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The Lady of Vulci, and the Judgement of Paris

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The Lady of Vulci, and the Judgement of Paris

Turan, the name seems to mean "the lady" or "mistress," from a root of lordship, was the patron goddess of the city of Vulci, and, like Menrva, she is known above all from the engraved mirrors, of which she is a favourite subject. On them she is winged, attended by her companions the Lasa, minor winged spirits of love and fate, and she appears in the great set-pieces of Greek myth as the Etruscans received them: the Judgement of Paris, where the Trojan prince (Etruscan Elcsntre) awards her the prize, and countless scenes of love, adornment and courtship. The dove and the swan are hers. Turan shows how Etruscan religion could take a figure fully within the shared Mediterranean iconography of the love-goddess, recognisably the same visual language as Greek Aphrodite, while keeping her own name, her own city, and her own retinue of spirits.

Outside Vulci, Turan had a major sanctuary at Gravisca, the harbour town of Tarquinia that traded heavily with Greek merchants, where inscribed votive gifts bearing her name have been recovered in some quantity. One dedication there calls her Turan ati, "Mother Turan," a title scholars have connected to the later Roman cult of Venus Genetrix, Venus as ancestral mother, suggesting that the maternal, lineage-founding side of the Roman goddess may have Etruscan roots reaching back through Turan.

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