Bucchero ware drinking-cup (kantharos)
Etruscan, about 600 BC
From Italy
Inscribed with the Etruscan owner's name
This bucchero ware drinking-cup (kantharos) has an
inscription reading mi repesunas aviles, ('I belong to
Avile Repesuna'). Avile, of which the Roman equivalent was Aulus,
was a common Etruscan name, and Repesuna was a clan or family
name.
The inscription is written from right to left, as is normal with
Etruscan writing. Around 13,000 Etruscan inscriptions survive, many
of which can be read. However, very few long texts survive, as they
were written mainly on perishable materials. The inscriptions that
survive on pottery, bronze and stone objects tend to be very brief,
like this one, recording simply the name of an owner, or details of
the deceased on a sarcophagus or cinerary urn (container for the
cremated remains of the dead). These are relatively easy to
understand but the few longer texts that survive present a variety
of problems.
In the seventh and sixth centuries BC, bucchero drinking cups of
this kind were exported all over the Mediterranean and the form was
adopted by the Greeks.
E. Macnamara, Everyday life of the Etruscans (Barsford/Putnams, 1973)
L. Bonfante, 'Etruscan' in Reading the past: ancient writ (London, The British Museum Press, 1990)
J.D. Beazley, Etruscan vase-painting (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1947)
E. Macnamara, The Etruscans-1 (London, The British Museum Press, 1990)