- Maurizio Sannibale –
Figure 6.22 Monumental access stair to the altar-platform of the Melone del Sodo II at Cortona.
Beginning of sixth century bc. Photo MAEC-Museo dell’Accademia Etrusca e della Città di Cortona.ritual vessels, which converge in the essence of a goddess of fertility, generation and
regeneration beyond death, according to the ancestral pattern of “Mother Goddess” and
its subsequent sedimentation in the cults of Turan, Ishtar/Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus.^40
This understanding is also interpreted in the ivory statuette of a naked woman with her
hand brought to the breast from Marsiliana d’Albegna, Circle of the Fibula, tomb XLI
(675–650 bc) (Fig. 6.23).
An interesting feature appears in the Orientalizing tumuli of Tarquinia, which can
provide a sort of small piazza in the external entry area, with monumental structures
to accommodate seated spectators. To the well-known case of the Tomba Luzi in the
Infernaccio necropolis, with a central staircase and three smaller ramps on the sides
forming a sort of auditorium, is now added that of the “Tumulus of the Queen,” the
subject of recent excavations, still in progress, dated around the mid-seventh century bc
(Fig. 6.24).^41 This is an impressive architectural construction about 40 meters in diameter,
fi tted with a monumental staircase, which creates an open-air enclosure for spectacles
and ceremonies in honor of the noble dead. The “little square” was originally covered
by a wooden canopy supported in front by three columns, the rock-cut foundations of
which still remain. The roof also ensured the preservation of painted plaster. It does not
take a great leap of imagination to picture in such a context, something like the funeral
games for Patroclus recounted in the Iliad (Book XXIII). One may hypothesize that these
monumental spaces were used by the presiding clan for noble assemblies of particular
importance or solemnity, such as seeking the advice and divinatory protection of their
ancestors. In particular, this should emphasize the affi nity of the tumulus, even from an
architectural point of view, with the royal tombs of Cyprus, such as those of Salamis. It is
likely that even in the case of tumuli destined for the kings of Tarquinia, we may recognize
the work of architects and craftsmen who arrived in the early seventh century bc from the
eastern Mediterranean. Another element of these dynamics is provided by the discovery
of remains of wall painting, intended to decorate the hall and two-sided chambers of the
tomb of the royal personage buried in the “Tumulus of the Queen.” In fact this pictorial
document, dated c. 630 at the beginning of Late Orientalizing, deviates markedly, from
the technological point of view, from all other known Etruscan painting, because the
color support is composed of a thick layer of crushed-alabaster plaster, according to an