Stele of Larth Ninie
The stele of Larth Ninie is an Etruscan tomb from the 6th century BC. The stele that marked the burial place of a person named Larth Ninie was discovered in Fiesole and is now in the Casa Buonarroti in Florence .
The stele
The stele made of sandstone is 138 cm high and 41 cm wide. The thickness of the stone is 9 cm at the top in the arch and 19 cm at the bottom in the base. On the front of the stele an armed man is carved out of the sandstone so that he stands out from the background as a relief . The massive figure is shown in profile with body and face to the left. The man is armed with a lance in his right hand and a small ax in his left. His eyes are shown almond-shaped. His hair , which falls over his shoulders, is arranged in a wavy Ionic style. It is very likely the tomb of a leader of a gens , represented with the symbols of his rank.
The stele has the shape of a cuboid with a curved top and rounded lower corners. The broad base of the stele is likely to have been in the ground at the time of erection. The stone monument seems to be based on models of Syrophoenician and Anatolian origins brought to Etruria by Ionic craftsmen . In addition, the style shows Ionic influences, which can be seen in the shapes of the relief and in the representation. The stele is dated to about 550 BC. Dated.
The stele is the oldest in a series of such tombs from the immediate vicinity. They all seem to have come from a workshop that used local materials. There are also references to the stele of Avile Tite from Volterra, as shown in particular by the armament and the posture with the strongly arched chest. The unusually shaped ax is, however, unique and refers to non-Etruscan influences, perhaps to neighboring peoples from Liguria.
The stele was probably discovered near Fiesole (Etruscan Vipsul ) before 1650 and brought to the Casa Buonarroti in Florence. Filippo Buonarroti (1661–1733), a great-great-nephew of Michelangelo Buonarroti , noted in 1726 that the stele had been inserted into the courtyard wall of the house by his ancestors. In 1882 the stone was brought to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Florence. Since 1965 the stele has been back in the Casa Buonarroti, which is now a museum.
The inscription
The inscription is in Etruscan letters from right to left in the North Etruscan style from the middle of the 6th century BC. Written in BC. The stele names its owner:
- LARTHIA NINIEŚ
- (I am the property of) the Larth Ninie
The letter in the form of a circle with a point in the middle, which is transcribed with TH , comes from the Greek theta and was pronounced like an aspirated T. The letter M at the left end of 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.
LARTHIA NINIEŚ is the genitive form of the deceased's name with Larth as the first name and Ninie as the gentile name . The naming mode, in which the first name is supplemented by a name of the origin, emerged about a century earlier. In contrast to other inscriptions from this period, no donor of the stele is given here.
See also
literature
- Luisa Banti : Etruscan Cities and Their Culture. University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles 1973, ISBN 0520019105 , pp. 159-160.
- Giuliano Bonfante , Larissa Bonfante : The Etruscan Language. An Introduction. 2nd Edition. Manchester University Press, Manchester / New York 2002, ISBN 0719055407 , pp. 23, 142-143.
Web links
- Funerary stele. In: Casa Buonarotti. Retrieved January 2, 2020 .