Very little is known about the ancient Etruscans, but thanks to an archaeological dig in Lazio, a bit more knowledge has been added to the historical record. A tomb believed to belong to an Etruscan princess from the 8th century BC has been unearthed and is filled with treasures that may have been her possessions.
Vulci was once an important Etruscan city. Ironically, the tomb was found approximately three meters beneath the location of a modern ticket office for the Vulci site itself.
Even more ironically, archaeologists discovered the tomb because looters had “excavated” another tomb that was on top of it. Site workers carried out an emergency dig, and were surprised to find the intact royal tomb beneath, in which bones of a young girl were wrapped in cloth and surrounded by jewelry, pots and jars.
The artifacts included a necklace of Phoenician amber as well as Egyptian scarabs made of gold, ivory and silver. Their quality and presence point to her important status. After restoration, these items and others will be on display this summer at Vulci, where more than 15,000 Etruscan graves have already been excavated.
The Etruscans, forerunners of the Romans, were the indigenous people of Western Italy and Corsica who prospered from the 5th to the 8th centuries BC. They may have immigrated from Lydia in Asia Minor, and they seem to have had an economy based on agriculture—but very little is known about them overall. However, a note for lovers of all things Italy: Their designation according to the Greeks was “Tyrrhenian,” from the leader of the Lydian émigrés, King Tyrsenos—now the name of everybody’s favorite sea off the Italian coast.
By Kathy McCabe
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