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Etruscan Medusa urn contains vases, not ashes
An Etruscan cinerary urn carved with a high-relief face of Medusa has been revealed to contain no ashes or bones as expected, but rather three terracotta vessels. The vessels, two handled jugs and one cup, are simple and undecorated.
The urn is part of the collection of the Palazzone Necropolis, and while it was discovered in the 19th century, it is only now being thoroughly studied. The head of the gorgon was a powerful apotropaic symbol in Etruscan and Roman iconography. Her fearsome face warded off evil to protect the deceased, and the larger tomb that contained the urn, in this case the hypogeum tomb of the Acsi family.
The fact that a finely-carved, expensive urn was selected for the burial of three plain vessels instead of human remains suggests they may have been a symbolic burial, a ritual performed when the actual body of the deceased was lost or had to be buried far from home. The urn and its contents date to the 3rd century B.C., around the time the hypogeum was carved, so it’s also possible that they served a ritual function connected to the opening of the tomb.
The Necropolis Palazzone Necropolis is located in a modern suburb of Perugia, just four miles out of town. It was the burial ground of a settlement overlooking the Tiber Valley, in active use during the Hellenistic Era (3rd-1st century B.C.), although five tombs from the Archaic Era (late 6th, early 5th century B.C.) have been identified. More than 200 rock-carved chamber tombs have been unearthed there, with the grand hypogeum of the wealthy Volumni (Velimna in Etruscan) family standing out as one of the most important extant examples of Hellenistic funerary architecture.
Designed like a home of the period, the Hypogeum of the Volumni had 10 rooms, four flanking each side of the central passage, and two on each side of the main chamber. It had realistic architectural elements, including a pitched roof complete with joists, walls with framed niches and reliefs. The main chamber, dubbed the tablinum or banqueting hall, contains seven spectacular cinerary urns holding the remains of family members. The lids are decorated with realistic portrait sculptures of the deceased reclining and seated, as if they were sharing a family meal for eternity.
The Palazzone Necropolis was discovered in 1840 by accident. The subsequent excavations were amateurish, to put it mildly. The cinerary urns in the chamber tombs were collected in a haphazard fashion, their find sites undocumented, their lids mixed up, and then grouped together by design style and shape. The result was hundreds of urns lined up in rows like an audience in the bleachers in the entrance hall of the Hypogeum of the Volumni, the 19th century bumbling antiquarian’s version of arranging books by color. Some of the urns with notable inscriptions, vivid surviving polychrome decoration, intricate reliefs and sophisticated sculpture are on display in the Antiquarium.
After its discovery, the necropolis became a much-visited destination for young aristocrats in Italy for the Grand Tour, but in the 20th century it was neglected until professional excavations uncovered it again in 1963. Looters kept picking away even as archaeologists worked, and as late as the 1980s urns from the necropolis were turning up on the black market.
This summer, the necropolis museum embarked on a comprehensive program of restoration, study and relocation. In July, the Hypogeum was closed to the public and all the urns were removed to the storage facilities of the Antiquarium (the on-site museum). There conservators have begun to clean, restore and examine each urn and each lid, reviving long-faded remnants of polychrome point, rediscovering urns that had been recorded long ago but placed with the wrong lid and thought lost and looking inside some of for the first time since their discovery, as is the case with the Medusa urn.
The urn is now being conserved, while the vessels will be subjected to scientific analyses including materials and organic residue testing. Archaeologists hope to determine what the vessels may have contained, if they were used for food and drink offerings, if they contained ashes, etc. When conservation and analysis is complete, the Medusa urn and its terracotta vessels will be exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum of Umbria.
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