Charun: Etruscan Demon of the Underworld and Companion of the Dead

Charun belongs to the prominent demons of Etruscan religion. He is not an ‘Atua’ in the sense of an Olympian, but a being of the underworld who acts in a specific function. In Etruscan eschatology he holds a fixed place, often together with the demoness Vanth.

Massimo Pallottino, Jean-Rene Jannot and Larissa Bonfante have treated Charun in their works on Etruscan religion. Stephan Steingraeber’s Etruscan Painting (1986, German 1985) is an important source for his iconographic tradition in tomb painting.

Anyone who wants to understand Charun must grasp Etruscan religion as an independent entity that mediates between the Greek-Mediterranean and the Italic-Roman spheres of tradition.

That this mediating character stands out clearly today, scholarship owes to the works of Massimo Pallottino, Jacques Heurgon, Sybille Haynes, Mauro Cristofani and Giovanni Colonna, who sharpened the picture of a self-contained religious world.

Charun’s fixed place in Etruscan eschatology points to a theology that knew clearly structured hierarchies and assignments of function. Older accounts liked to portray the Etruscan pantheon as ‘mysterious’ or ‘alien’; in fact it is an independent expression of Mediterranean religion with a comprehensible order.

In the case of Charun, the mediating position of the Etruscans becomes particularly tangible: his name is borrowed from the Greek sphere, his figure carries over into the Roman world of ideas. The Etruscans mediated in Italic religious history between Greek influence and the emerging Roman religion, which is of particular interest for religious studies.

Older interpretations liked to read Charun merely as the Etruscan variant of the Greek Charon.

The ethnological study of religion in recent decades, by contrast, has acknowledged Etruscan religion as a whole as a self-contained system that is independent in terms of the phenomenology of religion, and has replaced the tendency to read it as a mere offshoot of Greek religion with a more differentiated view.

The name Charun is related to the Greek Charon. Linguistically it is assumed that the Etruscan form was borrowed from Greek. However, the Etruscan tradition considerably reshaped the character and function: Charun is not the ferryman of Hades, but an independent demon with a hammer and sometimes with a snake.

In Etruscan inscriptions his name appears on tomb paintings (Tarquinia, Vulci, Orvieto) and on cinerary urns (Volterra, Chiusi, Perugia). Helmut Rix’s Editio Minor documents the evidence.

The name Charun is transmitted in Etruscan script, yet the language itself is regarded as isolated within language families, or at most as belonging to a hypothetical ‘Tyrsenian’ family, to which Lemnian and Raetic might also belong. The decipherment of the texts has occupied scholarship since the 19th century and is not complete.

The epigraphic evidence for Charun on tomb paintings and cinerary urns is recorded in Helmut Rix’s Editio Minor, the fundamental collection of the Etruscan language corpus. It is supplemented today by the Thesaurus Linguae Etruscae and the online database ETP (Etruscan Texts Project).

Charun’s name, borrowed from Greek, also touches on the old contested question of the origin of the Etruscans. Herodotus derived them from Lydia, Dionysius of Halicarnassus held them to be natives of Italy. For the history of religion this debate is significant, because it raises the question of possible connections to Anatolian cults.

Linguistics and epigraphy work closely together today, and the digital edition of Etruscan texts in the ETP (Etruscan Texts Project) considerably facilitates comparative studies, for example on the various inscriptions accompanying Charun. Marie-Laurence Haack and Vincent Jolivet have presented pioneering works in this field.

In Etruscan art Charun is depicted as a threatening demon: bearded, with large ears, a crooked nose, sometimes with wings and always with a large hammer. The coloring is often brown-grey, which represents the coloring of the underworld.

On Etruscan tomb paintings (Tomba dei Carontes in Tarquinia, 4th/3rd century BC) Charun appears in striking scenes at the gate to the underworld. Sometimes several Charun demons are depicted: Charun Chunchulis, Charun Huths and other epithets are attested. This multiplicity of names points to differentiated functions.

Since hardly any narrative texts survive for Charun, Etruscan pictorial art is the most important source: mirrors, vases, tomb painting and bronzes provide the greatest part of our knowledge. Larissa Bonfante, in her studies, has acknowledged this pictorial language as an independent tradition and not as merely derivative.

Charun is encountered above all in Etruscan tomb painting, which in Tarquinia, Cerveteri and Vulci forms a first-rate source for the religion and eschatology of the Etruscans. Its banquet, dance and music scenes as well as mythological episodes present the afterlife as a continuation of life.

Charun often appears not alone, but in scenes with several figures, for example beside Vanth at the gate to the underworld. In this is shown a basic feature of Etruscan iconography, which favors multi-figure compositions, narrative references and symbolic condensations and is thus a subject of Etruscan religious iconography.

Charun’s inscriptions such as Charun Chunchulis or Charun Huths show how densely Etruscan pictorial art works: on a single mirror or vase, several mythological references can be present at the same time. This narrative condensation requires careful contextual analysis from scholarship.

Charun is part of a complex system of eschatology. On Etruscan tomb paintings and sarcophagi he is often depicted at the gate to the underworld, where he receives the arrivals. His hammer symbolically marks the separation of life and death.

Jean-Rene Jannot describes the Etruscan conception of the underworld as an independent tradition with references to the Greek idea of Hades, but also with its own accents.

The pronounced imagery of the underworld in particular is an Etruscan specificity. The Etruscans apparently imagined the afterlife as a complexly structured space in which several demons are at work.

Unlike Greek or Roman mythology, the Etruscan is not transmitted in elaborated narrative texts. What we know about Charun we reconstruct from pictorial sources, inscriptions and the Greek-Roman secondary tradition, which requires particular methodological caution.

Charun’s relationship to the Greek Charon is an example of the complex interplay of both mythologies: the Etruscans took over numerous Greek subjects concerning Achilles, Odysseus or Oedipus, but gave them their own interpretations and accents. This adaptation is the subject of intensive research.

In the underworld Charun does not act in isolation, but often in association with Vanth and further demons.

In this is reflected a typical element of Etruscan theology, the council of the gods (consensus deorum): Tinia too does not act alone, but consults with other gods. This concept is a specificity in terms of the phenomenology of religion.

The mythological tradition of the Etruscans is not transmitted in self-contained narratives; Charun’s role, too, becomes accessible only from pictorial scenes, inscriptions and secondary sources. A proven method combines the Etruscan inscription, the Greek pictorial model and the contextual reading, which, given Charun’s many epithets, requires particularly careful interpretation.

Unlike Greek sources, we possess few self-contained Charun narratives. What we know comes from pictorial sources. On sarcophagi (Tarquinia, Volterra) Charun is frequently depicted in scenes of separation: the deceased takes leave of the living, Charun takes him into the underworld.

An important scene shows Charun at the killing of Achilles or other mythological heroes: in the Etruscan adaptation Charun intervenes actively in the events, unlike in the Greek tradition, where Hades rarely acts directly.

Part of Etruscan religion was the Disciplina Etrusca, the system of divination consisting of the inspection of entrails (haruspicina), the interpretation of lightning (fulguratio) and the observation of birds (auspicia).

The Etruscans passed it on to the Romans, where it remained a living practice into the 4th century AD; Cicero and Seneca described it in detail.

The Disciplina Etrusca was transmitted in specialized priestly schools. Among its foundational texts were the Libri Rituales, the Libri Haruspicini and the Libri Fulgurales. These writings are lost, but can be partly reconstructed from quotations in Roman sources, for example in Cicero, Festus and Macrobius.

The Etruscan cult was strongly bound to the individual city. Tarquinia, where Charun is especially present in tomb painting, had its own principal cults and religious peculiarities just as Caere, Vulci, Veji, Clusium, Volsinii, Cortona, Perugia, Arezzo, Volterra, Populonia and Roselle did.

As a coherent religious-divinatory system, the Disciplina Etrusca belongs to the highly developed divination practices of the ancient world. The Romans adopted it systematically, and it remained in use into late antiquity, a continuity remarkable in religious history, within whose framework conceptions of death and its guides such as Charun also lived on.

Charun was not ‘venerated’ in the sense in which the Olympian Atua were. His cult was primarily relevant in the context of burials: at funerals, Charun-related formulas were spoken in order to accept death and to convey the deceased safely into the underworld.

Sarcophagi and cinerary urns were often decorated with images of Charun, which is to be understood as ‘escort’ for the deceased. This practice is attested over many centuries and shows Charun’s significance in Etruscan sepulchral culture.

The Etruscan temples exhibit architectural peculiarities: the Tuscanus style forms its own order of columns, which Vitruvius describes in De Architectura. Their ground plans emphasize the cella and a wide frontal hall and in this differ markedly from Greek models.

Etruscan temples were often monumental structures. The temple of Iuppiter temple on the Capitolium in Rome was erected by Etruscan architects and artists, in particular by Vulca of Veji, and is regarded as an architectural testimony of Etruscan religiosity in early Rome.

The Etruscan league of twelve cities gathered annually at the Fanum Voltumnae near Volsinii for religious and political deliberations. Voltumna was the federal god of the Etruscan confederation and possessed overarching religious significance.

Charun was not invoked in protective contexts: he was rather that against which one protected oneself. Apotropaic practices aimed to prevent his premature appearance: rituals of health, protective formulas against illnesses and the placing of protective objects in houses.

However, in the funerary context Charun could also be invoked positively, not as a being of terror, but as a necessary companion who safely guided the deceased. This ambivalent attitude is of interest for religious studies.

Etruscan protective practice had numerous apotropaic means at its disposal: phallus amulets, Gorgoneion images, eye symbols, bullae and certain formulas. Larissa Bonfante, in Etruscan Mirrors (1980 ff.), has opened up the pictorial language of these protective symbols.

Apotropaic symbols such as the eye of Tinia, phallus amulets and Gorgoneia were widespread in Etruscan culture. They adorned temples, tombs, household shrines and personal objects, and this practice continued in Roman and Mediterranean popular belief.

In the Etruscan context, protective practice was closely interwoven with the Disciplina Etrusca. Before every significant undertaking, whether the founding of a city, a military campaign or the building of a house, one sought divinatory advice.

Charun corresponds functionally to the Greek Charon (ferryman to the underworld), but with his own accents. In comparative religion he can also be compared with Anubis (Egyptian, guide of the dead), with the Germanic Hel demons or with the Mesopotamian Galla demons.

The specificity of the Etruscan Charun tradition is the pronounced pictorial language and the hammer iconography. This hammer symbolism is more rarely attested in other Mediterranean cultures of death and is regarded as an Etruscan peculiarity.

Through the interpretatio Romana, Etruscan gods were overwritten with Roman names: Tinia became Iupiter, Uni became Iuno, Menrva became Minerva. This equation usually remained selective and incomplete; the research of the last fifty years works out what of the Etruscan character was preserved.

Etruscan religion shows numerous points of contact with Anatolian, Phoenician and Near Eastern traditions. The Pyrgi tablets attest to the Phoenician mediation, and this trans-Mediterranean networking belongs to the important fields of research of recent decades.

In comparative religion, the Etruscan cult belongs to the Mediterranean family of religions, with references to Greece, Phoenicia, Egypt, Anatolia and Latium. This networking forms an important field of research.

In recent decades, research on Charun has benefited from new excavations and the systematic evaluation of Etruscan sarcophagi and tomb paintings. Stephan Steingraeber, Erika Simon and Cornelia Weber-Lehmann have made important contributions.

Research intensively examines the relationship between the Greek Charon tradition and the Etruscan independence of Charun. The iconographic differences are here the most important indication of the distinctive shaping.

Etruscan religion is researched internationally today. Important centers are the universities of Florence, Rome Sapienza, Pisa, Tuebingen and Princeton, and several international congresses per year are devoted to individual aspects of this religion.

International research projects on Etruscan religion today rely on digital methods: 3D scans of temples and tombs, databases of inscriptions and pictorial sources as well as GIS analyses of the Etruscan settlement structure. These procedures open up new insights.

Today’s Etruscan research is communicated to the public through exhibitions, for example in the Vatican Museum, in the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia and in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, as well as through numerous publications.

The most important sources for research on Charun are the Etruscan tomb paintings (Tarquinia, Vulci, Orvieto), the sarcophagi (Volterra, Chiusi, Perugia), the cinerary urns and the inscriptions. Stephan Steingraeber’s Etruscan Painting is the standard work on tomb painting.

A deeper classification within Etruscan religious history as a whole shows how Charun is to be understood within the web of relationships with Vanth, Aita and other beings of the underworld. This networking is essential for religious studies.

The source situation for Etruscan religion is heterogeneous and comprises epigraphic testimonies such as Helmut Rix’s Editio Minor, archaeological finds, pictorial sources and secondary literature. This diversity requires interdisciplinary methods, and more recent research systematically combines philology, archaeology, religious studies and anthropology.

Anyone who wants to open up Etruscan religion through source criticism must know both the Etruscan primary sources and the Greek-Roman secondary tradition. This double perspective is demanding, but indispensable for an adequate reconstruction in religious history.

A deeper classification within Etruscan religious history presupposes knowledge of the epigraphic, archaeological and literary sources as well as of modern religious studies. This multilayered engagement is standard in research.