Cerveteri, Pyrgi and the Origins of the Etruscans.

Cerveteri, Pyrgi and the Origins of the Etruscans is the new volume published for the newly established Cahiers series: the volume represents the re-edition of two valuable writings by Irpinian priest and archaeologist Sabino De Nisco, a profound connoisseur of southern Etruria, and dedicated to the origins of Cerveteri and the divinity of the temple of Pyrgi.

Cerveteri, formerly called Cere, is one of the most important Etruscan cities, and its necropolis is known for the grandeur and suggestiveness of its burials. Because of its importance, the city, which had its port near Pyrgi, was listed as a UNESCO site in 2004. Although it was a famous stop on the nineteenth-century Grand Tour and the focus of numerous historical-archaeological studies, the studies and publications on the city by the priest "doctor of letters" as he called himself, trained in Naples probably under the guidance of the Latinist and philologist Enrico Cocchia, do not appear in the scholarly literature on Cerveteri after the mid-20th century.

This reissue, edited by Vincenzo Bellelli and Folco Biagi, aims to relocate De Nisco's writings, after a century of oblivion, alongside the main results of historical-archaeological research on the city.

The volume reproposes the two short publications of 1909 that De Nisco dedicated to the origins of the city and to the divinity of the temple of Pyrgi: from the texts the direct knowledge of the archaeological reality of Ceretan, the mastery of literary sources combined with solidity and authoritativeness of the arguments are evident. Added to this are the acute critical intelligence and a lively sense of historical research thanks to which the author comes to support the terramaricola origin of the city, moving away from the theory of a foundation by the Pelasgians, and tracing the divinity of the temple of Pyrgi to an exquisitely Greek figure to be identified with Leucothea.

Cerveteri, Pyrgi and the origins of the Etruscans.
Sabino De Nisco
Edited by Vincenzo Bellelli and Folco Biagi
Cahiers, Johan & Levi
07/2020
9788860102317