Etruscans: pushing boundaries

When the Etruscans expanded to the south and the vast plains of Campania, they found a land of cultural connections and confrontations, as luxurious grave goods found across the region reveal. An exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples sheds light on these ancient Italians at the frontier. Paolo Giulierini, director of the museum, is our guide.

According to the ancient scholar Servius, the city of Capua, in what is now the southern Italian region of Campania, was founded after a hawk or falcon was sighted. The Etruscan word for this augural sign, the hawk or falcon, is capys, and, while we only know this word from Servius’ gloss, its mark can still be seen in the city’s name today. The Etruscans – or Rasenna, as they called themselves – were an ancient, pre-Roman civilisation dating back to c.900 BC. They controlled swathes of central Italy, ancient Etruria, encompassing the modern regions of Tuscany, Lazio, and Umbria. In time, they expanded north beyond Etruria, and also pushed south into the fertile fields of Campania, settling at centres like Capua.

Fine bronze vessels called lebeti, decorated with sculpted figures of warriors, have been found in the tombs of Capua’s necropolis. Examples of these extraordinary objects, testimony to the magnificence of this centre in the Archaic age (600-480 BC), have been in the British Museum since the 19th century. Also preserved abroad, this time in the museums of Berlin, is an artefact that demonstrates the city’s involvement with the Etruscan religion: the exceptional Tabula Capuana, a religious calendar inscribed – using the Etruscan language – on a terracotta tile.

Small bronze figurine of man in a toga, c.600 BC. Found on the Isle of Elba in 1764, the statuette’s extended right arm once held an object that has been lost.

Around the great urban hub of Capua, there is plenty of archaeological evidence for a lively Etruscan presence in Campania, confirmation of the ancient authors, who even wrote of a ‘dodecapolis’, a league of 12 cities, following the model of the dodecapolis in Etruria. An exhibition in the Palestra Grande in Pompeii used some of this evidence to explore the relationships between elite Campanians, Etruscans, and Greeks and the Etruscan presence in this pre-Roman centre – and now, at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN), we present The Etruscans and the MANN (see ‘Further information’ on p.47). Our exhibition begins with a video in which a hawk flies over Etruscan territory, from Lazio down to Campania, letting visitors see from above the most important sites of this civilisation which, from the 8th to the 5th centuries BC, controlled the great plains of the region.

Related Posts