Etruscan Ritual Armor: Two Examples in Bronze James H ...abou.heliologue.com/uploads/eturscanritualarmor.pdf · Etruscan Ritual Armor : Two Examples in Bronze JAMES H. TURNURE Excavations

Etruscan Ritual Armor Two Examples in Bronze

James H Turnure

American Journal of Archaeology Vol 69 No 1 (Jan 1965) pp 39-48

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JAMES H TURNURE

Excavations of Etruscan sites have repeatedly shown that the inhabitants of Etruria ranked among the ancient worlds most skillful artists and craftsmen in the modeling of clay and the work- ing of metal The great collections of the Museo di Villa Giulia in Rome and the Museo Archeo- logico in Florence for instance contain many examples demonstrating the high quality of their art Two exceptional pieces of armor a helmet (pl 8 fig I ) and a shield (pl 7 fig 4) provide further evidence of extraordinary artistic skill Dis- covered some years ago both pieces now form part of the collection of Sig Giovanni Giorgetti of the Museo delle Armi Antiche the Castello della Cesta in the Republic of San Marino

Their original provenance can unfortunately no longer be determined with certainty since they have passed through the hands of earlier owners They are believed however to have come from the region of Bologna where they were probably found by chance rather than as the result of systematic excavation In common with so many Etruscan finds almost nothing is known about the circumstances of their discovery but both objects are unusual and therefore of more than ordinary interest

The helmet is the more immediately striking of the pair while a number of specimens of helmets with face-pieces attached by hinges or other fastenings are known no exact parallel has come to the authors attention The helmet is of bronze 248 cm in height (excluding what remains of the crest) and 203 cm at the point of greatest width It is not cast but beaten from a single thin sheet

1 A dozen or more examples are cited by 0 Benndorf in Antike Gesichtshelme und Sepulcralmaken DenkschrWien Phil-histKI 28 (1878) 301-375

Examples of more recent finds include a series of specimens from Straubing in Bavaria (J Keim and H Kulmbach Der romische Schatzfund yon Straubing [Munich 19511) a silver and iron helmet found at Emesa in Syria (Archaeology 5 ~ [1952] 66-69 ILN 227 [August 27 19551 Suppl 111) Roman examples from Worthing and Guisborough in England (ILN 2 [1947] 312-313) and from Holland ( J J M Timmers

P L A T E S 7 - 1 0

of metal in a repousst technique of remarkably high quality Under careful examination no seam that would indicate the use of more than one piece of bronze was visible at any point The result is at least as much a mask as it is a helmet

The face has a slight suggestion of a mustache and a beard with an elaborately stylized pattern of curls The fairly thick lips are parted to allow a mouth opening giving a slight suggestion of a late archaic smile The nostrils and widely-set eyes are also pierced so that if the helmet were worn the wearer could breathe freely and see at least reasonably well The eyebrows are indicated by sharp linear ridges proceeding from the temples and meeting in a prominent frown at the bridge of the nose The upper eyelid also has a linear element imposed upon it extending toward the temple until it almost joins the beginning of the eyebrow Along with the slant of the eyes themselves this series of nicely calculated lines denies any appearance of benevolence that the half-smiling lips might imply the effect is distinctly forbidding and could have been frightening especially if the helmet were actually worn Many of the facial details resemble those used in the standard representations of satyrs and sileni and the influence of these half-bestial creatures may lie behind the equivocal expression of the face3

Above the forehead another pattern of regular- ized curls suggests the hair of the head Beyond this point the cranium is smooth and shaped like a helmet as if the face and helmet were in fact separate The helmet section extends far enough down the back to cover the wearers neck in sharp

A History of Dutch Life and Art [Nelson London 19591 24

fig 49) 2 The helmet is in a sufficiently good state of preservation

for the author to observe its appearance when placed over a mans head The effect of living eyes peering from the leering metal face was extremely disquieting

For example compare the face with the satyr on a kantha- ros of later date from Todi in the Museo di Villa Giulia (G Q Giglioli LArte etrusca [Milan 19351 pl CCLXXXI 4 5)

contrast to the face its only decoration is a prominent pair of curling rams horns Between the elaboration of the beard and the plain flaring flange of the helmet are openings which would normally serve for the ears In this case however the openings are little more than vestigial the ears of a wearer would be covered by the ends of the rams horns which bulge outward at that point in order to provide sufficient space Around the base of the helmet including the lower edge of the beard the ear openings and the lip of the flange are a number of small holes to which the lining was fastened No trace survives either of lining or of the means by which it was held in place although it may be assumed with some assurance that the lining material was leather

At one time the helmet was crowned with what must have been a fairly large crest although only its support now remains This consists of a spike of bronze some 5 cm in height capped by a curved bracket with three sets of holes of considerable size placed directly opposite one another Perhaps the crest itself was fastened to the bracket by three sturdy rivets which passed through the thickness of the crest and were hammered flat on either side If so no trace of such rivets survives as it almost surely would had they been made of bronze Fur- thermore the size and placement of the holes make the use of nails seem unlikely All this suggests that some other more perishable form of fastening was used or the crest itself may have been provided with a series of six small projections or knobs three on either side designed to fit into the holes from the inside of the bracket During the assembly the bracket could be left slightly loose and not hammered tight until the projections had been set in place

T o be consistent with the rest of the helmet the crest was surely of imposing size Because of the physical difficulties that a heavy weight would impose and because the bronze spike was its only support one must assume it was of some light material perhaps the usual horsehair or under these unusual circumstances possibly wood covered with leather or with metal foiL4 The spike appears to be soldered to the helmet but the metal of the

4 Such a crest made of sheet silver originally with a back- ing of some other material forms part of the remarkable 6th century Greek helmet in the City Art Museum St Louis Mis- souri This helmet also includes no less than three representations of rams heads two on the cheek-pieces and one in three dimensions rising from the cranium (Archarology 5r [1952]

TURNURE [AJA 69

cranium is too thin to support any crest without assistance Accordingly the helmet is reinforced at the base of the spike by two rectangular plates of metal one sheet outside and the other inside the whole then held firmly together by four rivets (pl 9 fig I b) This particular type of crest-holder is unusual but is occasionally paralleled in Etruscan reliefs for example in a representation of two warriors (pl 9 fig I a) on a slab of stone found blocking the entrance to a tomb at T a r q ~ i n i a ~ There is unfortunately no possibility of restoring the missing crest of the bronze helmet except in a very general way The base of the holder itself curves rather sharply from front to back suggesting a crest resembling that on the relief from Tarquinia However our helmet is clearly later in date than the Tarquinia sculptures and it might be expected that the crest would have a different silhouette higher and falling more emphatically behind the head (pl g fig 2)

The shield is circular formed from a single sheet of bronze approximately 635 cm in diameter and elaborately decorated in repusst In the center of its approximately six bands of concentric orna- ment is a prominent boss roughly semicircular in section and about g cm in diameter This is surrounded by a border of knobs which are in effect a series of -smaller bosses then a ring of palmettes and several circles of studs of varying size The main frieze holds a procession of ten horsemen each about 125 cm high dressed in short tunics or cloaks of the type which appears frequently in the tomb paintings of Tarquinia and among the reliefs of Chiusi For the most part the horsemen are empty-handed although three of the riders grouped together at what must once have been the bottom of the shield carry javelins in their right hands Four flying birds are interspersed among the figures The two outermost bands again separated by rows of studs consist of a wave pattern and another row of knobs of approximately the same diameter as those around the central boss

The entire shield is convex in section with a total height of about 9 cm more or less equal to the diameter of the main boss The outer edge is rolled inward and pierced by many small holes

40-46) The drawing is by the author as are the others illustrat-

ing this article and is after the photograph published by P Romanelli in the Atti della Accademia dltalia ser 7 (in con-tinuation of series 6 of the Accademia dei Lincei) 4 (1944) 241 fig 18 The reliefs date from the end of the 7th century

19651 ETRUSCAN RITUAL ARMOR 41

like the helmet so that a lining of leather or perhaps of wood covered by leather could be attached In the face of the shield are four roughly rectangular openings to take the fastenings for straps The space between one pair of these holes is much wider than the other the more widely-spaced pair being for the forearm strap and the more closely-spaced for the hand grip Since a shield was generally worn on the left arm these openings enable the modern observer to orient the shield top to bottom

Both helmet and shield are covered with a dark green patina and their thickness varies between 05 and 06 mm Oxidization of the bronze has caused pitting and flaking of virtually the entire surface of the helmet On the tip of the nose and in a number of spots on the cranium the metal has been eaten entirely through leaving a series of tiny holes Despite this the general condition of the helmet can be described as good The shield too has been affected by a surface corrosion which has penetrated through the bronze in one or two places where the metal was hammered excessively thin in forming the design These spots excepted however the shields state of preservation is ex-cellent throughout and noticeably better than that of the helmet

Something of this superior condition is surely due to chance such as a drier situation during burial but it may also be the result of a slightly different chemical composition Enough analyses of the constituent elements of Etruscan bronzes have not been published and therefore it seems desirable to include a listing of the elements found by spectrographic examination of these two objects

The helmet is composed of a combination of copper and tin with impurities of iron and lead Traces of a number of other minerals are also found arsenic bismuth manganese nickel phosphorus silicon silver and zinc

The shield presents most of the same elements but in somewhat different proportions The bronze is again composed for the most part of copper and tin but iron and lead are present to such an extent that the composition is in effect one of copper tin iron and lead Traces of arsenic manganese

See W J Young Technical Examination of Greek Hel-mets BMFA 48 (1950) 83-86 This article presents a brief but lucid explanation of the scientific examination of several bronze helmets Each of the six helmets which were analyzed spectrographically showed concentrations of copper and tin as did our helmet and shield and several had significant amounts

nickel phosphorus silver and zinc also appear in the shield

This difference in chemical structure need not indicate that the helmet and shield came from different localities nor do their varying states of preservation present any conclusive arguments Even within the same tomb articles of bronze often show varying degrees of corrosion depending upon their composition and upon the amount of moisture with which they have come into contact On the other hand their presence in the same collection and their over-all similarities in style and date seem to outweigh the differences in chemical content and to suggest that they originally came from at least the same general area The presence of traces of so many elements is characteristic of ancient bronzes and is due to the unsophisticated smelting techniques which allowed impurities to remain

Since almost nothing is known about the original provenance of either helmet or shield their dating must rest upon the internal evidence of their style Both show a naturalism and a freedom of handling which contrasts with a continuing archaic stylization and an emphasis upon repeated units These are characteristics associated with the years around 500 Bc when art in Greece was beginning the process which in less than a quarter-century was to produce the classic period The delight their makers took in elaboration and regularization of detail reflects a late phase of archaic style while the attention given to delicate modeling in certain of the flesh parts of the helmet and in the amount of anatomical detail and fluidity of movement of the shields horses and riders point toward a new era of observation of nature The Etruscans at the beginning of the fifth century as well as at other times were heavily indebted to the Greeks and new developments in Greece were soon echoed in Etruria The objects in question are comparable to Attic art of about the turn of the sixth century This is not to say that Etruscan art was only a provincial reflection of Greece Through most of their history the Etruscans managed to give their creations a unique and personal touch of inde-

of iron and lead All of these bronzes contained traces of a variety of elements although only silver proved common to them all The Giorgetti objects alone contained phosphorus The average thickness of these helmets ranged from 328 to 98 mm

The same general analysis applies to the helmet in the City Art Museum in St Louis (see note 4 supra)

42 JAMES H TURNURE [AJA 69

pendence and at the zenith of their political power around 500 Bc they expressed an open confidence in themselves through their visual arts This self- assurance manifests itself in a harsh biting quality which is generally foreign to Hellenic art although something of it is preserved in the sculpture of Rome

In Etruscan Italy many monuments of the sixth-fifth centuries show the same general style as does the bronze helmet7 One site in fact re-vealed work not only of a similar style and date but also of a similar subject Among the well-known terracotta sculptures from the temple at the ancient Satricum which were discovered at the end of the nineteenth century and are now in the Museo di Villa Giulia there is the head of a warrior (pl 9 fig 3) The head wears an open-faced helmet the main decoration of which is a pair of rams horns framing the upper part of the face This helmet was found without its crest and was so drawn for the original publication by Barnabei and Cozza Part of the missing crest was later added

The association of rams horns with helmets is reasonably common especially in Greek art But the warriors head from Satricum is significantly close to the bronze helmet The Satricum sculptures date in the late sixth or early fifth century and they exhibit nearly the same degrees of naturalism and stylization as does the helmet although owing to a different medium and use they are neither so precise nor so detailed

Since the Satricum head is closely allied to the helmet in theme they may be compared in ways other than chronological The Satricum helmet bears a large crest and while it is supported along the ridge of the helmet and not only by a thin spike of bronze it is reasonable to suppose that its

7 For example the terracotta acroterion from Civita Castellana in the Museo di Villa Giulia (Giglioli pl CLXIIL Gold-scheider Etruscan Sculpture [Phaidon Oxford 19411 pl 40) or a terracotta antefix from Narce also in the Villa Giulia (Giglioli pl CLXXVIII 3)

SF Barnabei and A Cozza NSc (1896) 42-43 A photo-graph of the head with part of the crest added appears in Gig- lioli pl C L ~ V I5 Ilate 9 fig 3 is an adaptation and restora-tion by the author based on a drawing from Barnabei and Cozzas report and on Gigliolis photograph

9 A AndrCn Architectural Terracottas from Etrrrsco-Italic Temples (Lund 1940) 462-463 Similarly decorated crests occasionally appear elsewhere as for example on two bronze statuettes which are reduced copies of a common prototype one in the British Museum (Giglioli pl c c x x ~ I Goldscheider 106) the other in the Museo Archeologico in Florence (Gig-

general profile more nearly resembles that which once crowned the bronze helmet than do those on the tomb slab from Tarquinia Furthermore the Satricum helmet is painted a light yellow with black edges on crest chequer-pattern in red white and black bordered by a red edge above and by a red broken meander beIow on a white ground bovine ear white [on the left side of the helmet removed in pl 9 fig 31 rams horns reddish grey with edges and cross-lines in black Perhaps the missing crest was also elaborated by painted designs continuing the analogy other parts might have been so decorated as well al-though no trace of paint remains

The horsemen in the main band of the shield are typical of figures executed about 500 BC They are in fact nearly identical with a pair of riders on the base of a funerary cippus of about that date in Munich The lower half of the Munich scene is a restoration but the ancient section above is comparable to our shield in almost every respect The central figure of the shields three spear-bear- ing riders may be compared with the rider at the left on the cippus The positions of head and arms most of the details of drapery the horses manes etc lead us to suppose almost a common ancestry Other details such as the long stringy locks of hair the slender tails and prancing postures of the horses and the excessively long feet of the riders can be found in reliefs bf this time particularly those from the region of Chiusi12 and suggest that both shield and helmet may have been importations into Bologna then a new center of Etruscan powerI3

Whenever exceptionally fine and valuable objects appear without a secure Fundort or provenance the question of authenticity inevitably arises Style and surface appearance of helmet and shield are

lioli pl c c x x ~ 2 Goldscheider 107 Otto-Wilhelm von Va-cano Die Etrusker [Stungart 19551 84 b)

lOGiglioli pl CXLVI 4 StEtr 12 (1938) pl XXII

11See C Carducci Due cippi chiusini dellAntiquarium di Monaco di Baviera StEtr 3 (1929) 481

1 2 For example to the heads of sileni on a sarcophagus of the late 6th or early 5th century from Chiusi in the Louvre (Gig- lioli pl CXXXVII 2)

3 The shields four birds are also in the late archaic style with similarities to those in the famous frescoes of the Tomba della Caccia e Pesca at Tarquinia ( P Romanelli Tarquinia la necropoli e il museo [Libreria dello Stato Rome 19401 55-56 H Leisinger Malerez der Etrusker [Kohlhammer Stuttgart nd1 20-26 M Pallottino Etruscan Painting [Skira New York nd1 49-51 P Ducati and G Q Giglioli Arte etrusca (Milan 1927) 184 186 Giglioli pl CXIII c x ~ v and elsewhere


what might be expected of late archaic Etruscan bronzes In order to prove their genuineness however samples were taken from inconspicuous parts of both pieces through the great generosity of Sig Giorgetti and submitted to the Istituto Speri-mentale dei Metalli Leggeri in Milan The two specimens were examined by means of a Zeiss Q24 spectrograph which indicated the chemical composition mentioned earlier Polished sections were also examined microscopically (pl 10 figs 5 and 6) and photomicrographs taken at an enlargement of 250 diameters showed that a thick layer of patina covers the surfaces and penetrates into the channels of corrosion within the metal In some places in the specimen from the helmet the intercrystalline corrosion penetrates almost the entire thickness of the metal The conclusion reached by the Institutes investigators under the direction of Professor Carlo Panseri was that the corrosion present in both samples was not produced by artificial means and that the patina and corrosion correspond exactly to those of authentic objects The helmet and shield from which the specimens were taken are therefore considered genuine and of archaeological origin

It may also be seen in the photomicrographs particularly in those of the helmet (pl 10 fig 5) that the corrosion has eaten the bronze in a pattern of layers shown horizontally in the photograph This is the micro-structure associated with objects that have been heated and hammered repeatedly in the process of annealing and is not that of objects that have been cast

In the end however all that is really known about this helmet and shield is that they are un- questionably ancient that their style indicates an Etruscan origin and that they were made about 500 BC or perhaps a few years later Beyond this we can only speculate about their use and the significance of their decoration

In considering the ways objects such as these might have been used only a few reasonable possi- bilities come to mind The first is the obvious one armor designed to protect the wearer in combat For several reasons this does not seem to have been the use for which these pieces were intended and

14The observations in this paragraph are those of the au-thor rather than of the Istituto Sperirnentale

15To be sure many combat helmets in the ancient world covered the wearers ears and repre5entations of them are

while no one of these arguments is conclusive in itself their sum rules out the possibility of their employment in warfare

A preliminary objection is the thinness of their metal (05-06mm) with the helmet probably thinner generally than these measurements would indicate It is doubtful that the helmet at least could have withstood any heavy blow by a pointed or edged weapon Yet it can be argued that if the leather linings which they both roba ably had were heavy and sufficiently hardened and if there were a further wooden support in the shield these might have made them fit for combat It does not seem likely but it is possible

The odd placement of the ear opening in the helmet is another factor that tells against a combat use Fighting helmets are functional if something is present it is usually there for a utilitarian pur- pose or for what its owner imagines to be utilitarian But the impression that these openings give is certainly not one of utility Rather it seems to be a sort of vermiform appendix possibly a tradi- tional element yet its importance is so outweighed by the presence of the horns that the openings are forced into positions where they cannot be of service This dominance of decoration over func-tion is the mark of an object of ritual rather than of an object of battle

The ornate quality of both helmet and shield also suggests that they were made for ceremonial functions and in order to remain in scale with the rest of the face the eye openings of the helmet are not much larger than the human eye itself This provides sufficient vision under most circumstances without however giving enough for conditions of combat The loss in peripheral vision would offset any practical advantage gained by the use of the face mask and no combatant willingly imposes a disadvantage upon himself Finally it might be mentioned again that the support for the crest of the helmet was not designed to withstand much violence even from its possible wearer

Similar reasoning applies to the shield T o protect the body efficiently the typical combat shield has the hand grip placed along the edge and the forearm strap located in the center In our shield strap and grip have been shifted from their usual

commonplace The fact that the ears in this case would be covercd is therefore not a valid argument either way

161n sculpture and vase painting fighting helmets always permit as wide a field of vision as possible Masks are not used

44 JAMES H TURNURE [ A J A 69

positions so that their fastenings which penetrated through the thickness of the metal leaving prominent rectangular holes would not interfere with the elaborate pattern in the center Again the decoration seems to have been the overriding concern

It appears then that both of these objects were not military in nature at least in the usual meaning of the term but there remain important ceremonial services which such a helmet and shield might have performed The closest extant parallels to the Giorgetti helmet are helmets of acknowl-edged ceremonial nature whose number was sig-nificantly increased not many years ago by the remarkable series of helmet face-masks of the Roman period found at Straubing in Bavaria17 This type of helmet of which the British Mu-seums complete and superb specimen from Rib- chester might serve as an example18 consists of a helmet section proper to which is attached a visor carefully formed into the representation of a human face Like our helmet there are openings for eyes nose and mouth although the visibility provided for the wearer is apparently no better and the breathing probably worse since the chin and neck are more tightly enclosed The main difference between this type of parade helmet and our Etruscan example is that the former is made in two pieces helmet and visor while the latter is of a single piece without moveable face-plate and had to be removed entirely if the wearer wished to uncover his face In this it is perhaps unique in form at any rate at such an early date it resembles either a theatrical mask or the masks commonly associated with such religious observances as those of the Dionysiac ritual18 While it was surely part of some important Etruscans tomb furnishings the analogy of the face-helmets suggests that it was made for use during life although it is difficult to say precisely what use an Etruscan might have made of such a helmet-mask since knowledge of their com- plicated ceremonies is very sketchy Considering the pronounced military character of the piece however it is not likely to have been employed in life in strictly religious rites although in a society

17See note I supra 18 A good photograph of this helmet appears in ILN 211

(1947) 312 1uch masks are displayed in the Dionysiac scenes on a

crater of ca 410 in the Museo Nazionale in Naples (P E Ariis Mille anni d i ceramica greca [Sansoni Florence 19601 pls 218-219) Other illustrations may be found in M P Nilsson T h e Dionysiac Mysteries o f the Hellenistic and Roman Age (Lund 1957)

governed by ritual it is often impossible to separate the religious from the purely mundane Neverthe- less it is not impossible that this helmet was worn by its owner during military displays perhaps cavalry maneuvers such as took place among the Romans and which seem to have been derived in part from Etruria For example the Ltldi Romani according to Livy (1359) begun by Tarquinius Priscus employed horses and boxers brought to Rome mostly from Etruria From their beginning these games were military in nature Established originally as a triumphal celebration they even-tually became annual affairs which continued to feature horsemen Presumably the riders did not engage in simple horse races but in cavalry exer- cises of the type suggested by Aelian the Tactician in his book on the tactics of the Greeks or in the treatise on Roman cavalry attributed to Arrian

The alternative which has much in its favor is that the helmet was purely funerary and was never connected with military display20 The question may be insoluble although fresh evidence from -excavation might still yield a definite answer

The shield too may have been designed for parade purposes but the choice of decorative subject makes this improbable Unlike the helmets horns the shields iconography is singularly un-warlike even for pure display No figure whether horse or rider wears any type of armor and only three of the men carry weapons of any kind Even these weapons resemble hunting spears rather than military arms and the general impression given by the ten horsemen and the four interspersed birds is of a peaceful procession enjoying itself as plainly as archaic figures on this scale are capable of ex-pressing pleasure For the same reasons it is not likely to have been a votive offering

If the shield was not designed f o r war for pageantry or for dedication there were still vital services that it might perform for its owner as part of his tomb furnishings While the exact function of Etruscan funerary shields is not understood in detail they were surely considered primarily as protective devices for the dead both in the tomb itself

20The fine terracotta funerary masks of a man and woman from Chiusi in the British Museum (Benndorf pl XI Goid-scheider pl 93) are of the same period as the Giorgetti helmet In common with the helmet they have carefully-made openings at eyes nose and mouth and holes along the edges for a lining yet the terracottas were surely intended only for use in the tomb probably to cover the face of the dead Such similarities demonstrate that these features in the helmet need not have been designed for use in life


and in the next world to which they could be translated by magic and ritual From the available evidence then it seems that the shield was used only in connection with funerary rites and in the actual burial the helmet on the other hand could conceivably have been worn ceremonially during the owners lifetime The probability however is that it too was designed to serve only during the funeral and afterwards in the grave

It is possible that the ornamentation of these objects whether representation or pattern may be simply decorative an aesthetic enrichment without any additional association with the beyond Ap- pealing as this belief might at first seem it violates what is known of the ancient attitude toward symbol particularly in connection with articles associated with the dead Even that which seems to be the result of chance or of artistic fancy may actually have had a profound meaning

The association of horns particularly those of rams with helmets existed throughout Greece and Italy in ancient times as a number of representations and a few actual examples indicate23 And the combination was still well enough known at the beginning of the sixteenth century for the French sculptor Michel Colombe to equip his figure of Fortitude on the tomb of Francis I1 of Brittany and Marguerite de Foix with a helmet decorated with highly stylized rams h0rns2~ Colombe used

2 1 Among purely funerary shields are the famous examples in bronze from the Regolini-Galassi tomb (L Pareti La tomba Regolini-Galassi [Vatican City 19471 pls xxxrv-xxxvr) or those in relief in the Tomba degli Scudi c delle Sedie and in the Tomba dei Rilieui all three at Cerveteri (M Pallottino La nemopoli di Cervcteri [Libreria dello Stato Rome 19391 19 33-35 Giglioli pls xcv andI CCCXLI-CCCXLII elsewhere)

22The customs of employing urns capped by helmets or masks and of placing urns with bust-length representations of the deceased on funerary thrones suggest the belief that the dead or his trophies witnessed the funeral games in which masked figures like Phersu participated If the helmet were used as a mask at the funeral and if the crest were of some flexible material such as horsehair it might have been placed on the head at interment However if the crest were of metal foil on wood or on leather it was almost surely placed else-where since the crest certainly fell behind the head

A black-figure Corinthian hydria from Cerveteri in the Louvre shows a scene of the prothesis of the dead (StEtr 3 [1929] pl LIV 3) By the side of the bier a double-crested helmet and a shield appear which since they are very promi- nently displayed must have formed an important part of the funeral equipment While it is impossible to determine it is tempting to speculate that the Giorgetti helmet and shield did come from the same burial and that they were arranged as shown on the Corinthian hydria

23 The most remarkable horned helmet now in existence is perhaps the ram-headed example in St Louis (see note 4 supra)

the horns to identify his personification and to suggest the strength vigor and stamina necessary to the virtue of Fortitude Rams horns in the ancient world were connected primarily with battle helmets by an association of ideas they were adapted to helmets of ceremony The meaning of horned combat helmets in the Renaissance or in the ancient world must have been largely the same either an indication of the strength courage and masculinity of the wearer or a sort of charm to provide him with these virtues25 In the Roman army soldiers of demonstrated courage were granted the Corni-culum the privilege of wearing a horn or horns on their helmets26 while in Greek the noun K~pas is sometimes used as a synonym for strength and power In their more extravagant versions horns were surely thought to have a certain propagandis- tic value in frightening the enemy and also in warding off the demons and maledictions that an enemy L igh t invoke in battle Heads with rams horns were occasionally substituted for Gorgon heads on armor and shields among Etruscans and Romans and protective amulets of male heads crowned by horns especially those of rams or bulls were worn by the Romans in everyday life27 Similar amulets survive from Etruria

When horned helmets were made for funerary purposes or were adapted for such use from battle or parade helmets28 the symbolism already con-

In addition to the Satricum head representations of horned helmets appear on the Siphnian Treasury (Fouilles de Delphes IV pls IX x P de la Coste-MesseliPre T h e Treasures of Delphi [Paris nd1 pls 35 41 42) A statue wearing a helmet with cheek-pieces in the shape of rams heads was found at Sparta (A M Woodward in BSA 26 [1923-25] 253ff Additional examples are cited) Duris painted a rams head on the helmet of Athena on a kylix (R Lullies Griechirche Vasen der reif- archaischen Zeit [Munich 19531 pls 88-89) and coins some-times show similar representations (J B Cammann T h e Sym- bols on Staters of Corinthian Type [New York 19321 pl xrrr no 103) A horned helmet also appears on a male figure who performs an armed dance among the tomb frescoes in the Tomba dellu Scimmia at Poggio Renzo Chiusi (L Banti I1 mondo degli Etruschi [Rome 19601 pl 68)

24 P Pradel Michel Colombc le dernier imagier gothique (Plon Paris 1953) pls IX x

z5 These questions are discussed at length by F T Elworthy in Horns of Honour (London 1900)

26 RE IV (Stuttgart 1901) 1604-1605 27 I Scheftelowitz Das Homermotif in den Religionen

ArchRW 15 (1912) 451-487 z8 Von Vacano Die Etrusker (note 9 supra) pls 118 119

Giglioli pl ccc~xxvr10

20 A Greek helmet of the 6th century in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts seems to have had a bulls horn added to it at the time of burial and would therefore be an example of an adapted helmet ( B M F A 48 [1950] 80-83)


nected with them certainly continued in the grave There instead of warding off human enemies and -

their possibly harmful magic the horns provided protection against the demons of the underworld of whom the Etruscans appear to have been much aware The horns of certain animals as well as the fangs of such predators as lions were thought to frighten evil genii or powers and to keep them away from the physical remains of the dead in the tomb as well as from his spirit in the life beyond In essence this formed a safeguard against the harmful influences g-rouped in more modern times under the generic title of evil eye against which rams horns were believed to be a sovereign protecti~n~The association of rams and lions is common in Etruscan mortuary art particularly in the bronze protomai which decorated the ends of funeral couches and served the same function as the amulets with the head of ache loo^^ Occasionally Acheloos also appears among the protomai In the tomb then the lions fangs and the horns of the ram or of Acheloos could stand guard one reinforcing the efficacy of the other and providing the dead with a double measure of safety

While the symbolism of the horn has thus far been much the same in life and death an additional meaning was attached to the horn when placed in the grave In a number of ancient religions animal horns or the horns of the crescent moon were considered to be symbols of fertility growth and re- generation an idea expressed in many ways in the classical civilizations The cornucopia according to one version of the myth a horn of Acheloos wrenched off by Herakles and later given to Amal- thaea is perhaps the clearest illustration of this belief Drinking cups were often adorned with horned heads connecting the horns with the revitalizing

30The extension of the index and little fingers in a horn-like gesture was and in certain areas still is regarded as a sub- stitute for the safety given by actual horns In this connection note the dancing female figure in the frescoes of the Tomba delle Leonesse at Tarquinia who uses this gesture during the funeral rites (Leisinger 31 Ducati and Giglioli I 82 Pallot-tino Etruscan Painting 45 and elsewhere)

31 W Llewellyn Brown T h e Etruscan Lion (Oxford 1960) I O I and elsewhere In two intact tombs (B and E) in the necropoli dei Pisciarelli in the district of Civitavecchia lion and ram protomai appeared side by side (R Mengarelli La necropoli dei Pisciarclli Atti della Reale Accademia dltalia

ser 7 2 [19411 349-369) 32 A B Cook Zeus A Study in Ancient Religion I1 (Cam-

bridge 1925) 306 33 In tomb frescoes the occasional sexual scenes or the ap-

pearance of eggs held in the hand have similar overtones of revitalization or rebirth

power of wine and by extension of Dionysus Rams were considered a symbol of or a primary sacrificial animal to several of the most important divinities such as Zeus Dionysus and Hermes the last especially under his titles Epimelius and Psy- chopompus Altars were sometimes decorated by rams heads and the shedding of the animals blood in sacrifice seems to have been associated with the spilling of human blood in the funeral games held in Etruria and in Rome The blood particularly human blood was undoubtedly believed in these cases to provide an especial stimulus to the revival of the dead in the next world33 Among the paintings of the Tomba degli Auguri at Tarquinia appear scenes of combat between a nude male figure whose head is covered by a sack and a vicious dog34 The hooded man who defends himself with a club has been bitten several times and is bleeding Behind him stands another male figure called Phersu who attempts to entangle the hooded man and his club in a long piece of rope In a second scene Phersu runs toward the right looking behind him and raising one hand to protect himself from an assailant who has nearly vanished from the fresco These scenes must represent part of the ritual which took place at the time of the funeral whether or not one of the contestants was actually killed and thus able to attend the deceased in the after-life at least it is certain that a quantity of blood was shed and spattered the ground This sacrifice of blood could then pass into the earth like a libation of wine to the dead mans spirit strengthening it or helping it toward new life35

It is of interest to note that biblical texts make repeated reference to horns they are mentioned in several connections but both Testaments are sometimes explicit about the horns functions of saving

34Giglioli pls crx cx Leisinger 37 and 39 Pallottino Etruscan Painting 41 Dccati and Giglioli I 88-1 89 Romanelli 85-87

3Vn the frescoes Phersu is masked and in fact appears to be wearing a helmet-mask of the same form as our bronze helmet Furthermore there are clear indications of sharply-pointed horns on both sides of the head-piece as may be seen in the left and right profile views of the head This similarity along with the evidence of the terracotta masks in the British Museum (note 20 supra) provides an additional indication that the bronze helmet may have been funereal only

The horns of the bronze helmet closely resemble those used on the coinage of Cyrcne and other cities in representations of Zeus-Amun and in heads of Alexander on the coins of the Ptolemies of Egypt Amun as a deity of fertility would relate to the funeral symbolism of the helmet but any similarity in representation between the horns of Amun and those of the helmet is likely to have been fortuitous


and protecting Samuel (I1 223) the Psalms (182) and St Luke (169) mention horns of salvation and Samuel and the Psalms make a direct sym- bolic connection between helmets and shields (my shield and the horn of my salvation) The Etrus- cans too seem to have recognized the obvious affinity between these two main defensive arms early cinerary urns often combine elements of helmet and shield for their double pr~tection~ Char-acteristic of the area around Chiusi are anthropo- morphized ossuaries providing an additional guard in a representation of the deceased in some cases a mask in others a bust associate the dead di-rectly with his symbolized helmet and shield When only the mask appears there are frequently holes around the edge as if in imitation of com--

memorative masks or of the actual masks some-times used in inhumation burials such as the terracotta examples in the British Museum

Against this background of association of helmet and shield and their connection with funeral masks it might be supposed that the Giorgetti helmet was actually a combination of helmet and mask and a descendant of the ideas expressed in the urns of Chiusi Should this be the case it would not have been used in military pageantry but would have been exclusively a sepulchral helmet

The iconography of the shield which is now associated with the helmet seems entirely funereal Even the mildly disturbing intrusion of the rectangular holes for hand grip and arm strap into the frieze of horsemen has a connotation of ritual since the empty openings emphasize the absence of the means of carrying it The shield is thereby disarmed3-retired from the possibility of physical use-in imitation of the dismantled shields used as votive offerings or as dedications in temples

It must be admitted that given our present knowledge of Etruscan religion the symbolism of the shield cannot be deciphered with complete certainty Nevertheless it is possible to offer a suggestion about its meaning The decoration consists of patterns and figurative representations of which the largest and most readily apparent section is the band of horsemen who ride endlessly around the boss Similar riders appear with reasonable fre-

36A Minto I clipei funerari etruschi ed il problema sulle origini dellimago clipeata funeraria StEtr 21 ser 2 (1950-51) 25-57

37 Carducci in StEtr 3 (supra note 11) 477-489 38See F Cumont After Life i n Roman Paganism (New

Haven 1922) ch VI

quency on mortuary reliefs and frescoes Perhaps these figures are engaged in funeral games as has been suggested in the case of the related relief in

This explanation however does not really fit the actions of the individual horsemen or the general arrangement of the group as a whole The archaic artist or craftsman in whatever so-ciety he worked was careful to be explicit His iconography was extremely important to him he attempted to convey the meaning of his subject matter with as little opportunity for confusion as possible Looking at the circle of riders it seems clear that they are not engaged in any form of race or of ritual combat Their poses are relatively relaxed none of them holds the reins with both hands two of them look toward the rear three of them carry spears an unlikely accompaniment to a horserace And the composite impression of the frieze is so strongly informal that funeral ritual cannot reasonably be accepted as its meaning

The horsemen are in motion in a uniform direction and in this there may be an allusion to the journey of Therethe dead to the ~ n d e r w o r l d ~ ~ would be reason to place such a subject on a protective funerary shield since the journey was dan- gerous and the way beset by demons Yet there is reason to believe that this is not the precise meaning The relaxed atmosphere of the riders the un- ceremonious character of their clothing the presence of what seem to be hunting spears and the appearance of four birds suggest that the journey has been completed and the riders are safely in the ~ n d e r w o r l d ~ ~ as-The frieze has paradisaical sociations of the dead existing beyond reach of harm engaging throughout eternity in the pleasant occupations of hunting and riding in the after-life

The shield is related ritually to the helmet as a safeguard for the dead and it is also symbolically allied to the flattened domical mound of the tumulus In plan and section the normal Etruscan tumulus the best-known examples of which are at Cerveteri closely resembles a circular shield especially when a cippus is in situ at the summit of the mound like the umbo of a shield40 This type of tomb was considered as an enormous enlargement of the funeral shield protecting its contents from

39 Birds of this type are frequently found among the paintings of Tarquinia especially in the Tomba della Caccia e Pesca where they are elements of the happy after-life In other tombs they seem to have different meanings possibly of the soul in bird form

40 See A Minto StEtr 21 (supra note 36) 36ff


spiritual harm The remains of the dead dwelt there in security At other times the deceased was provided with an eternal house a cinerary urn in the shape of the early hut or a rock-cut tomb which reproduced rooms of the house he occupied in life The tumulus and the house tomb while different in form do not necessarily represent dissimilar patterns of belief We have already suggested that the horsemen on the shield seem to be in the underworld By extension of idea from the shield it is not illogical to suppose that certain of the over-tones of the underworld were also attached to the tumulus If the idea of the eternal dwelling is added the tumulus becomes more or less a symbol of the underworld an expanded tomb house The cippus on the tumulus and the umbo of the shield take on similar meaning as a center point an umbilicus or omphalos The Etruscan tumulus was generally surrounded by a ditch or by a low wall of stone from which the mound arose This also is paralleled on the shield by the wave pattern which surrounds the ring of horsemen

We gather from later sources that the Etruscans conceived he world in terms of a rigid organization laid down by the gods through revelation and codified in an extensive literature which has been almost completely lost The world of the living and probably that of the dead as well seems to have been reflected in the foundation plan of the Etrus- can city A famous passage in Plutarch describes this plan in some According to him in the original planning of the city of Rome men from Tuscany first laid out a central point a circular trench called the mundus and around this they described a great circle which would enclose the city Following a carefully-prescribed ritual a deep furrow was plowed along the circle and the plow was lifted from the ground wherever a gate was

41 Cumont (After Life in Roman Paganism chs I and 11)

traces the concepts of the dead dwelling in ant1 around the tomb in the earlier beliefs and in the later beliefs dwelling in the underworld the tomb forming a point of communica-tion between the two worlds

42 Lives Romulus xr This question is discussed by von Va-can0 in T h e Etrriscans in the Ancient World (Arnold Lon-don 1960) 21-26 and elsewhere The marked influence of re-ligious ideas on Etruscan city planning has been demonstrated by the recent excavations at Marzabotto the preliminary re-sults of which were reported by Professor Guido Mansuelli in ILN 241 (1962) 556-560 See also A Maiuri Arte e civilti nellltalia antica (Milan 1960) goff

43 It may not be by chance that there are four birds present on the shield even if their scattering is not precisely to the four cardinal points In the view of the Etruscan Harrispice im-

to appear The ditch and the wall behind it were regarded as sacred and inviolable and the plow which described their bounds was not permitted to come into contact with the area of the gates through which unsanctified things might enter The general result of this arrangement of ditch wall mundus and circular plan is suspiciously like that of the normal tumulus as well as being close to what is represented by the shield

The circular plan of cities was subdivided by two main cross streets clearly reflecting a world or even a cosmic view The cardo running north and south in imitation of the axis of the earth and the decumanus which reflected its rotation upon its axis divided the city like the world into four equal ~ a r t s 4 ~ These streets crossed at the site of the mundus believed to be an entrance to the underworld The capstone of the mundus was re-moved three times each year to allow the spirits free passage between the world of the living and its presumed image in the world of the dead

The boss applied to the bronze shield could be considered related to the mundus as an entrance into the underworld and at the same time as an umbilicus44 Between the mundus-umbilicus and the wave pattern which borders the shield like an endless River Styx lies the equivalent of the Ely- sian Fields In this happy after-life the horsemen ride in a circle-itself a symbol of fulfillment and ete~nity4~

It may be suggested therefore that both objects under consideration were used either to assist or to insure the attainment of the same end the per- petual protection and eternal life of the deceased And in addition the shield may indicate in a for- mal way the topography of the land of the dead

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

portant omens of good and evil might be seen in the flight of birds in relation to the quarters of the world

44111 this regard the vexed question of the Omphalos of Delphi and the associations which it acquired with the tomb of Dionysus might be raised Did the omphalos found at Delphi (which is roughly the shape of the bronze boss) and perhaps other omphaloi elsewhere originally serve the same function as a gate to Hades See J Defradas discussion of omphalos in Les thPmes d e la propagande delphique (Paris 1954) 102-110

45 Eve11 the pattern of palmettes between umbo and riders may have had some significance The palmette was of course a millennia-old religious symbol in Mesopotamia as a representation of the sacred tree and Etruria was much less a political entity than it was a leligious union of twelve cities grouped around a sacred grove

T U R N U R E P L A T E 7

FIG 4 Etruscan bronze shield Museo delle Armi Antiche Repubblica di S Marino

FIG I Etruscan bronze helmet Museo delle Armi Antiche Repubblica di S Marino


FIGrb Support for helmet crest (thickness of section below is

exaggerated for clarity)

FIG2 Profile view with conjectural restoration of crest

FIG3 Terracotta head from Satricum FIGIa Decorated stone slab from Museo di Villa Giulia (after Barnabei

Tarquinia (after Romanelli) and Cozza restored)

P L A T E I 0 T U R N U R E


JAMES H TURNURE

Excavations of Etruscan sites have repeatedly shown that the inhabitants of Etruria ranked among the ancient worlds most skillful artists and craftsmen in the modeling of clay and the work- ing of metal The great collections of the Museo di Villa Giulia in Rome and the Museo Archeo- logico in Florence for instance contain many examples demonstrating the high quality of their art Two exceptional pieces of armor a helmet (pl 8 fig I ) and a shield (pl 7 fig 4) provide further evidence of extraordinary artistic skill Dis- covered some years ago both pieces now form part of the collection of Sig Giovanni Giorgetti of the Museo delle Armi Antiche the Castello della Cesta in the Republic of San Marino

Their original provenance can unfortunately no longer be determined with certainty since they have passed through the hands of earlier owners They are believed however to have come from the region of Bologna where they were probably found by chance rather than as the result of systematic excavation In common with so many Etruscan finds almost nothing is known about the circumstances of their discovery but both objects are unusual and therefore of more than ordinary interest

The helmet is the more immediately striking of the pair while a number of specimens of helmets with face-pieces attached by hinges or other fastenings are known no exact parallel has come to the authors attention The helmet is of bronze 248 cm in height (excluding what remains of the crest) and 203 cm at the point of greatest width It is not cast but beaten from a single thin sheet

1 A dozen or more examples are cited by 0 Benndorf in Antike Gesichtshelme und Sepulcralmaken DenkschrWien Phil-histKI 28 (1878) 301-375

Examples of more recent finds include a series of specimens from Straubing in Bavaria (J Keim and H Kulmbach Der romische Schatzfund yon Straubing [Munich 19511) a silver and iron helmet found at Emesa in Syria (Archaeology 5 ~ [1952] 66-69 ILN 227 [August 27 19551 Suppl 111) Roman examples from Worthing and Guisborough in England (ILN 2 [1947] 312-313) and from Holland ( J J M Timmers

P L A T E S 7 - 1 0

of metal in a repousst technique of remarkably high quality Under careful examination no seam that would indicate the use of more than one piece of bronze was visible at any point The result is at least as much a mask as it is a helmet

The face has a slight suggestion of a mustache and a beard with an elaborately stylized pattern of curls The fairly thick lips are parted to allow a mouth opening giving a slight suggestion of a late archaic smile The nostrils and widely-set eyes are also pierced so that if the helmet were worn the wearer could breathe freely and see at least reasonably well The eyebrows are indicated by sharp linear ridges proceeding from the temples and meeting in a prominent frown at the bridge of the nose The upper eyelid also has a linear element imposed upon it extending toward the temple until it almost joins the beginning of the eyebrow Along with the slant of the eyes themselves this series of nicely calculated lines denies any appearance of benevolence that the half-smiling lips might imply the effect is distinctly forbidding and could have been frightening especially if the helmet were actually worn Many of the facial details resemble those used in the standard representations of satyrs and sileni and the influence of these half-bestial creatures may lie behind the equivocal expression of the face3

Above the forehead another pattern of regular- ized curls suggests the hair of the head Beyond this point the cranium is smooth and shaped like a helmet as if the face and helmet were in fact separate The helmet section extends far enough down the back to cover the wearers neck in sharp

A History of Dutch Life and Art [Nelson London 19591 24

fig 49) 2 The helmet is in a sufficiently good state of preservation

for the author to observe its appearance when placed over a mans head The effect of living eyes peering from the leering metal face was extremely disquieting

For example compare the face with the satyr on a kantha- ros of later date from Todi in the Museo di Villa Giulia (G Q Giglioli LArte etrusca [Milan 19351 pl CCLXXXI 4 5)





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Etruscan Ritual Armor: Two Examples in Bronze James H ...abou.heliologue.com/uploads/eturscanritualarmor.pdf · Etruscan Ritual Armor : Two Examples in Bronze JAMES H. TURNURE Excavations