Room II.
Case A.
No. 5. A Medusa’s head in terra-cotta; exquisite and of unusually careful workmanship. This head was probably one of those plaques or tablets which were put up by the Etruscans over the lintel of their house-doors to keep away the evil spirits. The Medusa is commonly used in this way, and we find her constantly in tombs and other places. Her face is usually calm, and often lovely, though in this instance it is calculated to strike terror, as well as admiration, into the mind of any witch or evil spirit. Beside it are two tablets of the same sort, but much coarser in treatment and design, and apparently worked under Egyptian influences.
No. 12. Some charming pieces of Etruscan glass; small tear and balsam bottles; also some larger bottles, square in form. These latter were probably used for medicines. Their chief interest lies in the fact that they bear the stamp of their Etruscan makers.
No. 6. A row of terra-cotta pateræ, such as the dead hold in their hands on tombs.
No. 9. A plateful of little glass balls, which shine like handfuls of the most lustrous emeralds and opals in the dim light of the Museum. These were used as counters by the Etruscans in their games of dice, and it is thought that they were put into the graves of habitual gamblers, so that the soul of the dead man, during its passage to eternity, should not be denied the consolation of its favourite diversion.
No. 27. Some beautiful fragments of feet, heads, and arms. It has been supposed that the Etruscans often made whole statues of wood or of some such cheap material, only giving to the extremities the careful work required by terra-cotta. Hence these apparently disconnected relics.
Cases B. and C.
Most of the objects in this case came from Chiusi and are made of the black ware called bucchero. Some are Etruscan, some of an even earlier origin. All along the top of the case are some quite simple cinerary urns of a different form to the vases inside the cases, which latter were designed more for decoration in rich men’s houses.
No. 5. Two beautiful trays or toilet tables belonging to the Etruscan ladies. Looking at these one seems to understand the elaborate wigs on the heads of those ladies who smile upon the tops of their sarcophagi. Several objects in Case D. explain them further.
No. 4. A lovely line of graceful vases, good illustrations of the imitative power of the Etruscans. Not only the forms, but even the shining texture of the Grecian bronze, is here copied in bucchero.
No. 8. These vases are the work of those people who preceded the Etruscans in Umbria. The forms are simple, the patterns purely geometrical.
Case D
Nos. 2, 3. Some quite common earthenware urns for the ashes of the poor who could neither afford tombs nor inscriptions. On one or two of these a name is scratched in rough black paint, probably with the finger, and as a last token to the dead from someone who had loved him.
No. 7. Some earthenware bottles corresponding to the beautiful glass ones in Case A: those in earthenware were used for the tombs of the poor.
Room III.
Sarcophagi.
This room has a selection of the most interesting Sarcophagi in the museum. The corridors outside, and the staircase also, are filled with other specimens of more or less interest.
There is always a certain monotony in a collection of Etruscan tombs or sarcophagi, and the ordinary person wearies easily of the recumbent figures which lie so stolidly in effigy upon the lids of their own burial urns, with an expression of comfortable contentment on their somewhat unexciting and uneventful countenances. They seem, one and all of them, like persons who have fallen asleep on peaceful days with easy consciences,—persons whose hope of heaven is as slight as their fear of hell. They are, most of them, middle-aged, the pathos of old age, the hope and the passion of youth, is lacking in their faces. Their charm is to be sought in their extreme repose.
There are several forms of tombs in the Perugian collection, that with the recumbent figures on the lid being probably the one used by the richer and more prosperous families. With few exceptions the work on the sarcophagi is rather coarse—a singular and persistent monotony of subject is displayed. The simpler forms have either a rose or a Medusa on their front panels, the more elaborate are ornamented with subjects from the Greek mythology, which seem to clash at times with the conventional figures on their lids. The story of Iphigenia is a favourite theme for the sarcophagi of women.
On those of men, battles and boar-hunts figure largely, the labours of Hercules too, and fights with the Amazons. It is probable that these cases were kept in stock, and that when one was needed, the order was simply given to add a face, a portrait face of man or woman, to the figure, and sometimes an inscription. Most of the figures hold the familiar pateræ in their hand, others clasp their long and heavy necklaces, some of them carry a flower—a lotus, maybe, or a rose.
There was one quite different form of burial, when the whole body was preserved in a stone sarcophagus. Sometimes the corpse must have first undergone some kind of disintegration in the earth, as, in one or two cases, we find the bones gathered together in a small urn, into which the whole body could never have been pushed. At other times it was stretched full length in its long stone case. Infinitely pathetic is the figure of an Etruscan lady in the corridor. There she lies just as they found her, exposed to the most casual observer, with all the requisites for an exquisite toilet upon the resurrection morning: her hot-water can, her strigil, her looking-glass, her pins, the money to pay her passage across the river to Eternity—nay, even the little metal weights she wore to keep her long straight skirts in order—all laid out carefully beside her, and nothing of the beauty left beyond her white and shining teeth.
Faint traces of colour linger on some of these sarcophagi. Note No. 8. The hair of the Medusa is painted a delicate lilac hue, and the acanthus leaves which encircle it are blue like the sky in spring time.
No. 23. An exception to the usual design of Greek mythology. The defence of a city—dare we say of Perugia—is here depicted. The men are fighting beneath the walls; and in the towers above, a row of valiant ladies are preparing to crush them with large and heavy stones.
No. 30. These much smaller sarcophagi are made of terra cotta and come from Chiusi. In many of them the dead are represented in a new way; they have fallen asleep wrapped in long thin veils which cover the entire figure.