The Thin and Thankless Dead

Safe behind a wall of glass, she stares out from a shelf in Room 71 of the British Museum. That's the Etruscan Room. Room 71 is a kind of blind extension of the Wolfson Gallery, Room 70 [Things Quite Roman] which flows, without too much fuss, right into Room 72 [Cyprus Was Important, Too]. The upstairs Gallery Rooms don't have inner doors, per se and run one into another like so many wondrous, if sometimes puzzling, gifts set before the King of Arts upon his birthday.

Yes, yes, everything is delightful but the average person's capacity for delightful by the boxcar-full isn't anywhere near boundless. Which would explain the grim faces and forced knee-steps of Those Dragged To A Museum.

Mr. Jurgens: Oh, God, not another room full of pots, Susan.
Mrs. Jurgens: Yes, another room full of pots. Be quiet. There's no pouting allowed in the Etruscan Room.
Mr. Jurgens: That's because the Romans killed them all and stole their lunch money. None left to say boo.

This isn't entirely true, of course. The Romans didn't - or couldn't - kill them all - they Romanized them. This is somewhat akin to being Simonized, except without the messy wax buildup. Some would say it was vice versa - that the rube, scruffy Romans were Etruscanized, and there's certainly a lot to support that theory. Rome's last kings were Etruscans and bequeathed much to their subjects: the Cloaca Maxima, a civil service and the Temple of Jupiter. Still, the Etruscan Tarquin the Proud was kicked out of town and the Romans, having had their fill of kings, went republic.

The Rasna [Etruscans did not call themselves Etruscan just as Nova Scotians don't call themselves Dread Northern Barbarian Cod-eaters] flourished in the nicer parts of pre-Roman Italy and Corsica for a very long time but we know crap all about what they were really like other than they were deeply superstitious about the Gods, threw swell parties and took funerals very, very seriously. Their language was isolate, like Basuqe, and is only now being - albeit very, very slowly - deciphered. I wouldn't hold out much hope of it ever really being fully understood since there aren't any more ancient Rasna around and they did not leave much to work with [except tomb inscriptions, which don't say much more than Here Lies Someone], unlike, say, Norman Mailer. Who died atop a groaning midden of his own printed babbling.

By the time I got to the Etruscan Room, on a rainy, miserable Sunday morning [just like today - blowing storms, spatters, low scud...all the weather of London and none of the charm here], I was ready for a bit of a break. You can only go "wowowowow" so many times before "wowowowow" loses some of its psychic punch. Admittedly, my camera-work wasn't exactly world-class but to be fair it's not always very bright in the Brit and I was in a hurry to see as much of as I could before meeting my wife for lunch, bedazzled and jet-lagged into a kind of shuffling, overloaded-on-antiquities stupor. Europe will do that to a man, if he lets it.

Back to the pot. She's hollow, terra-cotta and looks a lot better than this in person, of course; she's about the height of a standard poodle dog, maybe 8 or 9 inches across at the base. I think she's some sort of huge booze jug but since I took such terrible notes and can barely read the ones that survive from this trip...boy. Who knows? Elaborately painted once, a bit faded now as are these two Etruscan heads [right inset] which sit in the same case. Found in a tomb, etc.

The Etruscans were bibulous old sots and are believed to have introduced grapes to Italy from Arabia somewhere between 1,000 and 900 BC. Their pottery - the ubiquitous amphorae in some abundance, of course, but plenty of other sorts of vases, unguent jars, mixing krater, drinking cups and such - survived them. Their tongue, not so much.

If you think about it, you might want to thank the moody, long-dead Etruscans, quiet in their rattlebone graves now, for that bottle of Chardonnay in your fridge. Without them, it might have been a lot longer time coming.

But I doubt you'll think about it.