The exhibition “Tyrrhenòs and Sardò. Etruscan princes and Nuragic warriors: the story of two peoples and the sea that unites them’ stems from a partnership between the Mont’e Prama Foundation and the National Archaeological Museum of Florence, with the aim of illustrating the ancient and close relationship between the two shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea, which saw the great Sardinian civilisation of the Age of the Giants and the emerging Etruscan power during the Villanovan and Orientalising periods take centre stage.
A network of intercultural contacts, at the dawn of the first millennium, which laid the foundations for Italian and European culture, within a Mediterranean context more open to mobility and exchange than is imagined today.
As they follow the exhibition’s itinerary, visitors will feel transported across the sea, between the Etruscan coast—where Sardinian artefacts were imported into Etruscan funerary contexts between the 10th and 7th centuries BC—and the island ‘with the silver vein’ (as the Greeks once nicknamed Sardinia), where numerous Etruscan artefacts bear witness to an ancient tradition of cultural exchange and intermingling.
The Sardinian bronze ships found in Etruria – including the finest example from the Tomb of the Duce in Vetulonia – are tangible evidence of the frequent maritime travel that linked different peoples within a shared cultural framework.
Finally, the encounter between great Sardinian monumental sculpture, represented by the Giants of Mont’e Prama, and early Etruscan sculpture, represented by the statues of Casale Marittimo and Vetulonia, once again reveals the human aspect of images from the past, with an unexpected shared way of living and feeling that still engages and moves us today, transcending the barrier of time.
It was the Battle of the Sardinian Sea in 535 BC between the Greeks of Phocaea and an Etruscan and Carthaginian fleet that established a new balance of power in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The victors, the Etruscans and Carthaginians, divided up their respective spheres of influence, and from that moment on Sardinia gradually became a Carthaginian colony. The exhibition demonstrates how Sardinia, whilst an island, has never been isolated, but has always been a key player in a Mediterranean cultural network, to which it has actively contributed since ancient times.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)