Turan

Also Known As: Etruscan *turan*; genitive *turuns* in the earliest dedications, later *turns*; the seventh-century derivative *turanirias* is the oldest surviving trace of the name
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Etruscan Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Turan embodies erotic desire and generative vitality, and she travels with a retinue of winged Lasas and with birds, above all the swan the Etruscans called *tusna*.
Role in Mythos: She is the Etruscan counterpart of Aphrodite and Venus, the goddess who awards beauty and quickens life, and one of the three dominant female figures in Etruscan art alongside Uni and Menrva.
Relation to Humans: Etruscans approached her chiefly through gifts rather than temples, dedicating inscribed cups, jugs and scent vessels at her sanctuary in the port of Gravisca. Her image was engraved on the backs of hand mirrors that went into women’s graves, which makes her the deity most present in Etruscan private life and one of the least present in its public religion.

Turn an Etruscan mirror over and the polished side gives back your own face. The engraved side gives back hers. These mirrors were cast thick in bronze and cut on the reverse with a fine burin, then buried with the women who had used them, which is why so much of what survives of Turan comes out of the ground next to a comb or a stoppered flask of scented oil. Her name is scratched beside her figure on more than fifty of them. Three carved gems carry it as well. Almost everywhere else in the Etruscan record she is simply not there.

Hold on to that absence, because in every other respect Turan is everywhere. She is the Etruscan power of desire and vitality and the making of new life, the figure a Greek or a Roman would have recognised on sight as Aphrodite or Venus. Alongside Uni and Menrva she is one of the three great female presences of Etruscan art, and by a wide margin the most often drawn.

On the earlier mirrors she is dressed to the point of armour. Long pleated robes, earrings, bracelets stacked at the wrist, a diadem pressed into hair worked up into tight engraved curls, and wings rising from her shoulders, which is how Etruscan engravers marked a goddess rather than a well-dressed woman. Bronze takes a line beautifully and they used it: the fall of cloth, the separate feathers, the small hard glint of metal at the throat. Then Greek fashion arrives in the third and second centuries and she loses the clothes, standing nude or half draped in the Hellenistic manner while the wings stay exactly where they were.

Most often she is not doing anything mythological at all. The commonest scenes are toilette scenes, the goddess at her dressing, attended. On a mirror from Tuder a woman stands behind her holding a fan, and the engraver has labelled her *snenaθ turns*, the assistant of Turan. The fan is raised. Nothing is happening. That is what a goddess of desire looks like on an ordinary afternoon, and the Etruscans clearly liked her that way.

No birth story for her survives, so the argument about where she came from is a linguistic one and it is still running. The Etruscan root *tur* means “to give”, and for most of the last century scholars read her name as built from it: the giving one, or, in a later and more careful reading of the suffix, something closer to an abundance of gifts. James Clackson has argued instead that she is an import, that Etruscan speakers heard the common Greek cult title of Aphrodite, Ourania, with the definite article attached in front of it, and took “the Ourania” home as Turan. An older suggestion tied the name to *turannos*, ruler, and made her the Mistress; that one has aged poorly. Her earliest appearance is a seventh-century bucchero cup carrying a long dedication in which the word *turanirias* occurs, which may name the whole cluster of divinities around her rather than the goddess by herself.

When she does enter a story, it is usually the Judgement of Paris, which Etruscan mirror-makers returned to again and again. The Trojan prince appears under the name Elcsntre or Elacsantre, in a tunic, tall boots and a soft cap. On a fourth-century mirror in the Louvre he sits on his rock while three women in high-waisted gowns stand in front of him. Uni wears earrings and a bracelet. Menrva wears a cap much like his own. Only one of the three has wings and a diadem, and the engraver evidently felt no need to explain how the judgement went.

Her other constant companion is Atunis, the Etruscan Adonis, the young lover whose cult the Etruscans took up with real appetite. Three more recently published mirrors set her beside a young man labelled Turnu who appears to be her son, the nearest thing the Etruscans had to Eros. Around all of them move the Lasas, the winged attendant spirits who seem to exist mainly to be near her.

Cult, as opposed to imagery, comes down almost entirely to one place. Gravisca was the port of Tarquinia, a walled trading station on the Tyrrhenian coast where Greek merchants did business with Etruscans under the protection of the gods, and the excavations there turned up fifty-three Etruscan inscriptions. Ten of them are to Turan. Her name appears in its early form *turuns* and then in the later *turns*, scratched into the pots people gave her. One Attic drinking cup from the late fifth or early fourth century, found in a small shrine in the southern part of the sanctuary, reads *turns turce ramθa venatres*: property of Turan, Ramtha Venatres gave this. A woman, a cup, salt in the air and pitch on the wind. A sixth-century water jug from Veii shares its dedication between Artumes and Turan.

What she gives is increase. Desire, offspring, the vigour of living things, the outcome of a contest that turns on beauty. One dedication addresses her as *ati*, mother, which has been read as an early anticipation of Venus Genetrix. Even the calendar seems to have belonged to her: the Etruscan month corresponding to July comes down to us only through its Latin form, Traneus, and the name looks like hers.

Set against that, her limits are startling. She does not appear on the Piacenza Liver, the bronze model of a sheep’s liver mapped into the compartments of the Etruscan sky with the resident god named in each one. She is missing from Martianus Capella’s late list of the sixteen heavenly regions too. Outside Gravisca there is very little evidence that anyone built her a temple or kept a priesthood for her. No Etruscan story about her survives in Etruscan. Everything narrative we have, we have because somebody drew her holding it, and when the mirrors stop being made the goddess goes quiet.

There is a coda, and it needs handling with tongs. In 1892 Charles Godfrey Leland reported a fairy called Turanna from folk informants in the Romagna, a spirit of love and happiness who helps lovers, and presented her as Turan surviving underground for two thousand years. Leland’s whole thesis of Etruscan survival, and his methods of collecting, have been picked over hard since, and very little of the continuity he claimed can be demonstrated. The mirrors were never intended as evidence of anything. They remain the best evidence there is.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Turan in Etruscan mythology?

Turan is the Etruscan goddess of love, desire, fertility and vitality, and the Etruscan counterpart of the Greek Aphrodite and the Roman Venus. She is one of the three most frequently depicted female deities in Etruscan art, alongside Uni and Menrva. Her name is recorded beside her image on more than fifty engraved bronze mirrors and on three carved gems.

What does Turan look like?

Turan is shown as a young winged woman with elaborately curled hair, a diadem and heavy jewellery such as earrings and stacked bracelets. In archaic and later Etruscan images she is richly robed, but under Hellenistic influence in the third and second centuries BCE she is depicted nude or half draped, keeping the wings. The wings are the marker that identifies her as a goddess rather than a mortal woman.

Where was Turan worshipped?

The only substantial evidence for Turan’s cult comes from the sanctuary at Gravisca, the port of Tarquinia, where Greek merchants traded with Etruscans under divine protection. Ten of the fifty-three Etruscan inscriptions recovered there are dedications to her, mostly scratched onto pottery given as gifts in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. One Attic cup records that a woman named Ramtha Venatres gave it to her.

What animals and companions are associated with Turan?

Turan is associated with the dove, the goose and above all the swan, which Etruscan calls *tusna*. Her attendants are the Lasas, winged spirits who accompany her in mirror scenes. She appears repeatedly with her young lover Atunis, the Etruscan Adonis, and on three mirrors with a young man named Turnu who appears to be her son.

Does Turan appear in the Judgement of Paris?

Yes. The Judgement of Paris is the myth Etruscan mirror-makers most often placed her in, with the Trojan prince named Elcsntre or Elacsantre and the rival goddesses named Uni and Menrva. On a fourth-century mirror in the Louvre the prince sits on a rock while the three goddesses stand before him, and Turan is the one marked out by wings and a diadem.