PUSHING BOUNDARIES

When the Etruscans expanded to the south and the vast plains of Campania, they found a land of cultural connections and confrontations, as luxurious grave goods found across the region reveal. An exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples sheds light on these ancient Italians at the frontier. Paolo Giulierini, director of the museum, is our guide.

- Paolo Giulierini

According to the ancient scholar Servius, the city of Capua, in what is now the southern Italian region of Campania, was founded after a hawk or falcon was sighted. The Etruscan word for this augural sign, the hawk or falcon, is capys, and, while we only know this word from Servius’ gloss, its mark can still be seen in the city’s name today. The Etruscans – or Rasenna, as they called themselves – were an ancient, pre-Roman civilisation dating back to c.900 BC. They controlled swathes of central Italy, ancient Etruria, encompassing the modern regions of Tuscany, Lazio, and Umbria. In time, they expanded north beyond Etruria, and also pushed south into the fertile fields of Campania, settling at centres like Capua.

Fine bronze vessels called lebeti, decorated with sculpted figures of warriors, have been found in the tombs of Capua’s necropolis. Examples of these extraordinary objects, testimony to the magnificence of this centre in the Archaic Age (600-480 BC), have been in the British Museum since the 19th century. Also preserved abroad, this time in the museums of Berlin, is an artefact that demonstrates the city’s involvement with the Etruscan religion: the exceptional Tabula Capuana, a religious calendar inscribed – using the Etruscan language – on a terracotta tile.