- Jean MacIntosh Turfa –
actually brought home from a pirate raid? As in Homer’s epics, hosts would have regaled
visitors with the colorful narrative of how a particular piece came into their possession.
The objects that we view today as isolated works of art were originally made and used as
the centerpieces of serious ceremonies such as banquets, sacrifi ces, divination rituals; and
the belongings found in tombs, such as mirrors and armor, were once gifts displayed in
betrothal, wedding, coming of age, and military rituals and processions. They held much
greater signifi cance in their original settings than we often grant them. As Sannibale
writes in Chapter 6, the adoption or adaptation of artistic motifs and iconography never
occurs without forethought and reference to belief: there are good reasons to think that
the Etruscan princes (and princesses) and their court artists knew very well the meanings
of Egyptian, Near Eastern, and Greek motifs and selected them quite deliberately.
Likewise, without the intermarriage of Punic Sardinian craftsmen, the trade of Atlantic
Iberia, the mediation of the peoples of Corsica and Campania, and the camaraderie of the
Faliscans, Etruria could not have become what it was.
Part VIII concludes with the post-antique reception of Etruscan culture and history,
from its early, and sometimes exceptionally imaginative, beginnings with “Annius of
Viterbo” (Chapter 61), and early scholarly discoveries by Thomas Dempster, brought to
a curious readership by Filippo Buonarotti (Chapter 62). Chapter 63 examines modern
reception of the Etruscans and their art, with some curious proponents in Italy and abroad.
There are many instances of innovation, invention, and implementation of technology,
statecraft, and social development to be found in these pages. For instance, the earliest
stone architecture in Italy has been identifi ed in the seventh century bc cult buildings at
Tarquinia La Civita (Chapter 29); Etruscans, although not necessarily doctors, performed
post-mortem C-sections and probably other surgery (Chapters 47, 59); the future of
wheeled vehicles, from automobiles to railways, was determined when the Iron Age
Etruscans began to make chariots, given the later development and spread of Rome
and Roman roads (Chapter 41); the intricate creatures of Celtic art and manuscripts
owe their birth to unnamed Archaic Etruscan artisans (Chapter 19). Etruscan cities led
the way in metallurgy, agriculture, surveying and planning, in literacy and the uses of
writing, in religious practice, especially divination, the techniques of urbanization and
the dissemination of Greek iconography and myth through the European world. Roman
portraiture and monumental painting, bronze-working and goldsmithing, glass-making
and gem-cutting, would have taken a very different track without the Etruscans. The
modern position of women in Western culture, the comforts of wooden architecture and
home décor, the wines of France and games propelled by cubical dice, owe much of their
character to Etruscan developments of the early fi rst millennium bc. Today, the Etruscans
still have much to offer and much for us to discover: welcome to their world – and ours.
NOTES1 Corpus Speculorum Etruscorum, Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae
Classicae, Thesaurus Cultuum et Rituorum Antiquorum.
2 Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum, Testimonia Linguae Etruscae, Etruskische Texte, Rasenna (online
journal).
3 Sybille Haynes, Etruscan Civilization. A Cultural History, Los Angeles: Getty Press, 2000.
M. Torelli, ed., Gli Etruschi/The Etruscans, (exhibition, Palazzo Grassi, Venice 2000)
Milan: Bompiani, 2000.
G. Barker and T. B. Rasmussen, The Etruscans, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.