Valuable artifacts dating from the 3rd century BC were recovered by Italian authorities from a looted Etruscan necropolis in Umbria, at Città della Pieve, located 150 km north of Rome. “The police seized the treasure found with two entrepreneurs who had unearthed Etruscan burial chambers during excavations on land belonging to them”said the chief prosecutor of Perugia, Raffaele Cantone, reports Le Figaro.
The treasure, estimated at 8 million euros by the Italian police, consists of 8 urns decorated with mythological motifs, two sarcophagi, one of which contains the complete skeleton of a woman of around 40 years old, as well as objects beauty treatments such as a bronze mirror and a perfume bottle. These artifacts have been attributed to an influential Etruscan clan that lived between 300 and 100 BC: the Pulfna clan.
THE Tombarolian Italian term for Etruscan tomb robbers, came to the attention of authorities for their recklessness after posting photos of some looted objects on Facebook with the aim of selling them. “They had nothing to do with the world of experienced grave robbers” and were “clumsy” And “amateurs” in their way of accessing the black market for looted works of art, said the prosecutor. Both men are now accused of “theft and trafficking in stolen goods” and risk prison sentences of up to 10 years, says Annamaria Greco, the prosecutor who led the investigation.
It was undoubtedly the discovery in 2015 of an intact tomb in the same necropolis of Città della Pieve – the second inviolate Etruscan tomb found after that of Tarquina in 2013 – which attracted the attention of criminals to this site, until there far from the usual looting areas.
The discovery of these artifacts, in particular two new sarcophagi, is valuable and provides new pieces that will enrich the research carried out in recent years on the Etruscans. The origin of this people, who flourished in central Italy during the Iron Age (800-50 BC), considered pre-Roman, has always been uncertain, with scientists casting doubt on the writings of some ancient authors who associated them with Turkish ancestry. Since 2021, DNA analyzes carried out by the geneticist Johannes Krause, director of the Max Planck Institute, from individuals taken from archaeological sites, are more in line with the writings of the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (60 -7 AD), rejecting the hypothesis of a foreign origin.
