- chapter 6: Orientalizing Etruria –
Bucchero also includes eclectic typology, since it reproduces both the local forms of the
oldest traditions and those of imported Phoenician, East Greek and Protocorinthian
pottery, likewise emulating the thinness of the last.
A similar assortment of shapes and inspiration enters into replicas in precious metals
(silver, sometimes with gilding) that, as in the case of the Regolini-Galassi Tomb, bear
inscriptions in Etruscan engraved by the same craftsman, evidently for local patrons
(Fig. 6.33). The exercise of the scribal art by artisans is even documented by virtuoso
inscriptions in decorative granulation technique on the gold work (Fig. 6.34).^49 For the
bronze cauldrons with animal-head attachments, well researched prestige objects, is
indicated a dependence on generic models from the Near East, linked in general to the
central Anatolian plateau where there arose the kingdom of Urartu, and to Assyria, and
the Neo-Hittite kingdoms of northern Syria. The last are identifi ed as a possible area
of convergence of diverse currents of production, from which the cauldrons would then
be exported to Greece and the West where they would then receive further processing.
Monumental cauldrons, placed on tripods or supports, are present in the princely tombs
of Etruria and other peripheral areas to the Greek world, as in Cyprus or in Lycia.
A different perspective of valuation is offered by the extraordinary discovery in
Karmir-Blur, on the outskirts of Yerevan, Republic of Armenia, of a cauldron protome
virtually identical to those of the Regolini-Galassi cauldron (see Fig. 6.2). The specimen
is engraved with the name of the Armenian king of Urartu Sarduri II (764–730 bc) and
thus provides not only a clear reference to the production area of the original model, but
also a testimony to the prestige of such an object that, not surprisingly, was intended for
the main chamber in a Cerveteri tomb. It is likely, also by virtue of meaning and value
that, like other objects, the cauldron protomes could have arrived in Etruria after a long
history.^50 By the second half of the seventh century, the Eastern infl uence is less and
suggestions of the Greek world increase markedly. To the increasingly frequent imports
of Protocorinthian vases, fi rst present in the Caeretan Regolini-Galassi Tomb, and the
Figure 6.33 Set of vases in silver. Cerveteri, Regolini-Galassi Tomb. Museo Gregoriano Etrusco.
Photo © Musei Vaticani.Figure 6.34 Fibula a drago in gold with dedicatory inscription in granulation. From Castelluccio di
Pienza, Chiusi. Paris, Musée du Louvre.