, known as the Etruscan room, in which the

ETRUSCAN VASES

are arranged. These are a series of earthen vases discovered in Italy.
These painted vases are the spoil from the tombs of the ancient
Etruscans. The Etruscans inhabited the northern parts of Italy, and
flourished there in a state of comparative civilisation, when the rest
of the Peninsula, save where the Greeks were busy on its southern
shore, was in a barbarous state. The Etruscan tombs present various
degrees of ornament according to the wealth of their occupant, but in
all of them painted vases of some description are found. It is
maintained by many learned men that these beautiful vases were not a
native manufacture, but were bought by the Etruscans of the Greeks of
Southern Italy, who imported them from the famous potteries of Athens.
The Greek inscriptions on some of these vases, and the Greek subjects
from which the decorations are taken, tend strongly to confirm this
hypothesis. It is, however, altogether a mystery why the Etruscans
surrounded their dead with these vases. They were not used to hold
human bones, nor to contain food for the deceased; but that the
Etruscans held them in high estimation as sepulchral ornaments is
certain from the fact that they are found universally in their tombs,
the finer and more elaborate in the sepulchres of the rich, and the
coarser and plainer kinds in the graves of the poor. The visitor will
do well to walk carefully round this room in which the Etruscan vases
belonging to the Museum are deposited. They are arranged in the
supposed chronological order in which they were manufactured; the
clumsy and coarse ware being placed in the first case, as exhibiting
the dawn of the potter's art, and the more elaborate and
highly-wrought specimens being arranged in regular order of
improvement in the succeeding cases.

The first five cases are filled with clumsy black ware, ornamented in
some cases with figures in relief, and extracted from tombs discovered
on the site of the oldest Etruscan towns, which circumstance has led
antiquaries to allow the Etruscans the honour of having fashioned
these rude specimens of pottery; but as the samples display a higher
degree of skill they refuse to allow the Etruscans the merit of having
improved the clumsiness of their early handiwork. In the sixth and
seventh cases are pale vases with deep red figures, chiefly of animals
upon them, chiefly from Canino and Vulci. The exertions of th