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An Etruscan Cippus in the Ashmolean Museum1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 August 2013
Extract
In 1933 the Moyses Hall Museum at Bury St. Edmunds was reorganised to deal with local history. Its Committee decided to dispose of much material from abroad, and the cippus here discussed was purchased by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. There is no record of its previous history.
I. Description of the Cippus
The cippus (Museum number 1933,1946) consists of the upper half of a rectangular limestone block with relief carving upon each of its four sides. The top surface, upon which are the marks of a large flat chisel (about 2·0 cm. wide), is between 28·5 and 29·0 cm. square. The block widens slightly below, and its present lower edge measures from 30·5 to 31·0 cm. in width; its height is about 25·0 cm. At a distance varying from 6·2 to 6·4 cm. from the top of the block is the lower edge of a flat moulding 3·0 to 3·5 cm. wide, projecting about 0·5 cm. Above this is a narrower, shallower moulding, whose width is less than 1·0 cm. The block is hollowed out from beneath to 16·5 cm. from the present lower edge. The walls vary from 3·0 to 5·0 cm. in thickness, and, whereas the inner vertical surfaces are smooth, the inner horizontal surface has the rough marks of a punch. The preservation of the lower half of the block is inferior to that of the upper, and at each corner, just above the lower edge of the cipppus, there is the slanting cut of a saw for a few centimetres into the stone.
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- Copyright © British School at Rome 1960
References
2 The most comprehensive work on cippi is Paribeni, E., ‘I Rilievi Chiusini Arcaici,’ Studi Etruschi, xii, 1938, pp. 57–139Google Scholar, and xiii, 1939, pp. 179–202. In the first part he catalogues 173 cippi, of which the Oxford cippus is not one; in the second he discusses them generally.
3 Cf. the discussion of cippus D 16 in the Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities of the British Museum, vol. I, part 2.
4 Cf. the similar courting gesture often found in Greek vase-painting.
5 A good example of this outline in stone is the stele of a young athlete, found on Nisyros and now in the Ottoman Museum at Istanbul. Another interesting comparison is the Treasury of the Siphnians at Delphi, where a thin red line was used to distinguish blue helmets from a blue background.
6 Beazley, J. D., Etruscan Vase-Painting, Oxford, 1947, p. viGoogle Scholar.
7 Santangelo, M., ‘Idrie Ceretane’ in Enciclopedia dell'Arte Antica, Rome, 1959Google Scholar.
8 C.V.A. Louvre, IX, Group III FA, E 697, pls. 1 and 3.
9 Ibid., E 699, pls. 5 and 6.
10 P. Ducati, Pontische Vasen, 1932. Also Beazley, op. cit., p. 12.
11 Ducati, op. cit., pl. 1.
12 Ibid., pl. 20.
13 B 64 (Pourtalès Collection). For these vases, see Beazley, op. cit., pp. 12–15.
14 Bloch, R., L'Art et la Civilisation Etrusques, Paris, 1955, p. 78Google Scholar.
15 Paribeni, , op. cit., xii, p. 57Google Scholar.
16 G. Q. Giglioli, L'Arte Etrusca, 1935, pl. CXLIII–IV.
17 Paribeni, op. cit., no. 78, pl. XXII.
18 Ibid., no. 77, pl. XXI.
19 Ibid., no. 31, pl. XIV.
20 Rumpf, A., Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: Katalog der Etruskischen Skulpturen, Berlin, 1928, pls. 21 and 22Google Scholar.