Dentures in terra-cotta, such as the Etruscans used to present to their divinities as votive offerings in order to be cured, or after having been cured of dental maladies.
As to what concerns dental art, everything leads up to the belief that it was practised by the Egyptians and Phœnicians earlier than by the Etruscans, whose civilization, as already hinted, is certainly less ancient. Nevertheless, in comparing the dental appliances found in the Etruscan tombs with the sole authentic dental appliance of Phœnician workmanship known at the present day,[105] we cannot but be struck with the great superiority of the Etruscan appliances. It is therefore probable that the Etruscans, although they had learned the dental art from the Egyptians and Phœnicians, had subsequently carried it to a much higher degree of perfection than it had arrived at in Egypt or in Phœnicia. An analogous fact has come to pass in our own times. Dental art in America, which emanated from the French and English schools, soon took on so vigorous a development as indisputably to acquire first rank.
Before describing in detail the dental appliances found up to now in Etruscan tombs, we will consider a question touching very closely upon the argument which we are treating and which has already been discussed in Professor Deneffe’s book, already cited.
How is it that the dental appliances of the Phœnicians, Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans should have come down to us, notwithstanding cremation?
In the first place, if one reflects that the teeth offer an altogether special resistance to the action of fire, and if one also remembers that gold was the substance employed for the construction of the appliances in question, and that this metal does not melt save at a very high temperature, it no longer appears marvellous if, in many cases at least, the dental appliances should have been able to resist the cremating process.