A 6th century B.C. ivory Etruscan sella curulis, the folding seat magistrates sat in during the exercise of their official duties, is newly restored and is back on display at the Civic Archaeological Museum of Bologna, northern Italy. The new restoration repaired errors made in two previous interventions, removing glue that compromised the ancient ivory and putting the fragments back together in a more plausible configuration.
The ancient city of Felsina was founded by Etruscans in the 6th century B.C. at the site of the modern city of Bologna. Pliny the Elder wrote in his Natural History that it was the “princeps Etruriae,” the primary city of Etruria in its heyday. Etruscan Felsina was conquered by the Celtic Boii tribe in 390 B.C. They renamed it Bononia after themselves and the name stuck, even after the Boii were soundly defeated by Rome in 193 B.C.
The stool was discovered in 1887 on the grounds of the Giardino Margherita park in downtown Bologna. Before the park was inaugurated in 1879, archaeological excavations uncovered a large Etruscan necropolis of 172 tombs. During construction of new pavilions for the 1888 Emilian Exhibition, tomb 173 was found, containing a rich complement of grave goods including Greek vases of different forms, jewelry and large fragments of an ivory curule seat.
It consists of two pairs of legs crossed in an x shape, joined by metal pins and side crosspieces. The seat was fixed to the crosspieces, and was likely made of leather. Small seats or stools made of wood are well-represented in Etruscan archaeology, but the ivory is exceptionally rare and the workmanship of the highest quality. It suggests the chair was placed in the tomb of a magistrate.
The entire stool was covered in worked ivory slabs, a choice that makes it an object out of scale by the usual standards of northern Etruria. Ivory was a luxury good, often imported from Africa or Asia, used for small cult objects or personal ornaments. To employ it for a piece of furniture, and moreover for everyday use, suggests the exceptional rank of the deceased.
The hypothesis advanced by scholars is that the owner of the tomb may have been a high-ranking magistrate of the Felsine Etruscan community, whose authority was also manifested through material symbols such as this. Mediterranean influence, perhaps Greek or Anatolian, in the choice of form and materials is not ruled out.
The stool is in a display case with the other grave goods found in tomb 173. An innovative interactive touchscreen next to the display gives visitors an overview of the object and restoration in three modules: a video story of the restoration process, a virtual tour of the tomb, and the graves goods in 3D that viewers can rotate and flip.
* This article was originally published here
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