AITA, the Etruscan Hades

Author: * Sin UtNapishtim - 14 Posts on this thread out of 23 Posts sitewide.
Date: Mar 31, 2007 - 22:29

Persipne and Aita(Persephone and Hades) Tomb of Orcus II, 2nd c BC.

by Dionysia Xanthippos & Sin Utnapishtim

It seems that only the Etruscans depicted the underworld god Hades, whom they called Aita, as a god or demon with a wolf's head, as seen on one of the ash urns below, or with a wolfskin cap, as seen above, with his snake-crowned queen Phersipnei (Persephone) on a famous wall painting from the tomb of Orcus in Volterra, Chiusi, Italy. Between their heads you can clearly read his name, AITA, even in "backward"-reading Etruscan.

The tomb, and its painting, must have been discovered by the 16th century, for there is a famous drawing of a similar wolf-capped and bearded man's head, formerly attributed to Michelangelo, but now to someone in his "circle." This is either an uncanny coincidence, or the unkown artist himself saw, or was told about, the head before you. Even more uncanny is the statue Michelangelo made for his Etruscanesque Medici Tombs that portrays Lorenzo as "Il Penseroso," brooding beneath a lion's-head helmet.

Nowhere in Homer, or in Greek art, was Hades depicted this way. The old Oxford Companion to Classical Literature says "'The wolf's cap of Hades' worn by Athena In the Iliad" (Book 5, lines 544-5) and by Aita/Hades in Etruscan art, makes its wearers invisible...." But this is badly put. Though Athena dons the "helmet of Hades" to make her invisible, Homer does not call it a "wolf's cap." Nor do we know whether the Etruscans thought it made Hades invisible.

Perhaps the Etruscans identified the Greek god with an ancient wolf or wolf-man that they worshipped?

Chest of an ash urn with Aita about to lead away a haruspex to Hades. From Chiusi, 150-100 BC. Painted terra-cotta. Berlin, National Museum. Image from Sybille Haynes, Etruscan Civilization, fig 269.

On this ash urn from the same period we again see a humanized Aita, bearded and fur-capped, about to lead away into the Underworld the man whose ashes were inside the box, and whose spirit is seen on the outside passing through the portal to the world beyond. He wears a funny-looking pointed metal cap, like the funnel on the Tin Woodman in the Wizard of Oz, to show he was a haruspex, a wizard and seer who could fortell the future by reading patterns in the guts of animals or blasts of thunder and bolts of lightning. Now he takes his last farewell from his pretty young wife and baby.

Above them are two bare-breasted, torch-bearing female demons or "vanths" with snakes in their hair like Phersnipnei in the tomb painting. Beside the door is a short-skirted female who could be Culsu, or Vanth herself, guarding the door. One of the overhead vanths points her torch down toward the mother and child. Are they being threatened with death, or just driven off, back to the realm of the living?

Meanwhile, Aita, Lord of the Dead, strides toward the dead man to take him into the Underworld. He wears a beard and a fur cap, probably a wolfskin cap like that worn by Aita in the tomb painting above. On the right, the death demon Charun, wearing an animal hide, waits with his hammer and a paddle to deal the dead man the coup de grace, while above him a dog-headed demon waits to devour him. Like Cerberus, the dog with three heads that guarded the Greek Hades, wild dogs would scavenge ancient graves and tombs to dig up and gnaw the flesh and bones of the dead.

The Conjuring of Oita. A relief carved on a 2nd c BC ash urn from Perugia, in the Museo Etrusco Romano at Perugia. Drawing from Otto Volcano, Die Etrusker.

Even more puzzling is this scene on an Etruscan ash urn from the same period, now in a museum in Perugia.

What in Hades is going on here?

It seems the Wolf Man from Hell is being conjured up by force by a group of Etruscan soldiers. But why? What is it they want from him?

Of no help in answering this question is the Etruscan writing across the top edge of the urn, which reads "backwards," from right to left. This is merely the name of the person whose ashes it held.

Hardly more helpful is this blurb from the Superintendent of the Archeological Institute of Umbria: "A man with a wolf’s head who comes out of a well, creating utter confusion among a group of warriors, in the presence of a female demon...."

"We need no ghost come from the grave to tell us this, Horatio." (Hamlet) So let us venture out on our own:

The "female demon" is Vanth, the Etruscan angel of death (or a "vanth," one of her look-alikes), who is present when someone is about to die or be killed so that she can lead him or her into the Underworld.

Here's a rough translation from the German of Oscar Vacano's description (with our comments in square brackets):

"Relief-decorated stone urns of the third and second century BC from Volterra, Chiusi and Perugia show the well-like verge of such an underworld pit, from which rises the torso of a wolf-headed monster. A bearded man with drawn sword stands behind him. He empties out the offering dish [called a "patera"; but we do not see it; perhaps it was lost?] over the monster that struck down with a powerful paw one of the armed young men, who try to hold him in check. [The stricken soldier is not, we think, the one on the ground at right, who is still trying to ward off a blow, but the one bent over the pit or well on the left. Is he peering down into it through a small opening? Or is he dying and emptying his soul into it?] Another soldier [standing, and about to hit Aita with a club or sword,] strains to haul the monster up from the depths with a heavy leash [the upper half of which has been broken off], which is hooked around the monster's neck. The winged Vanth in the background points to mischief and calamity." (Die Etrusker. Werden und Geistige Welt. Stuttgart, W. Kohlhammer, 1951.)

According to an old legend the underworld monster Oita (also called Volta) rose up from the earth around the city of Volsinii and threatened to destroy it, until Lars Porsenna, king of Chiusi, called down a thunderbolt upon him. (Pliny, Natural History, XI, 140.) Apparently King Porsenna was also a haruspex, or acting on the advice of one.

Is it possible that the wolf-headed monster Oita was the ancient name and form of Aita, the Etruscan Lord of Hades?

The conjuring of underworld and celestial powers was taught by the Disciplina Etrusca - the bible and handbook of the haruspices. And the technical term for what seems to be taking place on this urn is "necromancy," the magical conjuring up of the spirits of the dead. The most famous case of necromancy is the biblical story of the so-called "Witch" of Endor, who conjured up the spirit of the prophet Samuel from the kingdom of the dead (Sheol). That sort of magic was punishable by death: As King James' translators put it, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." If what we see on the urn is an even more dangerous and violent form of necromancy, dragging up from Hades one of its monsters, perhaps even the Lord of Hades, no wonder the soldiers are dying left and right.

If there are other interpretations of what is happening on this ash urn, let them come forth.

Finally, Is the urn trying to telll us that Death can't be toyed with - that Death cannot be defeated?

R.I.P. "Requiescat in Pace," or "Rest in Peace," we read on stone after stone in our graveyards. And the urn reminds us that the real reason this prayer is engraved on our tombtsones is not so much to benefit the dead, as ourselves, the living. For we are terrified that the dead will not stay dead, that they will come back to haunt us. Which, of course, they do. They are always with us.