Etruscan religion

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Map of the Etruscan territories with the twelve cities of the Etruscan League of Cities and other important cities founded by the Etruscans. The Tyrrhenian Sea was the "home sea " of the Etruscans and is named after them.

The origin of the mythical-theistic religion of the Etruscans - they called themselves Rasenna , with the Greeks they were called Tyrsener and with the Romans Tusci or Etrusci  - is as largely obscure as the origin of this people themselves, which is speculative in science to this day, the never formed a territorial state, only a twelve-city league with a cultic vault . The last of these twelve cities, Vetulonia , was discovered by the Italian doctor and archaeologist Isidoro Falchi towards the end of the 19th century . In any case, they only become tangible as a people in Italy , in whose cultural environment they were firmly integrated. We know more details about them apart from Greek, though (for example in Hesiod ) rather mythical and contradicting reports, especially from Roman sources, and these sources date from the first century BC at the earliest, and are selective to fragmentary and often one-sided. To make matters worse, the Etruscan language is hardly deciphered, although it can be read, because the Etruscans used a Greek alphabet (the Euboean variant).

Especially in later periods, this religion was also heavily influenced by Greek mythology . On the other hand, the original layer is barely recognizable, not even its myths are known more precisely or only through Roman traditions, the same applies to their theology and essential aspects of their cult, especially its early forms. In contrast to the pre-Christian religions of the West, it was also a prophetically mediated revelation religion , which in turn speaks more for an oriental descent, as does the art style in the orientalizing phase of Etruscan culture, especially since there were the first such religions in Egypt, Mesopotamia , in Judaism and Zoroastrianism , which is why parallels are often drawn here.

Despite the massive Greek influences and its mixed character , the Etruscan religion is, at its core, completely non-Greek, since it proclaims the total submission of man to the divine will, to which man is nothing. For the Etruscans, their religion was therefore of central importance and extended deep into the individual way of life. The so-called Etrusca disciplina (Latin : disciplina : doctrine, instruction, science), consisting of books that were closely guarded by the priests as secret knowledge and contained precise instructions on how to perform oracles , provided the template and regulations for this . In antiquity, this Etrusca disciplina - the doctrine of the interpretation of divine signals, i.e. the technique of divination (from Latin divinare: to have a divine inspiration) and of the correct handling of the world of gods , was famous far beyond Etruria . Leberschau ( haruspicius ), the interpretation of the flight of birds ( auspices ) and the lightning ( fulgural discipline ) were just as much part of this teaching as the correct procedure for land surveying, administration or the construction of water pipes. The original texts of the disciplines were largely lost by the time of the Romans. The related cosmology is extremely complex and also only preserved in outline.

Louvre: Etruscan bronze mirror from the 4th to 3rd centuries BC Chr .; it shows the "judgment of Paris" and thus the great influence that Greek culture had on Etruscan at that time.
Grave fresco showing the joys of the afterlife. Tomba del Triclinio, 480 BC BC, Monterozzi necropolis ( Tarquinia )

Origins and Tradition

Origins: The problem of independence

The area of ​​the Villanova culture in Italy around 900 BC Chr.
Map of the approximate spheres of power of Carthaginian and Etruscan territories as well as that of the Greeks during and after the battle of Alalia , which the Greeks lost. Although the Etruscans, sometimes in association with the Carthaginians, repeatedly clashed with the Greek colonies, they nevertheless took over large parts of their religion and culture.
Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia approx. 1220 BC The empire of the Hittites blue. It mainly took up Mesopotamian influences. Should the Etruscans come from there, as new archaeological, genetic and linguistic findings suggest, they could have taken Troy (map above left) and the island of Lemnos, which lies about 70 km to the west, as the starting point for their hike Traces of Aeneas ”led to Italy.

Since the Etruscans had a non-Indo-European language, although in historical times they were surrounded by Indo-European peoples such as the Umbrians , Sabines and Latins , there used to be heated arguments about their potential origins and a whole series of theories that are now mostly obsolete. Their ancestry from the north, which was propagated for a long time, is considered to be of lesser importance despite some similarities, for example in the case of weapons and vessels, even their ancestry from the Trojans , which they themselves postulated , was ventilated in the literature for some time (and has recently gained in importance see below ). Archaeologically, however, the closest connections can be found with the Villanova culture in Italy. Whether they came from Lydia in Asia Minor (according to Herodotus ), from the north, from the Aegean Sea of Lemnos (which linguistic arguments speak for) or Cyprus or even from the west (they are said to have founded Tartessos on the Iberian Peninsula), whether they were Pelasgians or were an autochthonous, pre-Indo-European ancient people of Italy, and whether they immigrated as a whole or infiltrated in small groups when pirates came - as such they were also later thoroughly feared - and accompanied by Phoenicians who were connected to them and here above all the Carthaginians , like themselves sea-facing, excellent seafarers is controversial. The references of their religion to the Egyptian, Celtic, Chaldean or Villanova culture as well as to the ideas of the neighboring Italian ethnic groups, which of the Etruscans - as a possibly rather small immigrant class who landed with ships on the central Italian coast - apparently technologically, are also incompletely clarified and were culturally strongly influenced, maybe even subjected to them (iron processing due to the rich ore deposits in central Italy, i.e. Tuscany , but also on Elba ; it is estimated that around 700,000 tons of iron are produced in Populonia , the "Ruhr area" of the Etruscans were). Potential similarities to the also chthonically oriented prehistoric and early historical cultures of Malta and Sicily are occasionally pointed out. Some myths such as that of Hercules (Hercle), which is obviously very popular in Etruria, have a completely non-Greek expression and point to Babylonia and Palestine ( Melkart cult).

The local Villanova culture, which they may have dominated due to their technological and cultural superiority, did not disappear entirely, but it appears that the immigrants have subjugated the natives and established themselves as the ruling class. After all, the relationship between the two groups was so close that today one speaks of a historical continuity between the two cultures, especially since most of the Etruscan cities in the heartland evidently emerged from Villanova settlements. Most of the Etruscan population also came from indigenous groups. However, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica , this is apparently only one strand in the complex tissue that characterizes this culture and which, through orientalizing, especially Phoenician and later Greek influences, finally took on those forms of which we only know the outline. Correspondingly shimmering before this discontinuous, even erratic course of development, as it shows above all its art (according to the Brockhaus Encyclopedia ) and its religion, which in its heterogeneous structure is both fundamental archaic (→ religion in the Paleolithic ) and typical for traditional societies how “modern” polytheistic and anthropomorphic patterns can be recognized, such as those also exhibited by the Celtic and Slavic religions, which were subject to similar influences and development processes, but without any genetic relationship being derived from them. However, above all the Celtic religion is very similar to the Etruscan, because the druid priests took a bird's eye view , read from the signs of nature and had a secret knowledge passed on orally, so that here, too, features of a prophetic religion of revelation are definitely recognizable; The ideas of the afterlife are also similar, so that some authors consider a common descent of Celts, Slavs and Scythians from the old urnfield culture to be possible. Since the Celts settled in northern Italy relatively early in the 6th century BC, such a relationship does not seem to be completely ruled out, especially since the Lepontic language , which is documented by inscriptions, points in this direction. Apart from the polytheistic aspect of the Etruscan religion, which almost regularly took place here in the development of natural spirits via heroes to personalized gods, a certain similarity to the Chaldeans is occasionally pointed out.

Italic and Greek influences are dominant, however, which have been massively assimilated, sometimes so much that the Propylaea , for example, speaks of world history that the Etruscans cannot even be ascribed a high degree of cultural independence and originality, and that they are notoriously different from other cultures have been dependent "to such an extent that one has already spoken of a culturelessness of this people". After the more detailed investigations by Prayon or Cristofani, for example, this opinion can no longer be maintained to this extent, and Eliade already speaks of a very own synthesis (between Etruscan and Greek culture), because “the Etruscan genius develops the ideas borrowed according to his own vocation ”and:“ The basic idea, namely the homology between macrocosm and microcosm, is archaic ”, but then, somewhat perplexed, to close his Etruscan chapter with the remark:“ In the end we miss the essence of the Etruscan religious Thinking. “Completely new aspects regarding the origin of the Etruscans from Anatolia and their cultural and especially linguistic influence on their environment, especially on the Celtic, have meanwhile been found in Etruscan studies by Martin Counihan. New genetic findings from Alberto Piazza, Turin, which showed a close relationship between long-established Tuscan families with the genetic pattern of an ethnic group living near Lemnos in western Anatolia, support this finding. The question remains, why neither the Greeks nor the Etruscans were able to expand and consolidate their culture to include all of Italy in terms of state politics, so that this was left to the Romans, who only took over from both cultures and religions what seemed useful and attractive to them, the actual authors, however, deliberately let it fall into oblivion (the Greeks only became "fashionable" again in the imperial era). Arnold Toynbee says:

“Because of their geographic location, the Etruscans would have been very well placed to unite all of Italy from the Alps to the tip of their toes, and if they had worked together they would have been successful. The Italo-Greeks had never seriously thought of uniting even the peninsula of Italy; they were too few, too far from the center, and above all, one city-state was the enemy of the other. (The Etruscans failed to take joint action, but they did not destroy each other as the Italo-Greek states did.) "

- Toynbee : Humanity and Mother Earth

Lore

The main problem with the interpretation of the Etruscan religion is therefore the tradition, especially since no images of gods have survived from the early period, just as little as evidence of the originally rich religious literature. The cult itself only becomes visible after it was influenced and reshaped by the Greeks , and we can still see it today in the enormous grave cult of the Etruscan necropolis . Elements of the Pythagoreans , Orphics and Dionysian influences can be identified as early as the 7th century BC , which later remained formative, as well as strong oriental influences. The archaeological sites were also largely looted by grave robbers in the 19th century, when serious scientific research began, and tens of thousands of graves were cleared, but the context of the finds was also destroyed. In addition, adulterations by Roman traditions, which are certainly not necessarily wanted, are to be expected, especially since the Romans adapted parts of the religion for their own needs, i.e. de facto simplified, rationalized, formalized and externalized them after a thoroughly religious period, especially towards the end of the Republic in the sense that the relationship between man and deity was given a legal character (Cicero: ius divinum ), which is expressed above all in the correct invocation formula and precisely defined rituals, which, however, did not seem to be entirely sufficient for the Romans, at least emotionally, because In addition, there are numerous remains of ancient beliefs in the form of fear of demons and rituals of the dead with an irrational tendency towards magic and superstition, which undoubtedly contained numerous Etruscan and ancient Italian remains. These indirect reports often emerged long after the Etruscan period, at the earliest from the 1st century BC. And are based themselves to a not inconsiderable extent on rather uncertain sources. Nevertheless, religious doctrine presents itself in a complexity and systematics that must have taken a long period of development to arise and develop. Above all, the influence of Greek philosophy and science seems to have been strong and to have been used intensively by the Haruspices in particular . Also, Greek authors apparently tried to compensate for the contradictions of the system secondarily and to select its rules in a populist way and to make them more applicable for the purposes of the time. Above all, the design of the discipline was significantly influenced by this and is therefore well preserved by Roman authors ( e.g. Varro , Seneca , Pliny the Elder , Sextus Pompeius Festus and Cicero ), who apparently translated directly from the sources, whose influence it It is probably also thanks that this discipline became very popular with the Roman public. Other aspects of the Etruscan religion are only vaguely preserved and leave many questions unanswered.

As for archeology , although abundant in its findings, most of it comes from the ornate necropolises outside of the Etruscan cities. The graves of the noble families there were often splendidly furnished and allow detailed conclusions to be drawn about the way of life of this social class. But this picture is naturally one-sided, because the Etruscan society was based on the work performance of serfs, about whom little is known, just as little as about the rural settlements and their customs as well as the lower class of the cities or even the natives.

One of the few, still sensitive sources for the belief and cult of the Etruscans is therefore the Roman religion , which despite considerable modifications and intermingling with Greek intellectual property and despite its origins from the Indo-European Latin area, has received a great deal of what the Etruscans once believed where and how they did it. One cannot avoid taking a closer look at this source again and again, with all due caution in the assessment and in the knowledge that the Roman religion was only an intermediate phase in a development in which very different currents came together to form a complex but independent network which later changed into a new one, that of the Roman state Christianity.

Cosmology and the world of the gods

Cosmological structure

Systematics

The cosmological system of the Etruscan religion is one of the most structured in the history of religion and in this form is certainly strongly influenced by Greek. Its main principles were the orientatio and the divisio , i.e. the precise alignment of all things with the cosmic structure of the world and its precise subdivision. Central is the idea of divination . This understands the structure of reality as absolutely subordinate to the divine will, since this alone guarantees order and rationality. This means that nothing happens by chance, rather all things and events can be classified and thus also predictable within the framework of a cosmic overall system - the basis of all prophetic actions of the Etruscan religion. Extraordinary processes are signs ("prodigies") of certain divine intentions. However, if you want to read these signs, you first have to strictly classify them. Above all, the space must be rationally aligned for this purpose and divided into sectors, whereby the Etruscans, in contrast to other Mediterranean cultures, which mostly followed a twelve-part division, preferred a division of 16.

In his sociology of religion, Max Weber recorded the origin and essential characteristics of this divination, which was absolutely central to the Etruscans:

“The art of“ divination ”initially arises directly from the magic of belief in spirits. The spirits, like all other beings, do not work absolutely irregular. If one knows the conditions of their effectiveness, one can combine their behavior from symptoms: omina, which from experience indicate their disposition. The construction of graves, houses and paths, the performance of economic and political actions must take place in the favorable place and at the favorable time according to previous experience. (P. 262 )

He differs from the magician ( note: the priest ) in that he proclaims content-related revelations, the content of his mission does not consist in magic, but in teaching or commandment. Externally, the transition is fluid. The magician is very often a divination artist. The revelation works continuously at this stage as an oracle or dream-inspiration. Without questioning the magicians, new regulations for community relationships would originally hardly come about anywhere. (P. 269)

Life and the world, the social as well as the cosmic events, have a certain, systematically uniform “meaning” for the prophet, and the behavior of people must, in order to bring them salvation, be oriented towards this and be made uniformly meaningful through the relationship to him. (P. 275)
The “belief in providence” is the consequent rationalization of magical divination. (P. 317) "

- Max Weber : Economy and Society, Chap. V: Sociology of Religion

The Etruscans followed these rules consistently. They divided the world to determine the natural signs with a large, invisible cross from a north-south axis (lat. Cardo ) and an east-west axis (lat. Decumanus ). This corresponded to four regions in the sky, each with four parts oriented according to the cardinal points, to which certain gods were assigned. The cosmos, in turn, was divided into four concentric spheres, the uppermost that of the aether, the lowest the earth. The north-eastern quarter was assigned to the highest sky gods, the two southern quarters to the gods of nature and earth, the north-western quarter to the underworld deities, which, however, are missing in the depictions of the liver of Piacenza , rather the main god Tina / Zeus also unites aspects of the afterlife in especially since the actual death deities did not develop until the 4th / 3rd Appeared in the 18th century and here correspond to the pairing Persephone / Hades as Phersipnai / Aita . The order of the gods also reflects a certain idea of ​​the universe, which corresponds to the world of the sky gods, the gods of the seas, the underworld and finally the world of humans, with a descending order in which the different entities each occupy different heights and thus function as groups of four Etruscan penates assigned to these worlds , who are general protective gods here and not, as was the case with the Romans, primarily limited to the domestic area, which, according to legend, were brought from Troy by Aeneas. This system is spatially oriented towards midday; the orientation of the Haruspex corresponds to this, as does that of the sacred buildings, the front of which often faces southeast.

Practical application in urban planning
View of Orvieto , probably the old Volsinii ; a typical hilltop settlement on a tuff rock plateau with caves , which made it impossible to apply the Etruscan principles of urban planning.

The concept of the 16 heavenly fields from which the gods acted on the earth is particularly reflected in the layout of the Etruscan cities or the necropolises; even Etruscan Rome was supposedly designed according to these principles. However, Tuscany, the core area of ​​the Etruscans, was too hilly to be able to plan settlements according to purely geometric principles, and you can still find walled settlements there that are irregularly adapted to the landscape, often on hilltops, as the Greeks also built for themselves. So this principle is actually only in the 6th century BC. Realized when the Etruscans settled in the plain south of Rome, in Campania and in the Po plain and founded colonies. There they built their cities in a strictly ritualized manner: after the priests had determined the center and determined the east-west axis with the help of a measuring device (probably a kind of theodolite , for example a dioptra ), which aimed at the rising sun, the new city became laid out around a crossroads, so that further subdivisible districts were created. At the ends of the crossroads, the city gates were then erected at equal distances from the center, pointing exactly in the four cardinal directions. The construction of the city wall was also ritualized: with a bronze plow, four furrows were torn out parallel to the measured axes, so that they delimited a square area. The principle was probably derived from army camps and was later adopted by the Romans as "etrusco more" (in the style of the Etruscans).

The gods

Among other things, the deities were anthropomorphized by the influence that emanated mainly from the Greek colonies of Lower Italy , and they came in function, shape and mythology very much closer to the pantheon of Greek Olympus , especially in the late period . that this convergence may well be based on similar archaic sources. Voltumna was considered the supreme god of the Etruscans. Its representation is, however, rather diffuse and completely dissimilar to that of the Greek father of the gods Zeus with his often very worldly desires, whose equivalent is already considered Tinia among the Etruscans . It is also noteworthy that his name is missing on the liver of Piacenza.

Oldest forms and Roman traditions

It is hardly recognizable any more, but the unearthly beings were apparently initially indeterminate and changeable in terms of gender, type and number. Initially, there even seems to have only been a belief in a single divine being, who expressed itself in different forms and took on different forms, which gradually became different personalized deities with different functions through heroes . And not surprisingly, Voltumna, as the supreme god, was understood as an entity rather remote from the world.

It is remarkable that this ancient lack of names and images found its expression in the Roman religion. The highest and oldest gods did not exist for the Romans as a dormant being or in human-like form, but only because they caused actions that could be fixed in time. This ancient principle is called numen and can mean these actions like God himself. The ancient Roman religion, which was influenced by the peasantry and has great similarities with the Etruscan religion, therefore had no pictorial representation of the gods. Later cult images were mainly used under Greek influence, perhaps also under Etruscan ones, who had also adopted this custom for their at first faceless otherworldly-metaphysical entities from the Greeks or brought it from their possibly ancient oriental homeland (the Indo-European Hittites , however , called them themselves the people of a thousand gods , but spoke at least eight languages, including some non-Indo-European ones from the Anatolian indigenous population). In any case, a Greek imagined his gods in myth and cult image, a Roman and probably also Etruscans made the god present to himself through cultic acts and signs of nature. From this, however, there is also the decisive difference between the Etruscan and Roman understanding of religion and gods: For the Romans, religion is not a self-contained, abstract and cosmic power that stands above the daily needs of man, but remains the practical needs of the domestic Subordinated and subordinated to life and peasant activity, and indeed in their developed form as state religion and imperial cult. In this completely different concept, what the Romans took over from the Etruscans in terms of gods, rites and customs was then integrated.

Developed form

The later pantheon of the Etruscans with its approximately 40 gods, like all their religious ideas, is almost ungodly and strictly systematized. So there are six relentless gods and goddesses, the Dii Consentes , the Dii Involuti , mysterious beings who exclusively advise the supreme god Voltumna / Tinia , the nine Novensides , who throw lightning, etc. This supreme god, in turn, is not a god of heaven, like one knows him from the Indo-Europeans, for example, but a chthonic god of the earth who lives in its depths and is not married in the sky and is also married to an earth goddess Uni ( Hera - Juno ). The world of gods of the Etruscans is thus less nomadic than that of the Indo-Europeans, but rather rural, agrarian myth and chthonic. The extreme orientation towards natural phenomena also points in this direction.

The Etruscans knew the Olympian gods known by the Greeks and Romans, their own native gods and entire associations of gods. Since the 4th century BC, demons of various kinds have also been typical , often winged and with a horrible appearance, hybrid beings with animal attributes and animal heads, which often function as messengers of death or companions of the dead and in which the chthonic and animistic origin is most clearly preserved.

When classifying into originally Etruscan and adopted Greek gods, it must be noted that some old Etruscan deities merged with Olympic secondary gods or adopted their names, which can often hardly be determined from case to case. According to Prayon, the partial correspondence between the names of the gods is related to the fact that the Greek, Latin and Etruscan cultures were in close contact as early as the 8th and 7th centuries and, above all, Greek legends were adopted or adapted if their comparable functions allowed this. They either kept the name, as with the god parents Tinia and Uni, or they took over or Etruscan names of Greek gods such as Apollon , who became Aplu or Artemis became Artumes. A further complicating factor is that the gods often had several functional areas, so sometimes only partial aspects of the originals were affected.

The native gods of the Etruscans were often pure cult gods without pictorial representation. Little is known of the gods associations. Some Latin names are:

  • dei opertanei (mysterious gods)
  • dei involuti (inexplicable gods, they advise Tinia)
  • dei consentes or di complices (six inexorable and nameless gods and goddesses each)
  • the Novensides (they alone can throw lightning).

In addition, there are lower deities such as the Lasen belonging to Turan (comparable, if not identical with the Roman lares ) and the Manes .

Accordingly, purely linguistically, one can differentiate between three categories of Etruscan gods:

  • the genuinely Etruscan
  • the originally Greek
  • those derived from the Latin or Italian dialects.

In terms of content and functionality , as presented in Etruscan art, four layers can be separated from one another:

  • The traces of animistic ideas of God: Above all, the faceless high god Voltumna, who seems to float above everything, could be assigned to this layer, possibly also Artumes as the late form of the mistress of animals , because her worship as a cult goddess is demonstrably very old in archaic central Italy. The numerous occurring demons represent a very old common Mediterranean layer, especially since they sometimes exhibit nor animal attributes (wings, animal heads, horns, etc.) as they are found especially in its oldest form in Anatolia, which according to the current state of research ( so potentially) most likely region of origin of the Etruscans.
  • The indigenous nature gods in the broader sense: Cavtha and Usil (sun), Tivr (moon), Menerva (weather goddess), Selvans (young god of nature), Turan (love goddess), Laran (war?), Leinth (death), Maris (fertility, Love), Thalna / Thanr (birth), Turms (trade) and Fufluns (vegetation, wine).
  • The high gods from the Indo-European heritage or the intensive contact with him: Tin or Tinia (heaven), Uni, his wife (city goddess and birth), Cel (earth goddess).
  • As a fourth, most extensive layer, there were Greek gods who came into the Etruscan system during the orientalizing period 750 / 700–600 BC. Were integrated: Artumes / Aritimi (Artemis, if this is not a pure adoption of the name), Pacha (Bacchus, corresponds to Greek Dionysus ) etc.

The Etruscan pantheon: gods, ghosts and demons

Only where the assignment to Etruscan or Italian is relatively certain, that is, where no direct Roman or Greek equivalents are known, is it recorded. Above all, the 24 gods on the bronze liver of Piacenza , which is divided into 40 zones, are recorded , as far as their function has been clarified to some extent.

Bronze mirror from Volterra depicting the university suckling Hercle, 3rd quarter of the 4th century BC BC Florence, Museo Archeologico
The winged death demon Vanth . The wings are an ancient animal attribute of demons, which is also found in Mesopotamia. Fresco from the Anina tomb near Tarquinia, mid 3rd century BC Chr.
Apollo of Veji. Gable figure of the Menerva temple in Veji , 6th century BC As usual with the Greeks, Apulu / Apollo was later considered the brother of Menerva and was often revered with her.

The most important gods in alphabetical order: Greek-Roman equivalents in brackets.

  • Aita ( Hades ), lord of the underworld. Together with Aia he treats the dead with a blow of mercy with a hammer.
  • Apanu - goddess of love and death, possibly identical to Persiphnai
  • Apulu ( Apollon , Apollo) - brother of Artames, god of the arts. In its archaic form, however, it also includes underworld aspects. Later he is brought closer to the sun god.
  • Artumes ( Artemis , Diana ) - goddess of hunting adopted by the Greeks.
  • Atunis ( Adonis ) - god of vegetation, is associated with Turan.
  • Calu - god of death, bringer, not ruler of death, in contrast to Aita but cult god, probably originally Etruscan.
  • Cavtha ( Eos ), partner or daughter of the actual sun god Usil. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Cel - Earth Mother.
  • Charun - Greek Charon , companion to the dead. Also called a mantus .
  • Culsans (functionally equivalent to Janus ) - youthful god of gates. Like the Roman Ianus, he is two-faced.
  • Culsu - a death demon, guardian of the gate to the underworld? Belongs to Culsans. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Esplace - Greek Asklepios , god of healing.
  • Ethausva and Thanr / Thalna - goddesses of birth. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deities.
  • Evan - one of the Lasen, goddess of personal immortality, authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • February - god of death, god of purity. The month of February is named after him. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Feronia - goddess of the freedmen, is associated with forest, fire and fertility. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Fufluns ( Dionysus , Bacchus ) - god of wine, god of vegetation. Cult name probably Pacha (from Latin Bacchus). He was especially worshiped in Populonia . Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Hercle ( Heracles ) - hero and god of healing. Its myth, based on the number of depictions, was the most popular in Etruria and contains numerous non-Greek elements.
  • Horta - goddess of agriculture. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Laran ( Ares , Mars ) - ancient god of earth and fertility, later god of war. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Lasa - The winged Lasa belong to the Turan entourage and often have their own names: Achununa, Racuneta, Sitmica. The Lasa Vecu is of great importance .
  • Leinth - Faceless god of death who awaited the dead in the underworld. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Lethans - obscure god, underworld? Goddess?
  • Lusna - moon goddess, possibly corresponds to the Greek Leucothea. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Mania - goddess of the dead. Mother of the Lares . Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Mantus - god of the dead. Consort of Mania.
  • Maris - Presumably love and fertility, possibly a counterpart to Eros .
  • Menerva ( Minerva , Athene ) - Authentic Etruscan deity. An old Italian goddess of wisdom and struggle, Uni and Tinia are her parents, after them she is the highest heavenly deity.
  • Nethuns ( Neptune ). - Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity. Originally an Italian god of water and springs. A particularly important god for the Etruscans, who were excellent seafarers.
  • Nortia - a goddess of fate, especially worshiped in Volsinii .
  • Phersipnai ( Persephone ) - mistress of the underworld.
  • Phersu - presumably death demon
  • Sans - god of oaths.
  • Satres - Possibly derived from Saturn, unclear function.
  • Selvans ( Silvanus ) - ancient god of nature. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Semla - earth goddess. Mother of Fufluns.
  • Sethlans ( Hephaestus ) - underground blacksmith god, patron god of craftsmen and artists.
  • Day - god of wisdom, brought the disciplines to the Etruscans by means of Tarchon . Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Tecum - god of the Lukumonen. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Tellus and Tellumo - two earth gods. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deities.
  • Thalna - goddess of birth. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Thetlumth - god of fate and the underworld. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Thesan ( Eos ) - Authentic Etruscan deity. Goddess of the dawn, cult goddess associated with university.
  • Thufltha, Tukhulkha , and Nathum - underworld demons, who can also be invoked for protection and serve Tinia.
  • Tinia ( Zeus , Jupiter ) - Authentic Etruscan deity. Most High God, thunderbolt. It also has otherworldly significance.
  • Tivr - moon god. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Turan ( Aphrodite , Venus ) - Authentic Etruscan deity. Goddess of beauty, love and fertility; the most important of the female deities of Etruria.
  • Turms ( Hermes , Mercurius ) - messengers of the gods. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Tvath - goddess of resurrection, similar to Demeter .
  • Uni ( Hera , Juno ) - Authentic Italo-Etruscan deity. Wife of Voltumna (Tinia), a fertility goddess who was especially worshiped in Veji and is also called the Lady of the Dawn. Occasionally she has merged with Aphrodite since the 6th century BC . She is the only goddess who can throw lightning. Patron saint of families, women and mothers.
  • Usil - sun god. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Vanth - Female death demons, death companions and grave guards with large wings and in white clothes. They often carry scrolls on which the deeds of the deceased are recorded.
  • Veive - goddess of revenge. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Velchans - God of unclear meaning. March was sacred to him.
  • Vetis - a kind of devil, underworld god of destruction. Authentic Etruscan-Italian deity.
  • Voltumna - also Veltha, high god, later war and covenant god. Variants: Vortumnus, Velthumna, Velthumena, Volturnus: Authentic Etruscan deity. He is the primordial god of the Etruscans. The representatives of the League of Twelve Cities gathered around his sanctuary in Orvieto or Volsinii / Voltumnae. He later merges with Tinia, Zeus and Jupiter, but in contrast to these is not a sky god, but a chthonic earth deity. Its altars are therefore hollows dug into the earth. He was the only Etruscan god originally adopted by the Romans. It was so important to the Romans that after their victory over Volsinii (now Bolsena) in 264 BC, the general M. Fulvius Flaccus ordered it to be used as a sanctuary. (According to the Naturalis historia of Pliny there were 2,000 statues) and transferred the booty to the new Roman sanctuary, which they had built for him on the Aventine and thus deprived the defeated Etruscans of their most important religious basis. The process marks the final political end of the Etruscans, because with it they had lost their spiritual center.

Analogous to the humanization of the gods based on the Greek and Roman models, Greek sagas of gods and heroes are also adopted (for example the Dioscuri , Orpheus and Heracles saga), possibly mixed with their own and occasionally given a political background, because the myth of Aeneas is for example very popular with the Romans and serves to glorify and legitimize one's own past. From this, as has happened several times, to deduce a real historical descent of the Etruscans from the Trojans and thus from the Hittites , is problematic, although more recent linguistic studies point in this direction again ( see origins above ) when they postulate a relationship between Etruscan and Luwian , which was possibly also spoken in Troy, as indicated by newly found inscriptions.

Religious law, priest and cult

Spiritual foundations

Typical Etruscan bronze statuettes from the Museo Etrusco Guarnacci , mid-7th century BC Chr. Votive offerings? The statuettes belong to the geometric style phase, as it was typical of the Villanova culture.

In ancient times, the Etruscans were famous for their religious practices and were considered a religious people. Several historians even mistakenly derive their name Tusci from the Greek thysiazein  - the word for sacrifice. For the Etruscans all areas of life and nature were predetermined by divine will. By interpreting and researching the divine will, they tried to foresee as much as possible and to act accordingly. As late as the 6th century AD, the Roman historian Prokopius reported that the Etruscans were famous as fortune tellers of his time . Their lives were shaped by deep religious fears, which they tried to counter through particularly intense rituals, far more than all ancient peoples of the West. The main aim of these rituals was to force the gods to reveal their secrets by means of divination . Without divination, that is, the precise exploration of divine will and future divine intentions, there were no important decisions or actions, publicly or privately. If the result of this preview was negative or threatening, complex preventive or protective ceremonies had to be carried out and sacrifices had to be made, which is evidenced by an extraordinarily large number of finds of votive offerings , often relatively coarse sculptures with typically elongated figures. The liver and intestinal examination by a haruspex were particularly important in terms of divination. In second place was the interpretation of lightning and other celestial phenomena such as the flight of birds, in third place was the interpretation of unusual heavenly and earthly phenomena. Exclusion from such prodigies amounted to exclusion from the cosmic order itself.

The calendar

What Rome owed to its Etruscan kings as well as architecture, town planning, hydraulics and other basic cultural techniques, was the religious calendar with its attempt to align the solar and lunar years . The month names April and June are also originally Etruscan, possibly also February . On the basis of the festivals recorded in this calendar, even earlier events can be traced back to the 6th century BC. To date with relative certainty. In contrast to other texts, this calendar is well attested in around 40 original sources. This ritual calendar in the so-called Liber linteus , one of the longest texts ever preserved in Etruscan language, which has been preserved on the Zagreb mummy bandages and dates from the first century BC, is mainly passed down, however, with gaps and only partially legible .

It was introduced in Rome by the Etruscan Tarquinius Priscus (616-579 BC), the fifth king of Rome. In a revised form it was 45 BC. It was taken over by Julius Caesar and replaced the ancient Roman calendar , which was completely inadequate because of its systematics based on the lunar year , such as the Fasti Antiates maiores from the 2nd century BC . The calendars contain numerous very old traces, such as a pre-Etruscan ten-month solar year. The festivals recorded in this old calendar reflect the transition from rural to urban life in Rome, but also its de-spiritualization, with religious activities increasingly nationalized and shifted from the private sphere and assured the citizens that the rites followed natural processes, the will of the gods is fulfilled and personal participation is no longer necessary. This marked a sharp break for centuries between the completely religious life of the Etruscans and the secular life of the Romans.

Cultic acts

Framework conditions, terms and individual phenomena

Framework
  • The Etruscans formed a cult community that was not politically determined and had its basis in an apparently deep popular belief, at the center of which was the unity of man, nature and cosmos and the absolute submission to the will of the gods, which, however, was through signs and their interpretation could be recognized.
  • In addition to the presumably numerous natural consecration sites documented by votive finds ( see below ), there were also a few important cult centers ( fanum ), one of the most important in the approximate geographical center of the twelve cities near Orvieto : the Fanum Voltumnae , where the spiritual and secular leaders of the City federation met once a year and, contrary to old reports, it was apparently in no way destroyed by the Romans, but continued to be pursued with a high degree of respect, as Roman and Etruscan coin finds show in close connection.
  • The priesthood was in the hands of the rulers, later in the hands of a few aristocratic families, and in accordance with the strict cosmology of the Etruscans, it was an important position of power.
  • The cult practice was shaped by secret doctrines, and details other than the practices reported and adopted by the Romans have not survived. In the early days there seems to have been human sacrifices.
Designations

The Etruscans used different terms for religious offices and actions, as one knows from their inscriptions: capen (Sabine cupencus ), maru (Umbrian maron-), eisnev, hatrencu (priestess). They called the art of liver inspection zich nethsrac . A god was called an ais (later eis ), plural aisar . Wherever there was, there was a fanu or luth , a sacred place such as a hexagonal sacrificial stone ( favus ), a grave or a temple. In such places one had to offer a fler (Pl. Flerchva ), a sacrifice.

In the vicinity of the tombs called mun or muni there were the man or mani (lat. Manes ), the souls of the ancestors. These were sometimes also called hinthial (literally: someone who is underground). A special administration, the cechase , took care of the cecha or rath , i.e. the holy things. But each individual also had certain religious obligations within a holy community, the so-called slecaches . No public event took place without the netsvis , the haruspex, or its feminine equivalent, the nethsra .

Single phenomena

Two religiously relevant phenomena should be mentioned here:

  • The use of masks in cultic ceremonies: This phenomenon, which can also be found among the Greeks, apparently comes from the Aegean culture. At the cultic performances of the Etruscans, for example during a funeral ceremony, actors always appeared with masks called phersu , from which in Latin, where such traditions were adopted, the word persona , which has now been used in many European languages, developed, which now in contrast to the original meaning no longer denotes the schematized typical, but the individual.
  • The procession during ritual ceremonies was another tradition introduced by the Etruscans in Italy, which also comes from the Aegean Sea, where it is attested in ancient Thera , Mycenae and the Minoan culture . Such processions were mainly practiced at funerals and animal sacrifices as well as certain temple services, for example during ritual holidays. This tradition was also adopted by the Romans, and after them by the Catholic Church.

The Etruscan discipline

The Etruscan Kalchas mirror shows the Greek seer Kalchas as haruspex at the liver inspection. (b / w illustration)

The religious precepts summarized in the Etrusca disciplina regulated life and relationships with the gods as well as the ways and methods with which their will could be researched, which in principle, however, was not assumed to be rationally directly explicable. In contrast to the Sibylline Books of the Romans, the disciplines did not actually contain divination , and they were evidently not based on an actual ethical system in the sense of a dedicated good-bad pattern. The basic idea was rather that the gods were in constant contact with the human world, on a collective as well as an individual level, and communicated through a constant stream of signs. The center of the Etruscan religion was to interpret the will of the gods and to influence them as much as possible. This made it possible for the priests to enter into direct communication with the forces on the other side (cf. shamanism ). The Roman prophecy practices based on the Etruscan methods are only a weak reflex of this, especially since they only provided simple yes-no answers and no differentiated instructions for action as with the Etruscans. The fundamental difference between the Roman and Etruscan worldview becomes particularly clear here: The Etruscans felt themselves to be part of a communicating cosmos that determined their lives , while the Romans, on the other hand, were distant from the world of the gods, rather took it formally through sacrifices, but they were on the Everyday life and the real world are focused. However, this determinism was by no means absolute and arbitrary, for example in the sense of a predestination , which in any case, in contrast to determinism, is directed more towards the hereafter, for example through divine choice of grace (for example in Calvinism ), and is not determined by comprehensible causal relationships such as below systemic-logical involvement of the gods, however, the determinism of the Etruscan religion, which then, however, towards the end of the Etruscan epoch from around the 4th / 3rd century AD. Century turns into a certain fatalism , as the pessimistic tinted grave frescoes of this time with their demon figures show ( see below ).

But this determinism was not rigid and hopeless. For example, the death of an individual could be delayed by up to ten years through suitable measures, the end of the people even by 30 years. The power over this lay in the hands of the priests, who therefore occupied a central position in society and were mostly connected to the rulership of the Lukumonen. Nevertheless, this situation allows the conclusion that the Etruscans were aware of the end of their epoch from the beginning and that they lived towards it.

It is therefore not surprising that the Romans did not adopt this side of the Etruscan religion, although they continued other rituals and formalities, such as official costumes, ceremonies such as the triumphal procession, titulatures and symbols such as the fasces , the bundles of rods around a hatchet as a symbol of worldly punishing power , which should then survive as a designation into modern times, because the word fascism comes from this. The crosier and miter are also of Etruscan origin. The titulature of the Pope as Pontifex maximus (supreme bridge builder or path finder, i.e. Augur, the etymology is controversial) in turn is a sign of the combination of secular and sacred functions that were inseparably linked in Etruria, a custom that, however, quickly became pure in Rome Ritual froze, as did the invocation of the gods, which the Etruscans took over before every official act, and the pompous burial ceremonies of the nobility or the temple cult including statues of gods. With the common people, on the other hand, the custom of invoking the faceless divine forces, the numina , in nature and also using mantic ceremonies remained for a very long time.

The Etrusca disciplina have not been passed on as a whole and can only be partially reconstructed from the mentions by Roman authors. They were recorded in ancient books, which, according to legend, of an otherworldly chthonic, because miraculously plowed out of the earth at Tarquinii, divine figure called day with the body of a child and the head of an old man, son of genius and grandson of Zeus, the representatives of twelve Etruscan populi are said to have been dictated. (Another part of these disciplines is said to have been revealed by the nymph Vegoia.) They contained the regulations on the interpretation of the flight of birds, lightning strikes and entrails, as well as the secular doctrine , according to which the life of the Etruscan civilization and culture was limited to a certain number of saecula. The predetermined period of time was eight or ten saecula, depending on tradition, with a saeculum spanning about a hundred years. However, the canon was constantly being expanded with the addition of new teachings. The Romans classified these books as libri fulgurales, haruspicini and rituales. The first two relate to limited divinatory techniques. The third, on the other hand, comprises a philosophical-religious overview of all Etruscan subject areas, far beyond divination. There are ritual rules that relate to all aspects of social life from the foundation of cities to agriculture, as well as cosmological theories and speculations about the fate of people and cities (libri fatales) .

Augurs, haruspices: the priests

Both terms were later used largely synonymously by the Romans. The Augur is probably older, however, because the word can be derived from augere = to flourish (still preserved today in "Inauguration") and therefore suggests that old agrarian fertility rites were carried out. Not to be confused with this is the term auspicium , which was derived from avi-spicium , i.e. bird observation. Haruspex, on the other hand, comes from haru-spicium , the looking ( spicium ) of intestines (our word yarn is still related to haru , which means something like tubular, yarn was originally made from twisted intestines). The Auguria were then generally understood to mean cultic processes through which the gods were consulted according to fixed rules, a process that was then generally also called auspices, without always understanding the interpretation of flight or voices of the birds.

Roman bronze coin ( sesterce ) depicting the emperor Herennius Etruscus on the obverse , several augural instruments on the reverse: left: ladle over watering can, middle: water jug, right: crook over flat sacrificial bowl

Function: Since they also exercised a comparable office in the Roman religion, but did so in the context of Roman attitudes, little is known about the actual Etruscan origins and peculiarities. They wore a kind of official salar with a tapered, conical hat, as it is still today in the miter of the bishops, plus a leather coat, probably made from the skin of a sacrificial animal, including a short tunic. Their official symbol was a long staff with a twisted end, as it is also found in the Babylonian culture and as it has been preserved as a pastoral staff of Catholic bishops to this day. The rod called Lituus was used , among other things, to establish a templum , a sacred area , in the sky , within which the flight of birds was judged. It was the augurs' most important symbol of the rank until the Roman period. Priests held a high social rank, mostly came from the aristocratic class and were sometimes even identical with the city king. In addition, there seems to have been a kind of village haruspex after Cicero. Even during the time of the Roman Republic, the Senate itself was called upon to deal with problematic cases, real Etruscan haruspexes, who then exercised great power in Rome in such usually political decision-making cases, since it was assumed that the basis of these Haruspex judgments was an old, respected science (the disciplines). Also with the Romans in general during the republican time, but also afterwards, state actions without corresponding religious acts were unthinkable.

The training of the priests was long and complex and took place in special schools, among which that of Tarquinii enjoyed the best reputation. These schools, however, were not just seminaries, but a kind of university with different faculties, whose curriculum included not only theological and religious knowledge, but all the encyclopedic knowledge a priest needed, from astronomy and meteorology to zoology, ornithology and botany up to geology and hydraulics, with the last subject being the specialty of water professionals who advised cities on their water supply. In Etruria, as in the ancient Orient, theology and secular science were not separated. Rather, it was thought that everything man did on earth must be done in accordance with the cosmos. Thus, all efforts of the priests were directed towards exploring the will of the heavenly gods in accordance with religious law.

Interpretation of lightning and bird flight

General

Earthly signs and heavenly signs were interpreted. The most important thing was the interpretation of lightning, while unlike the Romans, the interpretation of the flight of birds was given little importance. The intestinal inspection, on the other hand, had its own weight and was also passed down in detail in the Libri . These three disciplines were called artificiosa by Cicero, i.e. techniques based on assumptions derived from highly developed classification methods and observations. What is completely missing, however, is information about the so-called naturalia by Cicero , which are based on mystical obsession, roughly corresponding to the ecstatic rapture of shamans or Greek or oriental mystery cults .

Fulgural discipline

It was passed down in the Libri fulgurales , the origin of which was ascribed to the nymph Vegoia (not the day ). Most of what is known about it comes from Seneca and Pliny. According to Pliny the Elder , the Etruscans distinguished eleven types of lightning that were sent out by nine different gods (Di novensides). There was a meticulously precise system that described the region of the sky where the lightning came from, where it struck and which God hurled it, but also where it returned, because people firmly believed that it did so. Tinia had three flashes available, but he could only throw the first one on his own, with the second he had to ask the council of gods and with the third even the dei consentes .

This first, systematic stage was followed by the second, that of the divinatory interpretation and the third, that of the reconciliation of the gods through purification, sacrifices, prayers, etc. For private concerns, the premonition of a lightning bolt was valid for a maximum of ten years, for state concerns for a maximum of 30 years . Exceptions were lightning bolts on birthdays, to found a new household or to found a new city.

Augural Discipline

The behavior of birds, especially their voice and flight direction, was also used for predictions, albeit with a much lower weight, which, however, given the fact that this discipline was most widespread among the Italian peoples, due to deficiencies in tradition and a possible inhibitory preponderance which also suggests the discipline that prevailed among the Romans themselves. Therefore, relatively little is known about it, only that pigeons alone delivered auspices to kings. In addition, the Etruscans had pertinent bird lists for this purpose, some with species that had long since ceased to exist in Italy at that time, i.e. apparently very old. There was also a special form of guided auspices in which certain birds, such as chickens, were led by strings and their grain pecking was interpreted, a method that generals in the army camp also practiced, for example.

Haruspizia: viscera and liver examination

The practice of liver inspection (heparscopy), which was widespread in the Orient at that time , was also practiced by the Etruscans and later adopted by the Romans. Similar practices can already be found in the Babylonian-Chaldean area, from where the Hittites took over them, and later the surrounding oriental cultures, and despite considerable differences, a number of common interpretations can be established, so that one has at least a close relationship with such religious centers the third century BC. There are apparently also astrological relationships, since the liver's representations seem to relate to such factors.

The intestinal inspection is described in the Libri haruspicini, which has only been handed down in fragments from Roman sources . As in other areas, the question arises how one can separate the Roman traditions from the originally Etruscan ones. The decisive factor is that the Roman auspices only had a yes / no answer, while the Etruscan auspices were differentiated and reflected the complex will of the gods. In addition, unlike the Etruscans, the Romans did not remove the entrails from the body of the sacrificial animal.

The most important sacrificial animal was the sheep. All of the corresponding liver models that have come down to us come from this animal. In addition to the liver, the heart (only from around the 3rd century BC), the lungs (it was considered to be rather ominous) and possibly the spleen were also used. A bad sign was an absence or a small size of the organ. The main organ for haruspicos, however, was the liver. Certain zones of the organ were assigned to the individual deities, and abnormalities were now searched for ( hierarchy ). The assessment criteria (color, shape, size, symmetries, consistency, membranes, outgrowths, gall bladder, etc.) were complex and were assigned to the cosmic system as seen on the liver of Piacenza.

Further rules: space and time

In the Libri rituales , they relate primarily to the order of space and time and the position of people in it and contain rules on the ritual nature of town planning and town planning, the building of temples and altars, the organization of armies and administrations and generally the type of civic activities in this context. Central is the aspect of the Limitatio , i.e. the limitation of space and time both cosmic and earthly. Just as the sky was divided into sectors, the earth was also divided into astronomical coordinates. Macrocosm and microcosm were thus in an analogous relationship to one another. However, while the sky had a radial structure, this system on earth provided for a multiplication of the axes, which resulted in rectangular units. Human life took place within these fixed geometrical structures and was determined by a seven-year rhythm with a maximum of twelve of these hepdomads . Thus the life of the people, but also of the cities and states themselves, was clearly defined in terms of their duration, based on signs and prodigies that had occurred when the cities were founded, generally extraordinary events that were and also were to be classified as miracles indicated the end. Prodigia (to prod-agere = unexpectedly emerged) basically had a rather negative character within the positive fatum , the fate determined by the gods, which was disturbed by a prodigium and had to be corrected again. This predictability and definition is a peculiarity of the Etruscan religion, especially since it means that the end is clearly recognizable from the beginning.

Ostentaria: interpretation of the miracles

They are included in the last section of the Libri rituales and their importance exceeds that of any other part. There is a list of interpreted miracles that are classified in order to enable analogue interpretations. The first class of this systematics includes all aspects of the cosmos with earthquakes, atmospheric and astronomical phenomena, etc. Animal and plant phenomena are also listed, whereby lucky signs (domestic animals, especially sheep) are distinguished from ominous signs (mice, bees).

Cult of the dead

Marriage sarcophagus from Cerveteri ; around 520 BC Terracotta, Museo Nazionale di Villa Giulia, Rome, typical representation with women as equals
Wall painting in the Leopard Tomb, an underground burial chamber of the Etruscan necropolis of Tarquinia, Italy. The luxurious ideas of the afterlife of the Etruscan upper class are shown.

Archaeologically tangible here is first the change from the usual in the Villanovan cremation to inhumation in the 8th century BC. The reasons and meaning of this transition are unclear, but correspond to the end of the common European Urnfield culture (1250–750) of the Middle Bronze Age . The Etruscan necropolis then provides further information, albeit with considerable social restrictions on the upper class.

We do not know exactly what the original cult of the dead looked like and what concepts of the afterlife it was based on. Like the other areas of religion, it contains, on the one hand, close echoes of Greek ideas with a journey through the underworld - there was even a demon named Charun who fulfilled the function of a ship's captain - and a reception by the ancestors and the underworld gods; on the other hand there are massive demonological traits that are not of Greek origin. The Libri acherontici , which describe this aspect, are also hardly preserved. In any case, there seems to have been no actual ancestor worship in later phases of Etruscan history, although it may have been believed that spirits fill the whole of this world and accompany people, help determine their actions - an originally animistic idea. However, it can be concluded from the representations in the tombs that the Etruscans imagined life in the afterlife to be more of a pleasurable, even luxurious existence. It even seems that the dead souls were able to transform themselves into gods called Animales through the consumption of animal blood by means of certain sacrifices , as described in the lost Acherontic books, which are said to have been under strong Orphic - Pythagorean influence. It is still unclear whether there was a judgment of the dead , as was the case in Egypt . However, there were winged beings who acted as companions of the dead and carried lists of the deeds of the dead that were decisive for their position in the afterlife. However, it is unclear whether this was associated with a distinction between good and bad and the criteria according to which this was made.

There was only one pompous cult of the dead with lavish funeral ceremonies , theatrical performances and gladiatorial games, but within the aristocratic -gentilizistic social order it evidently arose primarily from the need for representation of a few princely families who could afford it and, above all, wanted to display their wealth in such a way desired and thus demonstrated their high social status. This also applies to women, who had a very free status in the home and in public, so that some authors such as Johann Jakob Bachofen even spoke of a matriarchy in the past , although it was more of a matrifocality. However, this says little about the general population's ideas of the afterlife. The representations in the necropolises are consistently this-sided, even orgiastic and contain, as we would say, the pictorial program of the Etruscan educated citizens, in particular the Aeneas legend, with which the legendary ancestry of the Trojans is associated, as later with the Romans . The puzzling existence of the huge necropolis seems to point to a pronounced and visually powerful concept of the afterlife, but there was no mummy cult, so that it was really only a matter of status symbols of wealthy families, as they also occur in other religions without an explicit cult of the dead, for example in Islam where such a thing is strictly forbidden even according to the doctrine of "traditions". However, according to Prayon, this too is uncertain, the furnishings of the tombs could also have had an effect on the otherworldly status of the dead in the belief of the Etruscans.

One motif of such an excessively luxurious design of the necropolis seems to be quite old: the fear that the dead might return to the living. To prevent this from happening, they had to be given an environment in which they wanted to stay and not think of tormenting the living, a very old oriental concept that already prevailed in Mesopotamia . Especially from the 4th century BC. BC, when the Etruscans had lost all political power, their depictions of the afterlife also show horror scenarios, which apparently reflect an increasing fear of the afterlife.

However, in science there is also the opinion that there are parallels to the Egyptian cult of the dead, because the depiction of the living on or on the sarcophagi is one of the best-known features of Etruscan customs for the dead. According to this, as in Egypt, the living would have to make sacrifices to ensure that the dead were well in the hereafter, combined with the idea that the deceased could also return to this world. Accordingly, the grave would not only have been a place of burial, but also a monumental altar. In general, this multiple manifestation, in which the rural with the aristocratic, the Greek with the originally Italian, the local with the later Roman, is particularly typical of the Etruscan religion.

Sacred art and architecture

Remains of Etruscan temples in Fiesole ; one recognizes the typical embedding in nature and landscape.

In the Etruscan religion, nature as such, i.e. groves, rivers, lakes, etc., had a special cultic meaning similar to that of the Celts and Slavs, but in general already in the Neolithic religions . This is concluded from the sometimes very extensive finds of votive offerings in such places, which are seen as a sign of the particularly pronounced piety of the rural population. These are images of gods made of clay or bronze, but also figures that apparently represent the supplicants or simply believers. There are also frequent representations of individual body parts, as can be found in other religions up to our days for healing cults. One concludes from this that these healing cults were probably the result of the numerous mineral and sulfur-containing lakes and partly hot springs in volcanic central Italy, whose healing powers are still used today. For example, at one such lake, Falterona Lake in northern Etruria, which lies at an altitude of 1400 m and is now dry, depots with around 2000 such votive offerings were found, including 500 bronze statuettes.

Elaborate buildings, which are usually temples, were basically not absolutely necessary, at most after the emergence of the Etruscan cities and their specific needs in the context of increasingly stratified societies. The low durability of these temples due to ephemeral building materials also points in this direction of a still very archaic understanding of religion. Oswald Spengler may well be right when he writes:

“The idea of ​​cremation is compatible with a place of worship, not with a cult building. That is why the ancient early religions possessed ... for their customs what is left over when one detaches the building from a building idea: the sacred boundary. The original cult complex is therefore the Etruscan templum , a sacred area marked out by the Augurns only on the ground with an impassable ban mile and the lucky entrance in the east. A templum is created where a cult act is to be performed or where the bearers of state authority, the Senate and the army are located. It only lasts for a fleeting period of use, then the ban is lifted. Perhaps it was not until around 700 that the ancient soul overcame itself to sensualize the line symbolism of this architectural void in a building. The Euclidean feeling was stronger than the aversion to duration. "

- Spengler : The Fall of the West

architecture

Basics
Basic shape of the Etruscan temple
Tombs of the necropolis of Norchia , near Viterbo, carved into the tuff
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen; Etruscan head urn
Etruscan tumulus grave "tomba dei carri" (two chariots were found in it) near Populonia

From the Etruscan temples and religious sanctuaries, apart from archaeological remains, hardly anything has been preserved except for the foundations because of the not very durable construction. Only the necropolises provide information here, but because of the aforementioned restriction to the upper class, they are of limited informative value. The floor plans of the Etruscan house construction give clues, as does the Roman temple architecture, which owes a lot to the highly developed Etruscan architecture, which knew and mastered both the real arched arches and the wall made of hewn blocks. The atrium of the Roman house is also based on this model.

Naturally and relatively early on, Greek art played an essential role in the development of Etruscan art. This is especially true for plastic.

temple

A templum (original meaning: observation circle , from Latin temperare = to span, to measure) was initially nothing more than a space in the open ( locus afferatus ) that was delimited by the augurs using certain formulas and consecrated to a deity for a specific purpose. Even when there were temple buildings, believers probably always gathered in front of the temple. This room opened on only one side, the one the augurs watched. These simple buildings or tents erected later were rectangular, like the places consecrated in the residential buildings. The meaning templum was later transferred to the building itself, which was otherwise called aedes .

The Etruscan temples were small, designed to look like facades and originally did not contain any cult statues in the cella (this is controversial due to the lack of evidence, and the cult statues were initially mostly made of clay and are therefore hardly preserved). However, numerous smaller votive statuettes have been found. That this must have been different later can be seen from the huge booty of allegedly 2,000 statues that M. Fulvius Flaccus sacked the Fanum Voltumnae in 264 BC. Fell into the hands.

The temples themselves were built of wood and fired clay slabs until the late period, stood on a high stone base and supported a flat, broad, gable roof made of bricks with a side length of 30 m or less. Stone seems to have been avoided in temple architecture for religious reasons, apart from the plinth; terracotta was preferred . The floor plan was mostly square and roughly corresponds to the early Greek temples, they were always laid out along a north-south axis. The building types did not differ from the private houses. There was only one flight of stairs on the narrow south side. From the 6th century onwards, terracotta figures can be found as external decorations, friezes, etc.

In its front part, the temple comprised a large pronaos that stretched to the cella wall, and in the rear part a cella building , which was usually divided into three parts by dividing walls, with the middle cella being wider. It is possible that the highest trinity of the Etruscan gods was always worshiped: Uni (Iuno), Tinia (Jupiter) and Menerva (Minerva), whereby Tinia was given more space due to its position in the middle. However, the function of the two flanking rooms is still unclear today and may also be due to the Etruscans' preference for a triad of rooms, as can be found in their homes and necropolises, especially from the 6th century onwards. The Romans also adopted this "Tuscan" pattern, as Vitruvius describes. The pronaos was formed by creating a large vestibule in the extension of the cella walls by means of four rows of columns, the middle rows of which were wider than the main cella. The temple was thus given a continuous central axis and an accentuated directionality oriented towards the cosmic system, which the Greek temple, for example, lacks, as well as an accentuated front side because of the closed rear wall. This basic form also became decisive for the Roman temples. The gable, entablature, ridge, roof edge and entablature were, an Etruscan peculiarity, richly decorated with painted terracotta figures and ornaments, the heavy roof was covered with brightly painted tiles made of the same material that was also used for decorative panels and friezes, and above all probably, to protect the wooden structure from the weather. In addition to the smooth, low and, due to the light wood construction, widely spaced Tuscan columns, there are Doric, Ionic and mixed forms.

That there were altars and sacrifices is known from illustrations on vases etc. and the descriptions of the Libri by Roman authors, whether these altars were in the temples and where, however, is uncertain. Only two have survived that were recently excavated from the rediscovered Fanum Voltumnae. The tables with the grave goods in the graves themselves, however, were probably not altars. The temples of the Etruscans were also like practically all temples of antiquity and the advanced civilizations before them colorful and not as chalky white as the ancient temple ruins or museums present themselves to us today.

Tombs and their art

The Etruscan art that we can develop is above all an art of the dead. In the 8th and 7th centuries BC The ashes were buried in house-shaped urns made of clay or metal or in grave vases with figures. At that time, however, body burial began to prevail in place of cremation. The dead were buried in shaft graves ( fossa graves ), which were closed with a grave crown, for example in the form of a house roof. Later stone circle graves with rich additions became common. There are already richly furnished Tholos graves, domed buildings, as we know them mainly from Mycenae .

From these beginnings, the necropolises later developed as apartment-like tumuli with chambers (the best known are those of Cerveteri ) and burial chambers carved into the soft tuff , the grave goods of which were often imported and point to a wide-ranging trade network, as the allies of the Etruscans did , which entertained the Phoenicians and reached beyond the Alps, where numerous objects from Etruria such as vases etc. have been found. The necropolises vary greatly from city to city. In the inland, for example near Norcia , rock tombs with facades were preferred, further north the facilities were mainly built above ground, Tarquinia, on the other hand, is famous for its particularly rich frescoes. There are also layered cube graves.

These increasingly elaborate burials with sarcophagi made of clay or stone in splendidly designed rooms that imitate the interior of a house, often with a temple facade in front, gradually resulted in an extraordinarily diverse art with plastic, reliefs, wall paintings, vases, jewelry and utensils. which represent several art styles and in which, in addition to luxurious profane, even erotic scenes, Greek sagas and gods appear, including depictions from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . However, many of these objects, especially the vases, are clearly mass imports from Greece or made by Greek artisans in Etruria, as shown by similarities with Greek sanctuaries in the region.

Ultimately, this is how the necropolises came into being outside of the great Etruscan cities, and their content is most likely to give us information today about the religious thoughts of this enigmatic people, at least the thoughts of the ruling class, although simple shaft graves can be found in them alongside the magnificent buildings of the aristocrats. In contrast to the Egyptians, who believed that the soul wandered around freely, the Etruscans evidently saw the tomb as the home of body and soul. There are also similarities to Phoenician burial customs. When it comes to chthonic features, people like to refer to Malta and Sicily .

Of particular importance, not least because of its great effect on the Romans, was the specifically Etruscan sculpture , in particular the sculpture of the clay sarcophagi, on the lid of which the dead, mostly men and women, were depicted side by side as if on a bed, often with an enigmatic one Smile in the face. The lower half of the body is usually only hinted at and appears to have collapsed. In contrast, the upper body straighten up, and the oversized heads are very personal, similar to the busts of the dead on the ashes urn. The Roman art of portraiture has its origins here. The gable figures of the temples represent a special form of sculpture, such as the so-called Apollo von Veji. The best-known example of Etruscan sculpture, the so-called Capitoline Wolf (the boys under her are an ingredient of the Renaissance), which was long believed to be a symbol of Rome in a close connection with Etruscan mythology, has now been proven ( C14 dating ) a product of the Middle Ages.

Religious literature

The tradition, which was already very sparse at the time of the Romans, does not allow any further statements about their spiritual background and their religious imagination, despite the 13,000 short texts handed down between the 8th century BC and the 1st century AD. Century BC Chr. Variant of the Greek script adopted from Cumae is legible and the contents are even largely understood. Most of the texts recorded on sarcophagi, urns, bricks, walls and consecrated offerings contain almost exclusively names and stereotypical formulations, and occasionally contracts. The few surviving Greek and Phoenician bilinguals and the glosses in Latin sources do not lead here either, and the few longer texts are still incomprehensible, so that the mythical-religious background remains puzzling from this point of view.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Battle of Alalia in the English language Wikipedia
  2. a b Gerhard Herm: The Phoenicians. The purple kingdom of antiquity . Econ, Düsseldorf 1973, ISBN 3-430-14452-3 , pp. 274-277 .
  3. Mauro Cristofani: The Etruscans . Mysterious culture in ancient Italy. Belser Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-7630-2330-5 , p. 237 .
  4. Harald Haarmann: History of the Flood . On the trail of the early civilizations. CH Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-49465-X , p. 131-136 .
  5. ^ Friedhelm Prayon: The Etruscans . 4th edition. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-41040-5 , p. 30-34 .
  6. a b c d e Mircea Eliade: History of religious ideas . tape 2 . Herder, Freiburg 1979, ISBN 3-451-05274-1 , p. 116-119 .
  7. ^ A b Golo Mann: Propylaea world history . Ed .: Alfred Heuss. tape 4 , 1986, ISBN 3-549-05731-8 , pp. 40 .
  8. a b Andrew Sherratt: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archeology . Christian Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-88472-035-X , p. 230 f .
  9. Fernand Compte: Myths of the World . 2008, ISBN 978-3-534-20863-0 , pp. 284 f .
  10. Richard Cavendish: Mythology. An illustrated world history of mythical-religious thought . Ed .: Trevor O. Ling. 1981, ISBN 3-88472-061-9 , pp. 192 ff .
  11. ^ Hermann Müller-Karpe: Fundamentals of early human history . tape IV . Theiss, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-8062-1309-7 , p. 276 .
  12. a b Mauro Cristofani: The Etruscans . 1995, ISBN 3-7630-2330-5 , pp. 148 .
  13. Etruscan Links
  14. ^ A b Martin Counihan: An Etruscan Solution to a Celtic Problem . January 23, 2009 ( PDF [accessed January 19, 2016]).
  15. Genetics
  16. ^ Arnold J. Toynbee: Humanity and Mother Earth . Claassen, Hildesheim 1996, ISBN 3-546-00100-1 , p. 212 .
  17. ^ A b c Heinrich Krefeld: Res Romanae . 3. Edition. 1962, p. 61 .
  18. ^ A b Heinrich Krefeld: Res Romanae . 3. Edition. 1962, p. 72 .
  19. Mauro Cristofani: The Etruscans . 1995, ISBN 3-7630-2330-5 , pp. 138 .
  20. ^ Max Weber: Economy and Society . 5th rev. Edition. 1980, ISBN 3-16-147749-9 , pp. 262, 269, 275, 317 .
  21. ^ Friedhelm Prayon: The Etruscans . 2004, ISBN 3-406-41040-5 , pp. 85 .
  22. Horst W. Janson: DuMonts art history of the world . 2nd Edition. 1968, p. 128 .
  23. The Origin of Europe , p. 305.
  24. Johannes Lehmann: The Hittites . 1975, ISBN 3-570-02610-8 , pp. 85-90 .
  25. Mauro Cristofani: The Etruscans . 1995, ISBN 3-7630-2330-5 , pp. 154 f .
  26. Klaus Schmidt: You built the first temple . 2006, ISBN 3-406-53500-3 , pp. 211-214, 220, 257 .
  27. Larissa Bonfante , Judith Swaddling: Etruscan Myths . Austin 2006, p. 74.
  28. a b Mauro Cristofani: The Etruscans . 1995, ISBN 3-7630-2330-5 , pp. 210-212 .
  29. ^ Heinrich Krefeld: Res Romanae . 3. Edition. 1962, p. 162 .
  30. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica , Vol. 19, 793 1b.
  31. Calendar
  32. Etruscan mythology in the English language Wikipedia; Basics of the cult.
  33. Harald Haarmann: History of the Flood . 2003, ISBN 3-406-49465-X , pp. 134 f .
  34. ^ Friedhelm Prayon: The Etruscans . 2004, ISBN 3-406-41040-5 , pp. 64 .
  35. Mircea Eliade: History of Religious Ideas . tape 2 . Herder, Freiburg 1979, ISBN 3-451-05274-1 , p. 118 .
  36. ^ A b Heinrich Krefeld: Res Romanae . 3. Edition. 1962, p. 70 ff .
  37. Golo Mann: Propylaea World History . Ed .: Alfred Heuss. tape 4 , 1986, ISBN 3-549-05731-8 , pp. 52-54 .
  38. ^ Heinrich Krefeld: Res Romanae . 3. Edition. 1962, p. 13 .
  39. priest
  40. Nymph Vegoia
  41. Haruspices
  42. ^ Friedhelm Prayon: The Etruscans . 2004, ISBN 3-406-41040-5 , pp. 72 .
  43. ^ Cremation
  44. ^ Friedhelm Prayon: The Etruscans . 2004, ISBN 3-406-41040-5 , pp. 81 .
  45. ^ Gentile in the English language Wikipedia
  46. ^ Friedhelm Prayon: The Etruscans . 2004, ISBN 3-406-41040-5 , pp. 82 f .
  47. Harald Haarmann: History of the Flood . 2003, ISBN 3-406-49465-X , pp. 133 .
  48. Klaus Schmidt: You built the first temple . 2006, ISBN 3-406-53500-3 , pp. 190-226 .
  49. Julien Ries: Origin of Religions . 1993, ISBN 3-629-00078-9 , pp. 62-65 .
  50. ^ Friedhelm Prayon: The Etruscans . 2004, ISBN 3-406-41040-5 , pp. 77 f .
  51. Oswald Spengler: The fall of the occident . 1983, ISBN 3-406-02531-5 , pp. 237 .
  52. Horst W. Janson: DuMonts art history of the world . 2nd Edition. 1968, p. 126 .
  53. ^ Friedhelm Prayon: The Etruscans . 2004, ISBN 3-406-41040-5 , pp. 88 .
  54. a b Christoph Wetzel (Ed.): Belser Stilgeschichte . tape 1 , no. 2 , 1999, ISBN 3-7630-2040-3 , pp. 201 .
  55. Grave types
  56. Capitoline Wolf: Dating. Matthias Schulz: Dizziness at the furnace . In: Der Spiegel . No. 47 , 2011, p. 160 ff . ( online ).