- chapter 6: Orientalizing Etruria –
It is possible that the very adoption of gold, increasing more and more, was strongly
determined by its original symbolic value in Eastern cultures, rather than its material
value. Gold, absent from Italian indigenous deposits and material culture, is intimately
bound in the ancient Near East and Egypt with the sphere of the divine and kingship,
never separated entirely from magical-religious meanings. In Egyptian funerary ritual
gold is associated with the concept of immortality of the body, represented as a palliative
to Late Period mummifi cation. Through the gold that covers it, the body of the deceased
is regenerated by passing to the divine from the human state. Gold, associated with the
sun and the stars, the prerogative of Ra and Hathor, is the incorruptible fl esh of the gods.
For example, in the “Book of the Heavenly Cow,” the body of the sun god Ra is made up
of precious metals: silver for the bones, gold for the fl esh and lapis lazuli for the hair.^21
In explicit connection with the matters set forth here is the singular golden “bib”
(pectoral) from the Regolini-Galassi Tomb (Fig. 6.11), which in form and symbolism is
directly linked to Egypt.^22 The large necklace (Egyptian “usekhet”), actually the pectoral,
Figure 6.10 Gold appliqué plaque: rosette. Cerveteri, Regolini-Galassi Tomb. Museo Gregoriano
Etrusco. Photo © Musei Vaticani.Figure 6.11 Pectoral in beaten gold. Cerveteri, Regolini-Galassi Tomb.
Museo Gregoriano Etrusco 20553. Photo © Musei Vaticani.