Stele of Avele Feluske

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Stele of Avele Feluske from the late 7th century BC. Chr.

The stele of Avele Feluske is an Etruscan tomb and dates from the late 7th century BC. The stele marks the burial place of a warrior named Avele Feluske. The artifact is one because of the inscription and the depicted double ax of the most important finds from the Etruscan early days.

The stele

The roughly cuboid stele made of sandstone is 1.0 meters high and 0.6 meters wide. On the front of the stele, the figure of a warrior armed in the Greek style is engraved in the sandstone . The technology used can also be found in a similar form on Cretan artifacts from this period. The warrior wears a Corinthian helmet on his head and obviously holds a large shield with a rosette emblem in his left hand. The entire left arm is covered by the shield. In his right hand the warrior holds a double ax, which is not part of the classic armament of a Greek hoplite . Rather, it represents a symbol of power for the exercise of military and perhaps also judicial authority. The figure is surrounded by an almost rectangular double frame, which is filled with an inscription on three sides. The upper part of the frame, on the other hand, contains a zigzag pattern . The lower section of the stele was likely to have been in the ground at the time it was erected, so that only the framed part of the stele could be seen.

Necropolis near Vetulonia

The stele was discovered in the late 19th century in the Etruscan necropolis near Vetulonia in the Tuscan community of Castiglione della Pescaia . The stele was transported to the National Archaeological Museum in Florence . In 2004 the artifact was brought back to Vetulonia near the place where it was found and has been exhibited in the Museo Civico Archeologico Isidoro Falchi since 2005. The museum is named after the archaeologist Isidoro Falchi , who discovered the submerged Etruscan city of Vatluna at the end of the 19th century under the medieval settlement of Vetulonia.

The inscription

The inscription is in Etruscan letters in the archaic style of the late 7th century BC. Written without separation of the individual words and is divided into two sections. In the first part, the stele names its owner and his parents. In the second part, the tomb indicates its donor.

[MI A] VELEŚ FELUSKEŚ TUŚNUTA [LA] [...] PANALAŚ
I (am the property) of Avele Feluske, (son of) Tusnute (and ...) Panalas.
MINI MULUVANEKE HIRUMINA PHERSNA [LAŚ]
Hirumina Phersnalas donated me.

The actual first name of the deceased is not entirely clear because the first letters have not been preserved. In recent research, the position is also taken that his first name was AUVELE. Due to the restricted legibility, AVILE also seems possible as a first name. The gentile name FELUSKE could indicate that the deceased came from the Falisker settlement area , which included the city of Falerii and a considerable part of the surrounding area. The Faliskers were culturally closely related to the Sabines .

Etruscan settlement and influence area

The use of first names and gentile names of the deceased was still unusual at that time and emphasized the social position of the deceased. The inscription also gives the names of his parents and is one of the oldest, in which the ancestors of the deceased are listed. Apparently, the father's first name was TUŚNUTE, the mother's name is unclear. The gentile name PHERSNALAŚ or PHERSNACHS of the founder probably refers to the Etruscan place Phersna ( Perugia ), which belonged to the League of Twelve Cities . The founder or his ancestors could come from this place.

The gentile name FELUSKE has the earliest use of the Etruscan letter in the form of an 8 for an F sound. The Etruscans adopted the character 8 from the Lydian script . The letter in the form of a mirror-inverted F, which is transcribed with V , on the other hand, was pronounced like a W. The letter M in the inscription corresponds to the Phoenician letter Sadéh or Zade and probably stands for a Sch sound. This letter, which is transcribed as Ś, was mainly used in northern Etruria.

background

Chamber grave from the late 7th century BC Near Vetulonia

From around 700 BC The Etruscan elites built chamber tombs for the burial of family members. These tombs usually consisted of underground chambers that had been carved out of the rock, or of above-ground arrangements of stone blocks, each covered with a mound of earth ( tumulus ). Some graves consisted of spatial sequences of several burial chambers. The interior of a house was often imitated in the tombs with furniture carved from stone. Aristocratic tombs of this type became the focus of a cult that was intended to celebrate the history, identity and importance of the family and to honor their founders. In northern Etruria, carved gravestones such as the stele of Avele Feluske were displayed outside the tomb, perhaps on the top of the burial mound. The deceased warrior is probably the founder of a family dynasty for whom this stele was erected as a homage .

Vetulonia (Etruscan Vatluna or Vetluna) was from the 8th to 6th century BC. An important Etruscan metropolis and belonged to the League of Twelve Cities. The trade contacts reached in the west over the Tyrrhenian Sea to Sardinia and in the south to Rome . The ax depicted on the stele already had a political and religious character in the Mediterranean cultures of Crete and Sardinia. The Mediterranean cultural currents brought the double ax as an attribute of power to archaic Etruria, where the ax became a weapon and a symbol of the leader. In addition, the ax could also symbolize judicial authority and religious power, since it was possibly also used in acts of sacrifice.

Roman lictor with a bundle of rods and hatchet

The Romans inherited numerous cultural achievements from the Etruscans, including many ceremonial customs and external attributes of rulership. These include the scepter , the embroidered toga (toga praetexta), a ruler's chair (sella curulis) and a bundle of rods ( fascis ) with an ax (securis), which have been a symbol of power since the beginning of Etruscan history. In the necropolis of Vetulonia such a bundle of rods was found on a smaller scale as a votive offering . The artifact is made of iron and dates from the 7th century BC. The attached hatchet is a double ax. The ancient authors also describe the Fasces as specifically Etruscan. According to Silius Italicus , a poet from the time of the Flavians , the bundle of rods with hatchet was developed in the Etruscan Vetulonia. The stele of Avele Feluske thus reflects the emergence of the Fasces as a symbol of power in ancient Italy.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum CIE 5213; Testimonia Linguae Etruscae TLE 2 363.
  2. ↑ Silius Italicus, Punica VIII, 483 ff.

See also

literature

Web links

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