Images

Dancers from the walls of the Etruscan Tomb of the Triclinium, Tarquinia, central Italy. c. 470 BCE.

A musician from the walls of the Etruscan Tomb of the Triclinium, Tarquinia, central Italy. c. 470 BCE.

A dancer figure from the Etruscan Tomb of the Lionesses in Tarquinia, central Italy. 520-510 BCE.

Glazed steatite scarab, clypeus marked, feathered legs, longitudinally pierced, base inscribed with name of Khyan and epithets flanked by scrolls.

Finger-ring comprising a green-blue glazed steatite scarab (clypeus marked, humeral callosities present, feathered legs, pierced longitudinally, base inscribed with a cartouche of Khyan with epithets enclosed within a continuous spiral border...

An Etruscan bronze helmet, 5th century BCE. Discovered at Olympia, it was dedicated there and carries an inscription: 'Hieron, son of Deinomenes, and the Syracusans, from Cumae'. Height: 20 cm. (British Museum, London)

An Etruscan bronze warrior statuette. Populonia, 5th century BCE. Height: 26 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

These two cylinders were commissioned by Gudea of Lagash (c. 2144-2124 BCE) as a literary and historical record of the construction of the temple of Ningirsu. Louvre, Paris

A bronze statue of an Etruscan mother and child in typical dress. 500-450 BCE. (Louvre Museum, Paris)

Venus from Hohle Fels, carved from mammoth ivory in the Late- or Upper Paleolithic Aurignacian period and discovered near Schelklingen, Germany. It has been dated to c. 40,000 to c. 35,000 years old.