Is this hollow bronze boy, dug from the ruins of Tarquinia in 1770, really Tages, the underground god who sprang up as a newborn babe from a freshly plowed furrow before the startled eyes of the plowman? More startling still, the infant before him had the face of a wise old man! The plowman yelled for everybody to come see this prodigy, and when they all circled around, dumbfounded, the boy sat down and looked up at them, just as you see him here, drawing diagrams in the dirt and explaining the secrets of haruspicy (i.e. how to foretell the future by reading its signs in livers and lightning).

Then, sinking back into the earth, he disappeared, never to be seen again.

Until then Tarquin, the plowman, and his people, had been simple farmers. Now, armed with divine knowledge, they built a city, Tarquinia, and became civilized.

For generations they passed on Tages' secrets by word of mouth, until their priests, their haruspices, wrote them down in a dozen books, the Books of Tages. Those books, and others, are lost. All but one: the Mummy Scroll or Linen Book of Zagreb. May a magical childlike Tages rise up to teach us how to read it!

Now, can anyone read, or tell us, what is written on the bronze boy's broken-off arm? Reading from the top line down, and from right to left, might get you this:

PAS FENVS A IRIS, TeCFISNEeS V, Ce FEDeR FER, ....IN.

At least that's how Mel Copeland, in his "Etruscan Phrases" (online), reads it. He then translates:

"Peace we bring to Iris. You shall go to protect, to truly forbid ...."

Which, if anywhere near right, means someone dedicated the bronze boy to Iris, the winged rainbow messenger-girl of the gods, to ask protection from evil.

To see the letters for yourself, you can visit the Vatican's Etruscan Museum in Rome. or go, as I did, to its website, Museo Gregoriano and click on the Putto Carrara image.

You'll get the image enlarged, and, oddly, browned, as if washed with acid to remove from the bronze its green patina of age. Though cast in the lost-wax process, this small (about 10 " high) bronze was cast in separate parts(arms, legs, torso, head, etc.), then welded together.If the welds had held, he would probably not have lost his arm.