked on them could recover not only ancient artifacts, systematically recording their
precise locations, but also the skeletal material for numerous inhumation burials. These
skeletons could then be studied so that the gender and approximate age at death for most
could be determined. The results are interesting: (1) Some, but certainly not all of the
adult women were buried with mirrors; this suggests that mirrors were not an essential
element for female burials, at least at this time and place; (2) When mirrors were placed
in these graves they were always oriented with their refl ecting sides visible; (3) There was
little consistency in the placement of mirrors relative to the skeletons associated with