Lurking on the left wall of a 4th century B.C. tomb, the exceptionally preserved monsters have been unearthed during the ongoing excavation of the Pianacce necropolis in Sarteano, a village 50 miles from Siena, Italy.
"So far we have found some scenes of banquets, snake-like monsters, demons, a hyppocampus and a sarcophagus broken in many fragments, probably by tomb robbers. We are confident to find more art as the digging goes on," archaeologist Alessandra Minetti told Discovery News.
Demonic Charioteer with the Shadow of Death
One of Europe's most mysterious people, the Etruscans forged Italy's most sophisticated civilization before the Romans. They rose from Italian prehistory around 900 B.C. and dominated most of the country for about five centuries.
Yet mystery shrouds their history. First defeated by the Romans in the 4th century B.C., in 90 B.C., after centuries of decline, the Etruscans became Roman citizens. They left no literature to record their culture — few traces of their puzzling, non-Indo-European language survive. Only the richly decorated tombs they left behind provide a glimpse into their world.
"The newly excavated tomb belonged to a rich family, and shows that Sarteano wasn't just a countryside village, but a politically important center," Minetti said.
Vividly colored, the scenes in the tomb reflect a sinister change in the Etruscan concept of death. A fun loving and sensuous people, on the verge of decline they adopted the Greek vision of a demon-infested underworld.
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