This is the façade of an Etruscan Funerary Urn, now found in Florence, Italy. Etruscans flourished in Italy for centuries before being assimilated by the Romans around 500 B.C.E. Even after that, though, they retained many of their traditions.

They cremated their dead and buried the ashes in these funerary urns. The urns were often put into tombs that survive today, as at Cerveteri, Italy. The urn in the picture is carved from alabaster. Other urns are carved in marble, or made from terracotta. Some of them retain the original paint. There is a nice selection on this page. The typical urn has a lid and a box, like this one at the Archeological Museum in Marseilles. The lid has a reclining figure propped on one elbow and partially sitting, as at a banquet. On most urns, which are small, there are no legs, and the lower part of the body trails off under a sheet. The face isn’t a likeness of the dead, just a person.

Some of the tombs are big earthen domes, each with a hole at the top that goes down into the tomb area. The urns were placed in the tombs, along with other odds and ends. On feast days, the living visited there dead with picnics. They offered a drink and a bite to their dead through the hole in the dome. That may explain why the figure on the lid appears to be at a banquet.

The box is decorated with one of a number of themes. The one above depicts the trip of the dead person to the underworld, riding a horse, and accompanied by family and servants and a horse-drawn cart to carry the things needed in the afterlife. The details in this carving are wonderful. The wagon cover is decorated, the wheels and the other figures are separated from the background, the figure on the left has a protective hand on the little guy as he steps across the gap, the boy on the right is “helping”. The faces are accurate, and each is given a bit of individuality, even though this was more of a business than a purely artistic expression. The animals are particularly well done, all muscle and with sharply drawn faces.

We once went to Volterra to visit one of the major Etruscan museums, on one of the more terrifying Italian back roads. Shortly after we entered, there was a thunderstorm, which gave us a real incentive to look much more closely. There was a British couple stuck as we were, and to while away the storm we played the game of trying to figure out the story on the box. We identified a number of stories from the Odyssey, the Iliad, and other Greek myths.

Among the decorations, one is noticeable. There are angels, human figures with large wings. The two figures on the left on this urn appear to have wings. This one appears to show an angel riding on a sea monster. This excellent site has a brief history, and pictures of tombs, possibly at Cerveteri, Italy. One of the pictures shows an angel painted on the wall of a tomb, along with a Roman demon.

The Etruscans had a Pantheistic religion; they believed that the divine is present in all things. Their afterlife would be like their world, so the burial customs begin to make sense. Sharing life with their dead is a charming and completely understandable custom.