- chapter 28: Etruscan religious rituals –
On the other hand, the sacrifi ce of sheep is also well suited for sacrifi cial rituals in honor
of gods such as Dis Pater, to whom it is perhaps permissible to ascribe the ceremonies
practiced in the sanctuaries of the Acropoleis of Marzabotto and of Volterra, respectively, in
the monumental podium structure “B,” also interpreted as a mundus, and in the sacred area
that seems to qualify as the primitive cultic nucleus of the city. Sheep are also appropriate
to a Tinia imbued with underworld-chthonic connotations like the one worshiped in Area
C of Pyrgi, or in the Orvietan Belvedere sanctuary, where the dedication incised on a
poculum (drinking cup), repeats the epiclesis (invocation) of the god Calusna.
Widely documented in ritual, sanctuary and funerary contexts,^77 the offering of ovis
vel capra (“sheep or goat” – whose bones cannot be differentiated in most archaeological
contexts) must also represent in the Etruscan world the most common and recurring type
of animal sacrifi ce, where the title of “hostia sacrifi calis princeps,” already postulated for the
ox in terms of the honor and value of the victim and thus of the greater rarity and quality
of the offering, could be attributed to this domestic species based on its exact opposite in
the domestic economy, because of the relative cheapness and widespread availability of the
animal, used primarily for human food and a wide range of ritual destinations. If in fact the
species of sheep/goat, in combination with cattle and pigs, formed the core of the principal
sacrifi cial procedures known in offi cial Roman ceremonies like that of the suovetaurilia, the
data obtained from the analysis of osteological fi nds in the context of sanctuary and burial
complexes seem to deliver, with the prevalence of these species over others domestic or wild,
a direct confi rmation of the appearance of the famous “triptych” in Etruscan ritual as well.
This predominance of sheep/goats seems to be refl ected in the fi gural documentation, in
which the representation of ovis vel capra occurs on a conspicuous number of monuments^78
and in different contexts, sometimes ascribable to the private and/or funerary sphere, as
perhaps seems to occur in the scene of sacrifi ce of a sheep near a naiskos at the end of a
sacred(?) pompe (procession), on the front panel of an urn in London (British Museum D69).^79
Other times, it is linked, by virtue of the presence of a person sacrifi cing in the costume of a
priest, to the sphere of public ceremonies very probably occurring in a sanctuary.^80
A propitiatory/celebratory intent, tinged with shades of initiation, would seem to be
found in the sacrifi cial scene reproduced on the front of the black-fi gure amphora in the
Museum of Dresden (Fig. 28.6),^81 that displays a male fi gure engaged in an armed dance
within the framework of a religious festival^82 in honor of a god with Dionysian traits, in
which the purpose of the celebration is in keeping with the presumed initiation value of
Figure 28.5 Black fi gure hydria. Eagle Painter. Copenhagen, Nat. Mus. 13567. From Caere.
530–520 bc (after Hemelrijk, J. M. (1984) Caeretan Hydriae: 29–30 n. 15 tavv. 67–69.