Vita effimera di un mostro etrusco

Adriano Maggiani

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Abstract

The ivory tablets complex from Comeana (Florence) is an extraordinary treasure of Etruscan "orientalizing" images, whose models are partly to be searched for in the Near East. The present study tries to point out these possible Oriental models and the transmitting vectors.
Two of the fantastic creatures carved in the ivory plaques, an extravagant image of Geryon and a lion headed demon, seem to have their prototypes in Neo-Hittite or Assyrian hybrides. One of them, thanks to the diffusion of the related greek story, is substituted very early in the archaic age by the purely Greek iconography of an armed Geryon; the other, for which a consolidated tradition of legend was lacking, underwent to some formal variations and finally disappeared. […]