A black man’s head protects sanctity of ancient Italian temple

The head of a black man seen here, enclosed in a shell-like frame and painted in naturalistic colors, represents a key piece of sacred imagery produced by the rich but still imperfectly understood culture of ancient Etruria. This loose confederation of city-states dominated much of the central Italian peninsula for several centuries until its absorption by the Roman Republic by the first century B.C.

Though damaged, the terra-cotta plaque still communicates much of its original expressive effect. It was produced through the pressing of damp clay into a mold, a technique ideal for the extensive replication of a single motif across the facade of the temple. Known as an antefix, it once formed the end of a clay roof tile that capped the sloping roof of the sanctuary. These painted reliefs ran along the eaves of the building as a horizontal series of functional ornaments. As one approached the structure, the pitched roof would recede from view, leaving the row of terra-cotta antefixes isolated against the sky.

This work comes from an unidentified temple located in the southern zone of Etruscan territory at the present-day Italian town of Cerveteri. To the Romans it was known as Caere, but to the Etruscans themselves it was called Cisra. Situated near the sea, the sizable settlement was an important center of international trade and controlled much of the area around it.

The aesthetic experience of an ancient Etruscan temple was quite different from that of Greek sanctuaries such as the Parthenon and numerous kindred examples. The visual effect of the temple, raised on a high base and topped by a massive, overhanging roof, was dominated by a deep porch supported by massive wooden columns. Distinguishing it even further from its Greek counterparts was the wealth of painted terra-cotta sculpture fixed along key points of the exterior. Because of the use of impermanent materials such as wood and mud brick for the structure itself, Etruscan temples survive almost solely as accumulations of this clay decoration.

Seen in isolation here, the head of the black man once played an integral role in the spiritual functioning of the structure. Current scholarship has interpreted these heads as boundary figures, separating the mundane world from the sacred precinct of the temple. Not merely decorative, they had an inherent purpose to ward off demonic influences that might disturb the veneration of the deity. That the black head served this purpose is demonstrated not only by the archaeological evidence but also by the representation of black people in contemporary art and literature of the Mediterranean world.

At Pyrgi, a port town located not far from where this antefix was found, another temple site has yielded several successive sets of related tile covers. The concept of blackness consistently occurs throughout these groups. For instance, two of the sets of antefixes juxtapose black and white maenads, the female followers of Dionysus, the “good god” of wine and revelry. A subsequent set of these tiles featured black male heads alternating with those of white maenads. The antefix seen here most likely appeared in a similar context of meaning.

The use in a religious context of imagery related to the often rambunctious god of intoxication may at first seem incongruous, but it was quite in keeping with the strong sense of complementarity that ruled the ancient world. Although the gods themselves often behaved capriciously, beyond their usually benign presence lay a vast array of destabilizing forces. Antefixes with heads of the followers of Dionysus probably served an apotropaic function—that is, they were placed along the exterior of the temple to ward off any malign influences that might threaten the harmony of the divine precinct.

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