- chapter 28: Etruscan religious rituals –
The uncertainty of the data provided by the residues of plant and animal offerings is
well suited to the words of J. P. Vernant: “If the remains of the ritual are silent...we may
ask what the images and the myth are telling us.”^112 It is precisely the analysis of the
fi gural representations that, in the Etruscan world, generates the attempt to reconstruct
the sacrifi cial ritual in the different stages that, within a rigid and previously established
order, ought to lead, from the selection of the animal to be allocated for sacrifi ce, to
its ritual killing, preceded and followed by the series of operations associated with the
bloodless offering.^113 Then comes the yet more complex objective, to seek to locate the
main purposes, thus, the typologies of the sacrifi ce.
The analysis of some fi gured documents, probably linked to the sphere of cult and
more specifi cally of funerary ritual practices, allows us to explore this ritual “path,”
tentatively proposing a “reconstruction” and trying to shed light on the nature and on
the values of some divine fi gures chiefl y related to the infernal-funerary sphere.^114 An
example for illustration is a red-fi gure oinochoe in the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa
Giulia (Fig. 28.7a-c).^115
The scene depicted on the body of this Vulcian oinochoe reproduces, in a kind of
synoptic and synthetic representation, the sequence of the bloody rite to be performed at
the end of the pompè (procession), by which the offerings have been performed near the
place of sacrifi ce, at the moment of suspension (epochè) that precedes the killing of the
victim in proximity to the altar and the libation of the bloodless offerings before and after
the shedding of the victim’s blood and the cooking of its fl esh.^116
Essential to the formulation of an exegetical hypothesis for the sacrifi cial rite
represented, would seem to be the small bloodless offerings deposited on the top of the
trapeza (table) to the side of the altar: the triangular outline of these items^117 suggests, in
fact, an immediate comparison to those small pyramid-shaped fl our-concoctions known
in Greek sacrifi cial ritual.
The protagonist of the bloody act, identifi ed primarily because of his knife, although
it is devoid of a specifi c priestly connotation,^118 would take on the double role of sacrifi cer
(sacrifi cante), understood as one who directs the sacrifi cial ceremony, and that of the one
killing (sacrifi catore), the magheiros, who materially carries out the killing of the victim.^119
Figure 28.7a-c Etruscan oinochoe in overpainted red fi gure. Rome, Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa
Giulia, inv. no. 63649. From Vulci, Osteria necropolis, tomb no. 52 (Scavi Mengarelli 1925–34).
Middle of the fourth century bc. (After Rafanelli 2009, fi gs. 1–4).