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Culsu & Vanth Lead the Dead into Hades
 Alabaster sarcophagus of Hasti Afunei. 2nd half of 2nd century BC. From Chiusi in Tuscany, now in the Antonio Salinas Regional Archeological Museum, Palermo, Sicily. Photo © 1999 LIMC. by DIonysia Xanthippos and Sin Utnapishtim Though the dead woman's portrait sculpture on the lid of this sarcophagus is missing her head, it remains fairly well-preserved for us in the relief carving on the chest beneath, which shows her saying goodbye to her husband and family as she is being taken away into the Underworld, into Hades. At the far right end, Hasti and her husband, Larth Afuna, attempt a last embrace while a winged female demon, clad in chiton and boots, reaches for the dead woman's arm and shoulder, to turn and take her away. The identity of this angel of death is unknown, but only because her name, painted right above her, is too faded and worn for us to read. However, the names of Hasti Afunei and the eight other figures facing her can still be read in the border above their heads. Reading the nine legible names in the order they appear in Etruscan, from right to left, we get the following names for these nine figures, starting with Hasti and moving also from right to left: Hasti Afunei, Larth Afuna, Thanch[vil] [Afun]ei [?], Vel Arntni, Larce Afuna, Larth Purnei, Larza Afuna, followed by the two demons at the left end, Vanth and Culsu. Those last two can actually be read from the photo with the aid of a magnifying glass! The women's last names appear to end in the feminine ending -ei, the men's in the masculine -a. Our guess is that Thanchvil Afunei, whose hand is on Larth Afuna's shoulder to comfort and restrain him ("Let her go," she seems to say), is his and Hasti's daughter. Standing next to her may be Thanchvil's husband, Vel Arntni. followed by an unmarried (?) son, Larce Afuna, then another (married?) daughter, Larth Purnei, and ending with a second son, Larza Afuna. Why do the three men all hold scrolls? Because they are not usually held by women? And so it is the men in her family who hold scrolls of eulogy that testify to Hasti's virtues and achievements, thus preparing her for judgment in the next world. So much for the farewell funeral scene, probably enacted by the family in real life in the family tomb, with Hasti already lying dead in her sarcophagus. Now to the two female figures on the left, the angels or demons of death, Culsu and Vanth. CULSU, VANTH and the GATE TO THE UNDERWORLD On the left end of this relief, striding through the gate to the Underworld, is a torch-bearing, torque-collared, chiton-skirted and booted young female demon. At first-glance she might be taken for Vanth, since she appears so often in these scenes in the same costume and carrying a flaming torch -- so often that we tend to take such a torch as her trademark. But Vanth has no monopoly on underworld torches; almost any death demon may be seen with one, lighting one's way into Hades, or holding it downwards with the flame gone out to show the new arrival is dead indeed. Moreover, we know it is Culsu who carries the torch here, for her name is written right above her. If you blow up this photo on your screen, and have your magnifying glass handy, you can just make out her name, and that of Vanth to her right. Culsu & Vanth wear metal collars, necklaces or torques around their necks and wrists. Is Culsu really bare-breasted? We think so, despite what might be fabric folds on her right arm. She wears bracelets, and the "folds" could be jewlery, or snakes. Otherwise, she is bare-breasted, as was Vanth by the entrance to the Tomb of Anina's family at Tarquinia. Here, however, Vanth seems not to be bare-breasted. If you still have your magnifying glass, see if you can make out what Culsu holds in her left hand. Most of it is in shadow, and not easy to see. But where the light strikes just below her wrist, we see what looks like a small skull. Most see here the handle of a pair of shears or scissors, and the "eye sockets" as its thumb and finger holes. "It looks amazingly like a modern pair of scissors," exclaims Ingrid Krauskopf (in her "Culsu" article for LIMC Textband III, S. 308-309 : Culsu ). It would be nice to have another Etruscan example, real or virtual, of scissors of this sort. Roman scissors, even surgical scissors, are usually what I would call shears: instead of a pair of metal blades pinned together in the middle so that when open they form an X, nearly all Roman scissors are made from a single piece of metal bent back on itself like cheap modern grass clippers. Here's one of this type:  Simple Roman shears. From John Ward,Iron Objects in Roman Britain,1911  University College, London.
Petrie Museum collection. Supposing Culsu does hold some type of scissors, what does this mean? What does she do with them? Or what do they symbolize?  The hand of Atropos cuts a man's life thread with a pair of scissors while Mercury kneels and prays, Pietas pours water on the flames and Nobilitas holds up... what? medals for the dead man? In the background Diana is praying in vain for Hippolytus to be restored to life. Print from an old emblem book. "Impossible!" replies Krauskopf. "As goddesses of destiny, the Fates decide one's time of death. But unlike the demons portrayed in Etruscan tombs, they do not belong to the Underworld. Thus, on an Etruscan mirror, Athrpa (the Greek Atropos) seals with one stroke of a nail the fate of Meleager and Adonis, while at her feet a Culsu or Vanth, or similar demon, appears as a messenger from the Underworld." Where can one can see this famous mirror from Perugia with the nail-driving winged Fate Athrpa? It was well known in 1848, when George Dennis wrote about it in his Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (ch 27), suggesting the driving of a nail with a hammer had a special meaning for the Etruscans: "the fixed decree of fate" -- a meaning it kept even in some nail-hammering rituals of the Romans. Even today, we say: "dead as a doornail." Might this throw some light on the question why the death-dealing demon Charun carries a hammer, rather than an axe? We would still want to know, though, why the Etruscan Athrpa, unlike the Greek Atropos, seals one's fate by hammering a nail rather than cutting life's thread with scissors or shears. And why Culsu, instead of Athrpa, is carrying scissors, if not for cutting the thread of life, or cutting off the dead from the living. One possibility, suggested by Dennis (Ch 1, n 39), is that here Culsu does the work, not of Atropos, but Persephone, "who severs the hair from the head of the doomed. Virgil, Aeneid. IV. 698; Statius. Sylv. II. 1, 147." It was, it seems, given as a sacrificial gift to Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. VANTH AND HER CURIOUS KEY. Since we are used to seeing Vanth in this torch-bearing role, it would be easy to see her, standing here at Culsu's left just inside the door, as extinguishing that flame. Her posture, as if leaning on the inverted torch, suggests this. But a closer look reveals, not a burnt-out torch, but something like a giant toothbush -- a toothbrush or tool with "teeth" of varying heights. Dennis, who calls it a "nondescript instrument," adds in a note that "It bears some resemblance to the instruments of torture used by the demons in the Grotta Tartaglia."(Dennis, ibid., & fn 38) Apparently it is an enormous latchkey, of the sort used to release the latchbolt or lockbar of a heavy gate or portal, and then to lock it into place again. Krauskopf says what Vanth holds is the cross-bar, latchbolt or lockbar (Riegel, in German), not the key (Schlussel). But we think it is the key.  Note that, unlike the diagrammed Egyptian lock and key, whose lock-pins and key-pegs are all the same length, the pegs on Vanth's key are of varying lengths and sizes -- as would be the matching holes and lock-pins in the gate. Whether her key could be flipped over and reversed to open the lock from either side of the door is not clear. But without it, it would be impossible for anyone locked into Hades to get back out. We don't think Vanth is holding the cross-beam, latch-bolt or lock-bar itself, as claimed, it seems, by Krauskopf, who writes: "she has gone on ahead, awaiting the deceased at the gate to Hades, whose lockbar [Riegel] she has already removed." But if it is Vanth, not Culsu, who unlocks the Underworld Gate and then locks it behind the dead woman, who is just now entering that world, why does Krauskof add: "As oher pictures make clear, she is never understood as a gate-keeper;" Whichever it is, the latchbar or the key to it, that Vanth is leaning on, she is now waiting for the dead woman to say goodbye to her relatives. ENTERING THE UNDERWORLD; THE ROAD TO HADES? The scene before us is thus in the tomb, or on the road to Hades' Gate, not on the other side of it, and Hasti Afunei has not yet crossed over into Hades through it? And Culsu is entering from Hades, into the tomb, or into the world of the living? So she is carrying the torch to light the way into the darkness of the Underworld. But what are her scissors for, then? To cut the woman's hair? And Vanth is waiting to unlock the door behind Hasti after she arrives and enters it? Isn't it odd that the third female demon, the girl guide on the right, has to lead the dead woman all across the space filled with family? Why isn't this part of the scene reversed, with Hasti and the winged guide next to Vanth and the family members facing in that direction? Why do they have to go across the space where the 6 family members are to get to Hell's Gate? Is it possible that the six family members are already dead, and are waiting for her on the other side of the tomb? Possible, but not likely? |
Library
~ Table of Contents ~
TYCHE & OEDIPUS
Adonis & Aphrodite Fatal Boar Hunts, Fatal Loves: Meleager & Adonis A Valentine for Camille Flammarion The Met returns its Euphronios vase! Camille Flammarion: Romantic Astronomer The Fountains of Enceladus The Eye of God Is Ganymede the Boy from Marathon Bay? THE ANCIENT OLYMPIEIA FESTIVAL AT ATHENS Which satyr would you choose... The Marathon Boy and the Satyr Contrapossto from Praxiteles to Rubens and Playboy The Afternoon of a Faun The Dancing Satyr - A Lost Bronze of Praxiteles? Hermes, The Liar Who Invented the Lyre Inanna, Queen of Uruk Inanna Adored: The Uruk Vase The Moon-God Nanna-Sin Visits his Ziggurat at Ur Apollo Sauroktonos, or How the Romans Killed the Lizard-Killer Jacob's Ladder Inanna and the Harrowing of Hell Lilith: Wild Demon of Sex and Death DUMUZI FEEDS INANNA'S SHEEP The Sun God in his Dragon Boat A Stairway to Heaven: The Ziggurat at Ur Lassalle's Post-Modern Male Torso Brancusi's Torsos: Pure Platonic Forms? Brancusi on Men and Women: Take the Tate Test? Four Gods Greet the Rising Sun God Rilke's Archaic Torso of Apollo Socrates' Apology: The Background A FATEFUL CHARIOT RACE: The STORY of PELOPS and OENOMAUS |
