Etruscans wished their dead to have light. They gave them 4. The scarab is the Egyptian solar subject par excellence. It amulets with astral symbols and painted the holy laurel represents the morning manifestation of the sun-god. Andrews grove of Apulu/Usil on the walls of their tombs.”44 1994, p. 51, outlines: “Because of the underlying ideas inherent in its shape, the scarab form of itself offered the hope of new NOTES life and resurrection, but these magical properties could be enhanced even further by the inscription motifs or pictorial 1. The origins of the facing head must lie in the efficacy of the representations added to the flat underside.” Amuletic scarab severed heads of real animals positioned as trophies in public or seals can also have human elements, and a human head with cultic places. In P. Erhart Mottahedeh’s view (Mottahedeh 1979, hair can replace the whole back, as on scaraboids produced in pp. 274–75), the Naucratis faïence factory at the end of the seventh and in the sixth century B.C.: V. Dasen, “Squatting Comasts and there exists no better vehicle for conveying hieratic and demonic Scarab-Beetles,” in Tsetskhladze et al. 2000, p. 91. Dasen associations. Deity and demon alike were most powerful and establishes that the image of scarab beetles was associated with impressive if encountered face to face, and in pictorial art only Dionysos (p. 95, with essential bibl., including her Dwarfs in the facing head allowed direct confrontation between image Ancient Egypt and Greece [Oxford, 1991] and Hölbl 1979). Two and viewer. The facing head was, in effect, the pictorial other Egyptian amulet types relevant for the amber head- equivalent of the cult image in the round. It could express more pendants are the faces of Bes and of Hathor. The relationship of ably than the profile head the presence or actuality of deity or the heads of Meskhenet to Greek and Etruscan female head demon, for immediacy was potency. From earliest times the representations may also prove significant. The head of facing head motif reveals a fundamental duality and polarity in Meskhenet was “frequently attached to a type of brick that art; it exhibits, so to speak, two faces—one hieratic and godly, Egyptian women crouched upon when giving birth. Meskhenet the other demonic and monstrous. Opposed to the profile head, was also believed to appear at the time of an individual’s it can assume either a positive or a negative role, signifying death—perhaps to preside over ‘birth’ into the afterlife—and good or evil, sacred or profane, and similar polarities. This the goddess is sometimes depicted in this way in vignettes from duality and polarity of the facing head motif was engendered by the Book of the Dead”: Wilkinson 1992, p. 41 (with reference to ancient religious beliefs in an elemental godhead which E. Russman, Egyptian Sculpture: Cairo and Luxor [Austin, TX, combined polarities—one both threatening and protective, 1989], pp. 19–21, 214, n. 5). beautiful and monstrous, fertile and barren. 5. Higgins 1980, p. 63, fig. 9. She continues, “Its strongest form is the Mask, which is able to capture essence alone, undiluted by activity.… The motif was 6. For the faïence head-pendant from Susa (Apadana) in the initially reserved for highly symbolic figures.… For human Louvre (Sb 03588), see Faïences de l’Antiquité: De l’Égypte à l’Iran, figures it served to strengthen divine nature, while for certain exh. cat. (Paris, 2005), p. 65, no. 159. The following are all in the animals and hybrid creatures it served to underscore demonic Louvre and illustrated in the above-cited catalogue: example force.” For other discussions of the mask form and its from Ougarit (Minet el-Beida, Tomb VI, AO.15731), no. 154; two apotropaic role, see the sources listed in Mottahedeh 1979, n. from Mari (Tomb 236, AO.19078, and Tomb 255, AO.19488), nos. 198; Steiner 2001, pp. 196–97; Faraone 1992, pp. 37–38; and, 155–56; the other two from Mesopotamia (AO.07089, AO.06685), most important, Frontisi-Ducroux 1991. Carpenter 1986, p. 97, no. 157. discusses the eyes and masks of late-sixth-century B.C. Greek 7. Large bowl mounted on three legs, Rome, Museo Nazionale cups and amphorae. While he admits that they “may have had Etrusco di Villa Giulia 13131, from the Barberini Tomb, their original stimulus in magic or cult,” he believes that their Praeneste: C. Densmore Curtis, “The Barberini Tomb,” Memoirs “meaning can be found in the realm of humour.” However, he of the American Academy at Rome 5 (1925): 42–44, no. 79, pls. does not address the importance of humor as a time-honored 26–27. aversion technique. 2. On Gorgo, Medusa, and the gorgoneion, see W. A. P. Childs and 8. For the engraved Tridacna squamosa shell figures, sirens(?), D. Tsiafakis in Centaur’s Smile 2003; R. Mack, “Facing Down falcons, and other creatures, see the recent discussion in B. Medusa (An Aetiology of the Gaze),” Art History 25, no. 5 (2002): Brandl, “Two Engraved Tridacna Shells from Tel Miqne-Ekron,” 570–604; S. R. Wilk, Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 323 (2001): (Oxford and New York, 2000); Rocco 1999, n. 199 (with other 49–62 (with earlier bibl., including R. A. Stucky, The Engraved relevant bibl. not listed here); J.-P. Vernant, “Death in the Eyes: Tridacna Shells [Sao Paulo, 1974]; A. Rathje, “A Tridacna Gorgo, Figure of the Other,” pp. 114–15, and “In the Mirror of Squamosa Shell,” in Italian Iron Age Artefacts in the British Medusa,” pp. 141–51, in Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays Museum: Papers of the Sixth British Museum Classical Colloquium, by Jean-Pierre Vernant, ed. F. I. Zeitlin (Princeton, 1991); LIMC 4 ed. J. Swaddling [London, 1986], pp. 393–96; and D. Reese and C. (1988), s.vv. “Gorgones” and “Gorgones in Etruria” (I. Sease, “Some Previously Unpublished Engraved Tridacna Krauskopf); and Mottahedeh 1979. Shells,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52 [1993]: 109–28). For the other imported vessels, see A. Rathje, “Oriental Imports in 3. Andrews 1994, p. 69. Etruria in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries: Their Origins and Human Heads 151