- chapter 44: The banquet through Etruscan history –
the so-called vestibulum, to the right of the entrance to the main chamber. The founder
of the tomb, Larth Velcha, was probably still alive when this tomb was inaugurated
to the memory of his parents.^19 The images possibly show the living at banquet with
the dead. The men are reclining while their wives are sitting at their side on beautiful,
richly ornamented couches behind tables with food, where at least grapes and bread are
distinguishable.
Although the custom is known already from the Archaic period on, it is especially from
the third to the fi rst centuries bc that the Etruscans from high and middle classes chose to
be represented on their sarcophagi in the south and cinerary urns in the north. Reclining
on pillows, they attend the eternal banquet both on the lids as well as on the front of the
containers. Both women and men are seen holding a fan or a patera, however, in many cases
they do not hold anything; in this moment of auto-celebration and coming together, they
are “miming” a banquet. No food or drink is necessary, the inner space of the tomb has
been transformed into a banqueting hall for the expanded family as seen in the Inghirami
tomb for instance (see Fig. 9.2), no longer a material space but a symbolic space.
NOTES1 See Chapter 43.
2 Tuck 1994; Kistler 2001.
3 Maggiani & Paolucci 2005: 5–8, 12–14. The tomb is dated 630–620 bc.
4 Maggiani & Paolucci 2005: 4.
5 Magi 1967.
6 Ridgway 2010: 51–54.
7 Rathje 2005; Rathje 2010: 25.
8 See Barjamovic 2011 for a very recent presentation of the Assyrian banqueting praxis, and
Nijboer forthcoming.
9 Rathje 1994; Winter 2009: 157, 159, 187–189; cf. also Rathje 2011: 60–61.
10 Berkin 2003: 120–125.
11 De Grummond 1997.
12 Rathje 2004: 63.
13 Wecowski 2011; Murray 2000.
14 Krauskopf 2006, 75.
15 Steingräber 1986, no. 123: 353–354; Weber Lehmann 2001. For a recent bibliography of
Attic vases in Etruria cf. Hatzivassilou 2010: 106–107.
16 Lewis, 2003: 189–190.
17 Steingräber 1986, no. 32: 278–279.
18 Steingräber 1986, no. 109: 341–343.
19 Maggiani 2005, 125.
BIBLIOGRAPHYBarjamovic, G. J. (2011) “Pride, Pomp and Circumstance: Palace, Court and Household in Assyria
879 – 612 B.C.” in J. Duindam and M. Kunt (eds) Royal courts in dynastic states and empires: A
global perspective, Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 27–61.
Berkin, J. (2003) The Orientalizing Bucchero from the Lower Building at Poggio Civitate (Murlo),
Archaeological Institute of America. Monographs New Series, 6, University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology: Philadelphia PA.
De Grummond, N. T. (1997) “Poggio Civitate, a Turning Point,” EtrSt 4: 23–39.