« previousnext »

The Etruscans were a people of uncertain origins, lived in Tuscany and northern Italy. The Etruscans civilization started in the early 7th century BC.

According to Herodotus (c. 400 BC) who identified them with the Tyrrhenian, they came from Asia Minor; other say from Central Europe.

According to modern historians the Etruscan nation developed in Italy through a gradual and voluntary assimilation of the various peoples living between the Arno and the Tiber. The Etruscans became a great marine force and head dealings with all the major countries in the Mediterranean, assimilating various elements from each in the development of their civilization: Italian, oriental and Greek.

They were organized into city states (lucumonie) united in a confederation of a primarily religious nature which included 12 cities: Arretium (Arezzo), Caisra (Cerveteri), Clevsin (Chiusi), Curtun (Cortona), Veii, Perusna (Perugia), Pupluna (Populonia), Tarchna (Tarquini), Vetluna (Vetulonia), Felathri (Volterra), Velzna (Bolsena), and Velch (Volci). There is a considerable discrepancy in the spelling of some of the names, depending on the sources, in some cases, we can only guess at the original Etruscan name.

The Etruscan League of 12 was mostly an economic and religious league, or a loose confederation, similar to the Greek states. The twelve city states met once a year where a leader was chosen to represent the league. Power, held by the aristocracy, was hereditary. The Etruscans developed the Maremma area; industry flourished and commerce was extremely active. Having learned the art of navigation from the Phoenicians and the Greeks, they shared their domination of the Tyrrhenian Sea with the Cathaginians and during the period of their greatest power (7th-5th century BC) their kingdom extended to the Po Valley where they founded Felsina (Bologna), Adria and Spina with its port on the Adriatic Sea. In the South, they conquered Rome pressing on beyond the Tiber into Campania to the Gulf of Salerno where they encountered resistance from the Sabines and the Greeks. Today is still a question about the Etruscan language. The Etruscans are generally believed to have spoken a non-Indo-European language. Knowledge of the Etruscan language only began with the discovery of the bilingual Phoenician-Etruscan Pyrgi Tablets found at the port of Caere in 1964, and this knowledge is still incomplete. The Etruscan religion was based on a dark and terrible conception of the divinity. The gods, of which the most important one was the god of death, were the enemies of man; they could only be placated with sacrifices.

The Etruscan obsession with elaborate burials, probably was connected with they religion, similar to the Egyptians that a part of the soul remained with the body, or at least that the body was important for the afterlife. Etruscans Tombs, the earliest grave sites were cremations, with the ash being retained either in biconical urns, or urns fashioned to represent huts. The Etruscans has good knowledge and experience of medicine, a fact mentioned by ancient Greek and Roman writers, especially with regard to the medicinal properties of plants. The degree of knowledge attained by Etruscan "doctors" can be seen in the votive offerings made out of terracotta or bronze depicting internal organs and anatomical parts of the human body found by archeologist. Various surgical tools have also been discovered as well as a skull with a dental prothesis. History of Italian art begins with the Etruscans. Many of the finest Etruscan sculptures date from the sixth century BC. Typical motives of Etruscan art were human sculptures with the realistic and expressive faces, with prominent eyes and enigmatic smiles, but with low attention paid to human anatomy. The best examples are the Apollo and Herakles from Veio, both now in the Villa Giulia in Rome, and the Sarcophagus of a Married Couple from Cerveteri.

Depictions of animals, real and imaginary, were also common, most famous are the Chimera from Arezzo, now situated in the Museo Archeologico in Florence, and Rome's own emblem, the She-Wolf, in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, either date from the fifth century BC.

Etruscan gold work was without question unrivaled in the Mediterranean during the first millennium BC. A considerable selection of Gold jewelers was found in the Regolini Galassi tomb, which was discovered in the 19th Century.

It should be remembered that a large proportion of Etruscan art did not survive up until the present day. The most of the Etruscan art that survives today is funerary art, from Etruscans Tombs. The collapse of the Etruscan state can be attributed to a variety of factors, the most influential being its disunity. Etruscan state government was in fact a theocracy. The connection between the states was not so strong, an individual state has no commitment to provide aid to one another, and frequently found it difficult to unify against one threat. For this reason, the Romans attacked individual cities between 510 and 29 BC. This disunity is further illustrated by the fact that Rome created treaties individually with the Etruscan states, rather than the whole. With the fall of Veii to the Romans, a key southern defense was destroyed, leaving the Etruscans pressed in on from all sides by several different forces, and ready for conquest.

For more information visit

• http://www.mysteriousetruscans.com