Virtual Antiquities Circle Lecture – The Etruscans

Join us for a Virtual Antiquities Circle Lecture presented by Dr. Branko van Oppen. In this talk, Dr. van Oppen looks at the Etruscans.

The Etruscans are a fascinating ancient people about whom much remains a mystery. They inhabited an area of Northern Italy (present-day Tuscany and beyond). It is only through their often-violent contact with the Romans that we know something about their history. They have left no historical accounts of their own, or at least none have survived. Etruscan culture is best known from tombs and temples. Much of the preserved Etruscan material culture is therefore of funerary or religious nature.

The permanent collection at the Tampa Museum of Art includes an assortment of 50 Etruscan objects covering a period of about 500 years (ca. 750-250 BCE). Together, these fifty objects illustrate aspects of four main themes: myth and religion; jewelry; pottery; everyday human and animal life as well as death.

Speaker: Dr. Branko van Oppen is an ancient historian specialized in queenship during the period from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra. He received his PhD from The City University of New York, where he studied with Sarah Pomeroy; he has over a decade of wide-ranging teaching experience in the U.S. and his native country The Netherlands; and he has worked for five years at the Allard Pierson Museum, which holds the archaeological collection of the University of Amsterdam. Dr. van Oppen’s academic interests further include clay seal impressions, animals in ancient material culture, and Romano-Egyptian mummy portraits, as well as art history and ancient religion.

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Image: Cinerarium (Cinerary Urn), Etruscan, ca. 200-150 BC, Ceramic, H. 45.7 cm. 18 inches, Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of Robert and Janette Moody, 1986.285.a–.b