ROME, ITALY—Italian police seized an array of third-century b.c. Etruscan artifacts that looters had found on their own land in the Umbrian town of Città della Pieve and had attempted to sell on the black market, according to a report in The Straits Times. Two sarcophagi, eight stone urns carved with Greek mythological scenes, a perfume bottle, and bronze mirrors are among the finds. The urns, some of which were inscribed with the family name Pulfna, were topped by lids featured sculptures of reclining women whose lips and jewelry still preserve traces of paint. In 2015, a farmer in Città della Pieve plowing land near the findspot of the recovered artifacts uncovered a hypogeum that also belonged to the Pulfna family. To read about a noble Etruscan family buried in a necropolis in Vulci, go to "The Tomb of the Silver Hands."
Looted Etruscan Sarcophagi Recovered
News November 22, 2024
SHARE:
Recommended Articles
Artifacts July/August 2024
Etruscan Oil Lamp
(Courtesy Museo dell’Accademia Etrusca e della Città di Cortona; © DeA Picture Library/Art Resource, NY)
Digs & Discoveries May/June 2024
Pompeian Politics
Letter from Vesuvius September/October 2023
Digging on the Dark Side of the Volcano
Survivors of the infamous disaster rebuilt their lives on the ashes of the A.D. 79 eruption
(Courtesy Girolamo Ferdinando De Simone)
(Alamy Stock Photo)
-
Features November/December 2024
The Many Faces of the Kingdom of Shu
Thousands of fantastical bronzes are beginning to reveal the secrets of a legendary Chinese dynasty
Courtesy Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology -
Digs & Discoveries November/December 2024
Egyptian Crocodile Hunt
Courtesy the University of Manchester -
Digs & Discoveries November/December 2024
Monuments to Youth
Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo -
Digs & Discoveries November/December 2024
Nineteenth-Century Booze Cruise
Tomasz Stachura/Baltictech