The old Etruria, that corresponds with the present Italian Tuscany geographically, it developed a native culture, differentiated from their neighbours, and it was considered mysterious for its origin. Even nowadays, the historians have not agreed about its appearance in the history of the towns. Some of them affirm that it derives from the vilanovense protohistorical culture that was developed in the Adriatic shore, between the valleys of the Arno and the Tiber, and that it arises in the history of the cultures around 750 B.C.; whereas others, Herodoto the first, as far as he is concerned they come from Lydia from where they had arrived, fleeing from a wave of hunger in its country.
To this enigmatic fact of its origin, it should be added its language; that it has not been deciphered yet; the singularity of their beliefs based on the oracles and riddles; its original and unmistakable art, of Eastern influences, that it was marked later by the mark of the Hellenistic world; its social ordering and the Etruscan woman leading role in a liberal and epicurean society.
All these enigmas transferred to our objective to relate the evolution of the history of the perfume, they can be translated into the incognito of knowing if Lydian were responsible to bring the use of cosmetics and the aromas, or, they developed it in an own previous culture.
The lack of literary sources prevents the exact knowledge of which were the matters used in the elaboration of the aromas. It forces to us to resort to the aid of archaeology, to illustrate to us on the first used matters and the vessels that they used as containers for perfumes. In this last aspect, they emphasize Egyptian classical forms of alabastrons, the one of the Greek "lekythos”, as well as the "askos", the "pixis" or small ceramics boxes to keep ointments or cosmetics and the aspheric " aryballos ", or in form of light bulb and also the called doughnut for its characteristic form.
These vessels were elaborated with numerous materials as we have explained before, and we can not forget neither precious metals nor hard stones, but an exclusive right of the applied Etruscan crafts to the glasses for perfumed ointments, it was the ceramics of "buchero", of black colour and very fine texture, with which they obtained shining glasses of extremely thin walls that they made them specially delicate and beautiful ones.
|
