The University of Sydney has mounted an exhibition introducing the once dominant and the most powerful Mediterranean people of the pre-Roman era.
According to Artdaily, the Etruscan Empire was built on mineral wealth and boasted elaborate cities and a powerful oligarchy which greatly influenced the Roman Empire.
Despite the obvious dominance of Etruscans, little is known about who they were, where they came from, or what language they spoke.
There is no Etruscan literature or major buildings left, and much of their art - mostly made from stone, wood and terracotta - was destroyed by the Romans.
The Etruscans: A Classical Fantasy displays sculpture, jewelry, bronzes, pottery, terracotta figurines and body parts, and funerary urns as part of the civilization's social life.
The urns, which date back to the 2nd century BCE, offer some of the best available clues about life in Etruria.
“Now, we know nothing about the Etruscans except what we find in their tombs,” writes British novelist D.H. Lawrence in his 1932 Etruscan Places.
“There are references to them in Latin writers. But of first-hand knowledge we have nothing except what the tombs offer. So to the tombs we must go: or the museums containing the things that have been rifled from the tombs.”
Exhibition curator Michael Turner believes the fascination with the Etruscans is partly because of magnificent underground painted tombs which have survived the worst excesses of the Romans.
“The Etruscans built cities of the dead outside the walls of their cities of the living in the Tuscan hills,” he said.
“Within these cities family tombs were built into mounds, carved into hills or cut into bedrock. They were painted and decorated as if inhabited and filled, for instance, with dining and drinking accoutrements.
“Several urns on display in The Etruscans: A Classical Fantasy feature customized lids depicting the deceased, with writing on the front giving the dead person's name and family.”
Source: Press TV [July 05, 2011]