tiaras, ear-rings, and necklaces of those vaguely mentioned Etruscans, the parents of Roman civilisation, fragments of whose history have been so recently snatched, as it were, from the obliterating darkness of the past. Modern researches have, in fact, yielded to us a rich harvest of knowledge in the shape of exquisite remains of former phases of civilisation, some of the specimens of the ancient art of the jeweller being as perfect as the day on which they were wrought in those antique workshops which, with the artificers who once made them resound with the busy clink of the hammer and of other tools, whose forms and uses have been so long forgotten.
The disinterment of the long-buried towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, yielded the first rich spoil of relics of ancient art. The great discoveries in Egypt followed. More recently the excavations in Asia, which have brought once more to light the palaces and royal chambers of the kings of Assyria and in Italy, the discovery of the ancient tombs of the Etrurians, have been still more rich in archæological results. In some of these Etruscan sepulchres, the dead who had lain undisturbed perhaps for thirty centuries, were found still wearing almost the aspect of life, and still clothed in the dresses they had worn when living. The bodies—that crumbled on the first rude touch—were still decorated with these gold jewels of the tomb, massive in appearance but thin as gauze, and which were manufactured expressly to replace the more solid ones, which were in some cases removed after the ceremony of interment was over. It is, however, not only these thinly beaten sepulchral jewels which have been recovered. Many of a more solid class have also been found, and gold ornaments of almost every class wrought by the hands of some Etrurian workmen, from five to ten centuries before the Christian era may now be examined in all their original perfection, not only in the Campana Museum, in the fine collection of the Vatican, and several other European collections, but also in the British Museum, where there are several fine specimens of necklaces found in Etruscan tombs.
Among ancient nations, necklaces were worn not only as marriage ornaments, but also by young girls, as proved by one of very graceful workmanship in the Campana collection, which was found upon the body of a girl (apparently of about fourteen years of age) in one of the tombs of Cervetri. It is composed of several plats of gold wire, from the lowest range of which are suspended little gold balls, delicately ornamented, and to the upper band is attached a series of stamped ornaments, imitation tassels, and the leaves of different plants; while from the principal plat descend smaller chains of different lengths, to which are attached alternately elegantly stamped representations of syrens, medusa heads, and leaves of plants, the centre ornament being a Lotus flower. The next specimen is a beautiful Etruscan necklace of an entirely different character, found in excavations made on the site of the ancient Vulci; it is composed principally of Scarabæi (the mystic beetle of the Egyptians), which were evidently used by the Etrurians merely as ornaments, as they bear no hieroglyphic characters. The undersides of those composing this necklace are carved with gracefully executed intaglio designs, such as a biga, or two-horse chariot, with its driver, a warrior armed with the Etruscan lance and buckler, &c. These Scarabæi are mounted in delicate filagree work, and fixed by a gold loop, also of filagree work, to a connecting bond, alternating with pendant gold balls, which are covered with a profusion of exquisite ornaments, that may literally be termed microscopic; sometimes they are patterns in granulated gold wire, ingeniously laid on; in other instances they are dotted with patterns formed of minute pellets of gold, or minute plaited bands of gold. The clasps for fastening it are composed of two dolphins, in stamped work of spirited design. But that M. Castellani, the celebrated artistic jeweller of Rome, possesses a similar specimen of Etruscan art, this specimen might be considered unique. The close connection of the Etruscans with Egypt is very evident from the style of some of the earliest specimens of their jewellery, which have been executed before the foundation of Rome. Indeed, some of the leading features of their civilisation are stamped with a character which evidently belongs to a period anterior to the rise of civilisation in Greece or Rome. Among other things they evidently conducted their commercial transactions without the aid of coined money, and like many of the ancient conservative nations of the east, did not adopt it even when in daily use among their neighbours. So that in the decorative ornaments of the Etrurians we look upon a kind of art that had its origin, and had reached its perfection long before the classic eras of Greece and Rome.
This necklace is not of the sepulchral class of Etruscan jewellery: it is of the solid make of the jewels of the living, and we cannot look without emotion upon those golden leaflets, and richly matted chains that once lay upon the warm bosom of some young Etrurian girl, whose very name, and race, and language have passed away!
Amber, garnet, and opaque emeralds (the smaragdi and virides gemmæ of Roman writers) are frequently wrought into this Etruscan jewellery, either as amulets, or because certain medicinal virtues were supposed to belong to them. But the “charms” were generally composed of small pieces of polished flint, or some other common stone, such as the one forming the centre ornament of the necklace engraved above (No. 1), which is from one of the specimens in the collection of the British Museum, which were purchased of the Prince of Canino.
The centre ornament is in other cases composed of a small gold bulla, or locket, containing either an amulet or some cabalistic form of invocation to the protective gods. Within such a locket, now in the Campana collection, a piece of sheet silver was found, carefully rolled and folded, on which were eighteen lines of writing, in very ancient Greek characters, mixed with cabalistic signs.
Another curious bulla of this kind, though not containing a cabalistic charm written on leaf silver, has a beautifully executed low relief in gold on its upper surface, representing an infant suckled by a mare, with the figure of a woman