- Simona Rafanelli –
“Presentation” of the victim^120 to the divinity in front of the altar, bloodless libations
that precede and follow the immolation of the animal and the offering of its fl esh,
constitute a ritual sequence that seems to be supported by the recent interpretation
furnished by H. Rix of the “parallel rituals” of the Liber Linteus of Zagreb (“Linen Book,”
see Chapter 22),^121 where the “presentation” of the victim to the god precedes in fact the
prescription for the bloodless offering of vinum (wine) and of fase (polta? “cakes”?) and the
killing of the animal victim, in similar fashion to that illustrated in the Tabulae Iguvinae
(the bronze Tablets of Gubbio)^122 and to what we learn from the reading of the descriptions
of sacrifi cial ceremonies in contemporary Greece.^123
Also concerning the instruments of death, in parallel with what happens in the
contemporary Greek and Roman spheres, the knife or the short sword represent the
weapons generally used for victims of small and medium size,^124 cut down while standing
or atop the altar, once freed from the constraints of the rope with which the animal is
bound and led in the ritual procession up to the place of sacrifi ce.
The animal victim, ultimately destined for sacrifi ce, identifi able as a deer, could well
form part of a funerary ritual devoted to a god of the Underworld, consistent with the
provenance of the oinochoe from a tomb. If the association of the animal with Hermes in
other Etruscan fi gural documents^125 fi ts the scope of a funerary sacrifi ce on the basis of the
god’s psychopompic abilities (able to lead souls to the Afterlife), on the other hand the
association of the deer with other gods with chthonic aspects, such as the infernal Apollo,
assimilated precociously to Šuri in the Etruscan world, or a funerary Dionysos, may be
validated by the appearance of other “secondary” elements in the fi gured representation.^126
The funerary provenance of the vase could therefore endorse the eschatological meaning
of the representation of the sacrifi cial rite, correlated to the initiational dimension of a
Dionysos Baccheios attested at Vulci^127 by vase inscriptions since 460 bc and understood as
the god who liberates one from the chains of death through initiation into his Mysteries.
The species of the victim, a piglet, the katharmos par excellence in Greek civilization,^128
(Fig. 28.8) as in Roman-Italic culture, and the sacrifi cial animal most closely connected
Figure 28.8 Mirror in bronze. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Museum inv. No. MS 5444.
Second half of the fourth century bc. (Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Museum; drawing by
permission of the artist, R.D. De Puma, CSE U.S.A. 4: no. 34).