Unknown Hand Mirror, 470-450 B.C., Bronze 16.8 x 15.1 x 0.7 cm (6 5/8 x 6 x 5/16 in.) The Art Institute, Chicago |
Bronze hand mirrors like this one are a fairly frequently found luxury good, preserved in burials of high-status Etruscan women. (On the Etruscans, see my previous post on the canopic vase from Chiusi.) One side would have been highly polished to create a reflective surface; the other was often inscribed with a mythical scene. Here, we see the goddess Eos (Dawn) carrying the corpse of her son Memnon, a hero of the Trojan War who was killed by Achilles: his story was originally told in the lost epic, the Aethiopis, of which only summaries and fragments survive.
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AuthorEmily Hauser is a classicist and researcher at Harvard and author of historical fiction recovering the lost women of the ancient world, including FOR THE MOST BEAUTIFUL and FOR THE WINNER. Archives
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