Principi Etruschi. Le tombe orientalizzanti di San Paolo a Cerveteri

The Orientalizing tombs In località of San Paolo in Cerveteri , with their extraordinary architectures and sumptuous grave goods, are an important testimony to the wealth and prestige attained in the mid-Tyrrhenian communities by the individuals buried there, and by their families. At the start of the 7th century, the major efforts of the urbane aristocratic class were concentrated on its funerary architecture as a metaphor of its wealth, with the specific intention of exalting its social status. Emerging quite suddenly is the clearly evident phenomenon of attention focused on the tomb, contained almost invariably, at least in Cerveteri, within a tumulus. Though drawing on a funerary typology already in use in Etruria by the end of the Bronze Age, it manifests precisely between the end of the 8th and the early 7th century in its full amplitude, profoundly transformed. At this time, partially resulting from innovative impulses from the Levant and Greece, we witness phenomena connoting radical change in the lifestyle and in the conspicuous, political-celebrative manifestations of the powerful emerging Etruscan aristocracies. The remarkable quality of the planimetric systems adopted for the San Paolo tombs, the first of which dating to ca. 670 or shortly thereafter, the second to ca. 630, entirely constructed of blocks from the pavement upwards, the boldness of their elevations with ogival vaults using techniques that recall Cypriot models, the architectural choices that bespeak familiarity with the execution of complex constructions in ashlar masonry, and the proficiency in structural and constructive solutions for interiors, all attest to the power of clients who did not hesitate to entrust construction of their eternal dwelling places to architects of a certain rank, possibly from far distant locations in the eastern Mediterranean, as the insignia of their newly adopted lifestyle models. The luxuriousness and opulence of the tombs is attested by the largest nucleus of imported pottery ever discovered in an Etruscan tomb, produced in sites throughout the Greek world, both the mainland and colonies, by the exotic materials from the Near East (ivories and ostrich eggs), and by extremely high quality local productions (e.g., an amphora by the Pittore delle Gru, vessels in bucchero, impasto and white-on-red). The grave goods found in the two tombs attest to the adherence to Greek world behavioral models, through the profound understanding they reveal of the epos and the myth. Here, even at so early a date this narrative material was already recycled to serve the celebrative needs of the Cerveteri “princes”, while the affectation of wine and of ceramic vessels referable to its consumption become exemplifications of a ritual – that of the banquet – which constitutes the highest cultural expression of the aristocratic lifestyle, along with the use of writing and the practice of gift-giving.