- chapter 46: Music and musical instruments in Etruria –
Figure 46.11 Amphora decorated by the Micali-painter, detail © Trustees of the British Museum.Figure 46.12 Mirror, now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, of an athlete and an aulos player,
circa 500 bce. Drawing by Richard de Puma.Musical instruments sometimes appear in Etruscan images of sacrifi ces or altars.^49 The
most common instrument in such instances is the aulos, followed by the lyre and the
tympanon.^50 However, a recent study found the relative occurrence of auloi in Etruscan
sacrifi cial images to be as low as less than fi ve percent.^51 We can therefore not claim that
Etruscan sacrifi ces were usually conducted to the sound of musical instruments, only that
some probably were.
Images of musical instruments often occur, as isolated objects or in the hands of a
person, in tombs or on other kinds of funerary monuments. No instrument seems to
have been considered unsuitable for this purpose. In some cases the instruments are
placed quite conspicuously, as in the Tomba dei Relievi, Cerveteri or the Tomba Giglioli,
Tarquinia where brass instruments frame the entrance of the tomb.^52 Players of the
kithara and the aulos can also be seen in more generic funerary images, often appearing
as fl anking elements around a central element like a door,^53 or as in the case of the Tomba
della Pulcella in Tarquinia, a loculus in the back wall.^54 Aulos players are also present in
prothesis scenes.^55