Etruscan Demons, Monsters Unearthed

Discovery news.com ^ | 11-5-2003 | Rossella Lorenzi

[blam]

Etruscan Demons, Monsters Unearthed

Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

Demonic Charioteer with the Shadow of Death

Nov. 5, 2003 — Etruscan art, made of strange demons and monsters, is emerging in a Tuscan village, in what could be one of the most important discoveries of recent times, according to scholars who have seen the paintings.

Lurking on the left wall of a 4th century B.C. tomb, the exceptionally preserved monsters have been unearthed during the ongoing excavation of the Pianacce necropolis in Sarteano, a village 50 miles from Siena, Italy.

"So far we have found some scenes of banquets, snake-like monsters, demons, a hyppocampus and a sarcophagus broken in many fragments, probably by tomb robbers. We are confident to find more art as the digging goes on," archaeologist Alessandra Minetti told Discovery News.

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One of Europe's most mysterious people, the Etruscans forged Italy's most sophisticated civilization before the Romans. They rose from Italian prehistory around 900 B.C. and dominated most of the country for about five centuries.

Yet mystery shrouds their history. First defeated by the Romans in the 4th century B.C., in 90 B.C., after centuries of decline, the Etruscans became Roman citizens. They left no literature to record their culture — few traces of their puzzling, non-Indo-European language survive. Only the richly decorated tombs they left behind provide a glimpse into their world.

"The newly excavated tomb belonged to a rich family, and shows that Sarteano wasn't just a countryside village, but a politically important center," Minetti said.

Vividly colored, the scenes in the tomb reflect a sinister change in the Etruscan concept of death. A fun loving and sensuous people, on the verge of decline they adopted the Greek vision of a demon-infested underworld.

"The figure with red hair is surely a death demon of some kind. This is confirmed by the black figure at her side, used by the Etruscans to characterize demons," chief archaeologist Mario Iozzo, director of the Center for Conservation in Florence and Chiusi's Archaeological Museum, told Discovery News.

With a chariot driven by gryphons, the demonic figure has probably come to hurry the soul of the deceased to the Underworld. Scholars are not sure whether the figure is Charu (Charon), normally shown as a bearded man with ruddy skin, the female Vanth, usually winged, or a totally unknown demon. They hope to find more clues as the digging continues.

Other paintings in the burial chamber are celebratory, showing joyful people banqueting — a scene more in tone with the spontaneity of the early Etruscan art.

Scholars are intrigued. "From what I can see, I can state that the painting is of exceptional quality, indeed a masterpiece of the late Etruscan style," Michael Padgett, curator of ancient art at Princeton University Art Museum, told Discovery News.

[Cultural Jihad]

I hear a popular saying in Northern Italy is: "When you travel south of Rome, you are in Africa." ;-)

[buwaya]

Too early.

The great Roman historians wrote most usefully of things of their own time - Tacitus, Caesar, etc. Only Livy went back to the origins of Rome, and his work is very unreliable.

[buwaya]

My theory is that they were like Basques (also an isolate).

They were much more interesting than Basques though.

[buwaya]

The Celts/Gauls were later invaders and occupiers of Northern Italy. They fought both Etruscans and Romans.

[f.Christian]

Post modern man --- liberals - rats !

[MarcoPolo]

Really? Hm. That IS interesting. Old, oft-quoted folk sayings are often full of hidden truths.

[nopardons]

Fascinating and absolutely NOTHING like anything I've ever seen previously, attributted to the Etruscans.

[nopardons]

Ahhhhhhhhh ... the Aeneid ! I I SING OF ARMS AND ARMAMENTS " ... the onpening line, when said by a male. When said by a female, those same lines read : " I SING OF A MAN'S ARMS AND THE ARMS HE CARRIES ."

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Thanks for the post. Significant new finds are always interesting.

[fqued]

Okay, so you can recite the first three words of the Aeneid.

But can you recite the first ten lines of the Oddessey??

a billion years ago, back in high school, we had to memorize it, and I can still recite part of it from memory.

so there, na na.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Bill and Hillary?

[Cronos]

like the BAsques

An interesting bit of research found that the Basques are not genetically different from their neighbours, only linguistically. Of course, being a small population they must have intermingled with the communities around them. The basque language is also supposed to be related to the Chechen. The other non-IndoEuropean linguistic group in Europe is the Finnish-Ugaritic group to which Finnish and some Baltic languages belong.

Weren't the Celts also Indo-European? Not Aryan though.

[Cronos]

Found this list of Indo-European language groups:

Subfamily	Group	Subgroup	Languages and Principal Dialects
Anatolian			Hieroglypic Hittite*, Hittite (Kanesian)*, Luwian*, Lycian*, Lydian*, Palaic*
Baltic			Latvian (Lettish), Lithuanian, Old Prussian*
Celtic	Brythonic		Breton, Cornish*, Welsh
Celtic	Continental		Gaulish*
Celtic	Goidelic or Gaelic		Irish (Irish Gaelic), Manx*, Scottish Gaelic
Germanic	East Germanic		Burgundian*, Gothic*, Vandalic*
Germanic	North Germanic		Old Norse* (see Norse): Danish, Faeroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish
Germanic	West Germanic (see Grimm's law)	High German	German, Yiddish
Germanic	West Germanic (see Grimm's law)	Low German	Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Flemish, Frisian, Plattdeutsch (see German language)
Greek			Aeolic*, Arcadian*, Attic*, Byzantine Greek*, Cyprian*, Doric*, Ionic*, KoinE*, Modern Greek
Indo-Iranian	Dardic or Pisacha		Kafiri, Kashmiri, Khowar, Kohistani, Romany (Gypsy), Shina
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan		Pali*, Prakrit*, Sanskrit*, Vedic*
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	Central Indic	Hindi, Hindustani, Urdu
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	East Indic	Assamese, Bengali, Bihari, Oriya
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	Northwest Indic	Punjabi, Sindhi
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	Pahari	Central Pahari, Eastern Pahari (Nepali), Western Pahari
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	South Indic	Marathi (including major dialect Konkani), Singhalese (Sinhalese)
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	West Indic	Bhili, Gujarati, Rajasthani (many dialects)
Indo-Iranian	Iranian		Avestan*, Old Persian*
Indo-Iranian	Iranian	East Iranian	Baluchi, Khwarazmian*, Ossetic, Pamir dialects, Pushtu (Afghan), Saka (Khotanese)*, Sogdian*, Yaghnobi
Indo-Iranian	Iranian	West Iranian	Kurdish, Pahlavi (Middle Persian)*, Parthian*, Persian (Farsi), Tajiki
Italic	(Non-Romance)		Faliscan*, Latin, Oscan*, Umbrian*
Italic	Romance or Romanic	Eastern Romance	Italian, Rhaeto-Romanic, Romanian, Sardinian
Italic	Romance or Romanic	Western Romance	Catalan, French, Ladino, Portuguese, Provençal, Spanish
Slavic or Slavonic	East Slavic		Belorussian (White Russian), Russian, Ukrainian
Slavic or Slavonic	South Slavic		Bulgarian, Church Slavonic*, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian
Slavic or Slavonic	West Slavic		Czech, Kashubian, Lusatian (Sorbian or Wendish), Polabian*, Polish, Slovak
Thraco-Illyrian			Albanian, Illyrian*, Thracian*
Thraco-Phrygian			Armenian, Grabar (Classical Armenian)*, Phrygian*
Tokharian (W China)			Tokharian A (Agnean)*, Tokharian B (Kuchean)*

[Cronos]

TRue, the Aenied seems very much like the Romans were desperate to show that they were not barbarians at earlier times. Which they were. The GReeks themselves (contrary to the dad in 'My Big Fat GReek Wedding') were themselves barbarians before and even arguably IN the Mycenean age (1500 to 1200 B.C.) when the war against Troy took place. After that, they went into stagnation until the rise of the city states. A 1700 BC date of the Minoan civilisation in Crete still makes it a comparatively infantile civilisation compared to those in the Nile, Euphrates-Tiger and Indus valleys with their early points stretching back to 3100 BC (for the scorpion king) and 4000 B.C. (for the Sumerians in what is now modern day Iraq).

History is fascinating, eh?

[Cronos]

The * indicate dead languages.

[Virginia-American]

few traces of their puzzling, non-Indo-European language survive

Related to the Basques?

Greenberg includes Etruscan in Eurasiatic, although not enthusiastically (there really isn't much data)

See Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family: vol. I Grammar and Vol II Lexicon by Joseph Greenberg (the greatest linguist of the 20th century)

Soviet linguists have concluded that Basque is part of a Dene-Sino-Caucasic phylum that includes na-Dine (Athabaskan (icl Navaho and Apache), Sino-tibeten, Yeniesian (Kott and Kett), Burushaski, Basque, and the non-Kartvelian Caucasian tongues.

Discussed in On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy by Merritt Ruhlen.

[Virginia-American]

few traces of their puzzling, non-Indo-European language survive

Related to the Basques?

Greenberg includes Etruscan in Eurasiatic, although not enthusiastically (there really isn't much data)

See Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family: vol. I Grammar and Vol II Lexicon by Joseph Greenberg (the greatest linguist of the 20th century)

Soviet linguists have concluded that Basque is part of a Dene-Sino-Caucasic phylum that includes na-Dine (Athabaskan (icl Navaho and Apache), Sino-tibeten, Yeniesian (Kott and Kett), Burushaski, Basque, and the non-Kartvelian Caucasian tongues.

Discussed in On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy by Merritt Ruhlen.

[GiovannaNicoletta]

Could you please add me to your "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" ping list?

Thanks!

[eastsider]

I'd wager you went to a Jesuit high school in the NE : )

[eastsider]