Kalchas mirror
The Kalchas mirror (also Chalchas mirror ) is an Etruscan artifact from the late 5th century BC. It is now in the Museo Gregoriano Etrusco of the Vatican Museums in the Vatican City of Rome . The bronze mirror came from the Etruscan Vulci and shows the Greek seer Kalchas as an Etruscan priest ( Haruspex ) at the liver inspection . The Kalchas mirror is an example of how the Etruscans modified and reinterpreted Greek myths in the visual arts .
description
The mirror is made of bronze , an alloy of copper that was widely used in ancient times. The diameter of the almost circular disc is 14.8 cm. The front was polished, the depicted engraving is on the back. The mirror has a 3.7 cm long base to which a handle was probably attached. Bronze mirrors of this type were made between the 6th and 3rd centuries BC. Made with a main production time in the 4th century BC. Chr.
The man who does the liver inspection is winged and has a beard. A loose sheet covers the hips, left shoulder and left arm. He is bent over and his eyes are on the liver he is holding in his left hand. The man seems to want to bring his right hand to the liver in order to feel it. The left foot is raised on a rock.
In front of him on the table on the right edge of the picture lies a knife or another piece of gut. It could be a lung with a trachea . Behind him on the left side of the picture is a jug . The scene is framed by two strong ivy tendrils with three-lobed leaves and fruits.
inscription
On the right side Etruscan characters are incised obliquely from top to bottom. Reading is therefore from left to right, which does not correspond to the other writing habits of the Etruscans, who arranged their letters mirror-inverted and from right to left. The inscription refers to the person depicted as CHALCHAS, Etruscan for Kalchas.
Kalchas was after the Iliad of Homer , the official seers of the Greeks during the Trojan War . He had received from Apollo the gift of interpreting the flight of birds, a divination discipline that was also practiced by the Etruscans.
interpretation
With the Etruscans only one priest ( haruspex ) was authorized to conduct a liver examination. The illustration therefore shows an older haruspex bending forward to examine the liver of a sacrificed animal in order to be able to recognize the will of the gods. His left foot rests on a rock. This posture, which the priest also adopts on the Tarchon mirror , seems to have been of great importance for the ritual. Presumably the priest believed he was coming into contact with the forces of nature and the underworld. During the mantic assessment, the sheep's liver was apparently held in the left hand and felt with the right, as the Tarchon mirror shows. The sacrificial knife and the beaked jug were probably also part of the ritual. Jugs of this type have been found in Etruria since the first half of the 5th century BC. Chr.
The legendary seer Kalchas was evidently highly regarded by the Etruscans as well. The viewing of the liver itself is transferred to a mythical level by the winged seer . But it is also possible that Kalchas should not be represented as a person, but his name is given generically for seers. The wings then symbolize the function of the divination priest as a mediator between the earthly world and the transcendent .
literature
- Ulrike Fischer-Graf: Mirror workshops in Vulci (= archaeological research. 8). Gebrüder Mann, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3786112487 , pp. 42-44.
- Nancy Thomson de Grummond (Ed.): A Guide to Etruscan mirrors. Archaeological News, Tallahassee FL 1982, ISBN 0943254000 , p. 110.
- Nancy Thomson de Grummond: Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA 2006, ISBN 9781931707862 , pp. 30-32.
- Friedhelm Prayon : The Etruscans. Concepts of the afterlife and ancestral cult. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2006, ISBN 3805336195 , p. 9.
