This week we’ve been learning about the Etruscans, a people who were living in Italy since long before Aeneas sailed from Troy or Romulus killed his brother for the right to found a city. I honestly knew very little about Etruria before now, and always kind of thought of them as simple precursors to the glorious art & architecture of Rome and Greece. But the Etruscan tombs we explored, the exquisite pottery, and the larger-than-life statues and sarcophagi are not the relics of a simple, artistically-challenged people. Although we have comparatively little of their material culture and most of their language still remain a mystery to us (it’s loosely based on the Greek alphabet and shares some similarities with Archaic Latin but isn’t an Indo-European language which is absolutely wild), the Etruscans are fascinating and impressive, and walking through underground tombs gave me some SERIOUS Indianna Jones/Lara Croft/Nick Cage in National Treasure vibes and I was definitely ready for it.
We started at the necropolis in Tarquinia, an hour on a comfy chartered bus (!) from Rome. This massive complex sits on a hill, and all the individual tombs are accessible just through stairs leading underground. In this necropolis, the Etruscans painted the tomb walls with maybe scenes of the Afterlife, maybe scenes from the deceased person’s life, maybe just things the family liked. Banquets, hunting parties, processions, musical performances, jugglers, birds, lions, horses, dogs. Some better-preserved than others, but all beautiful.
Then we went to the necropolis of Cerveteri, where the tombs are located in these massive stone and dirt mounds built straight out of the rock. Here we got to see the procession over the centuries (roughly 7th-3rd BC) from simple, unadorned caves with a few roughly-carved benches for the bodies or sarcophagi to the incredibly ornate, colorful Tomb of the Reliefs with elaborate wall decorations and stone beds with pillows. Cerveteri is all overgrown and jungly now, with vines hanging down around and lizards basking in the sun on the millenia-old stone walls. We got lost a few times as we wandered, but were happy to be able to see more of this monumental labyrinth honoring long-gone families. It was interesting to notice the hush that fell over all of us as we made our way down crumbling steps into these final resting places, as if we had walked into a cathedral or library. No ghost encounters this time, but there absolutely is a certain presence in these tombs.
Both the necropoleis had museums displaying some of the sarcophagi and grave goods discovered there, although most had sadly been lost to grave-robbers before proper excavation started. Remnants of iron shoes, six-sided dice that look just like ours, a beautiful cista (cosmetic storage container given to a woman by her mother as a wedding present), and too many bronze mirrors and pieces of pottery to count.
One of my favorite parts of this week was the Sarcophagus of the Married Couple at the Villa Giulia museum in Rome. Their hands and faces are so expressive, and although their almond-shaped eyes and Archaic Smiles (the mildly-creepy, “I know more than you” ones) are perhaps not perfectly realistic, they still seem like real people. And of course, they were.
Off to the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel with my art history class this morning, and then a visit to the island of Capri this weekend with some friends! Expect lots of pictures from that. And so, so many blessings for everyone in my second-home-state and actual-home-states of my lovely friends who are being affected by this hurricane. All will be well!
Wright Now 