The death of Judah Maccabee at Elasa (161) put a definite end to that stage of the Judean revolt which strove predominantly to restore religious rights and defend coreligionists. The nature of the struggle initiated by the Hasmoneans won them popularity and broad support. It still proved insufficient in the face of a military defeat that left the vanquished and rebel sympathizers facing a difficult trial of their faithfulness to its ideals and faith in a continued struggle. Bacchides' victory meant an increased influence over Judean affairs of the Hellenists, Judah's ideological and political adversaries (cf. 1 Macc 9:25; Jos. AJ 13.2). Now in control of the situation, supported by Bacchides, they proceeded to crack down on the defeated opponents (1 Macc 9:26; Jos. AJ 13.4–5). The repressive measures they took were a form of revenge for the wrongs they had suffered and for their lost property, and were meant to remove as many of Judah's associates as possible. A thorough political purge well served the interests of the group now in control over Judea, as it did the Syrian rulers. Elimination of rebel leadership could prevent possible future recurrence of insurgency. As an unexpected windfall, famine that struck Judea at the time helped the Hellenists strengthen their position. Supplied by Syrian authorities, the Hellenists were able to provide grain to all those who sided with them, which, hardly surprisingly, increased their popularity.

An attempt to outline the political system created by the Hasmoneans first requires its definition, for it was not a copy of any preexisting form of government. As an essential characteristic, it was a combination, a fusion of two entirely different elements which, in Israel's biblical history, made for two distinct qualities: religious authority and secular power. Successive Hasmoneans, as high priests of the Jerusalem temple, held the highest spiritual office, while at the same time they were the political heads of a state that would eventually take the form of monarchy. D.W. Rooke analyzed all records pertaining to the execution of the high priesthood by the Hasmoneans and concluded that in the system of government they created the secular element heavily outweighed the religious. In her opinion, it was a monarchy disguised as priesthood, what she calls “the sacred kings or the royal priesthood.” The foundations for the system were laid during the leadership of Jonathan and Simon, to remain largely unchanged in the later period. This is not to question the validity or accuracy of this opinion, but is seems that the high priesthood, at least formally, had far greater significance to the Hasmoneans than D.W. Rooke is prepared to ascribe to it. In our belief, this particular circumstance makes it more appropriate to describe the political system they created as a priestly monarchy.

Evidence concerning Hellenistic kings contemporary to the Hasmoneans provides much detail about their entourage, an inseparable part of their status. It was composed of not just family members, but also the king's numerous ministers and aides, officials of different levels, and servants. The entire community, with its hierarchies and structured functioning, fully deserves to be called a court.

Among members of the royal court, a place of honor belonged to members of a select body of advisors closest to the king whom Hellenistic nomenclature described as “friends” (οι φίλοι). Their rank in court hierarchy was indicated by the honorary titles they were awarded by the ruler. It was from the circle of the king's “friends” that usually were selected ministers, generals, and chief diplomatic envoys. Also, they made up part of the king's council, supporting the ruler with their knowledge and experience in making essential state decisions, whether in domestic or foreign affairs. Without their counsel, some kings could not bring themselves to take important decisions. Being included among the king's “friends” was a great honor as it afforded unlimited access to the king. It also bestowed personal prestige as well as ample material gains in land and occasional gifts. However, risks were there, too: a change on the throne might mean loss of influence and privileges for existing members, perhaps even loss of life; but then again, it could bring new honors and promotion. Regardless of what actual influence on affairs of state that group of officials had under the various monarchs, in the Hellenistic era the presence of such a body at the king's side was a matter of course.

The choice of place for the king's permanent residence, his capital, was typically determined political, strategic, economic, or even prestige-related considerations. The Hasmoneans never had to face such choice as the historical and religious tradition of the Jews made Jerusalem the only worthy location. The Hasmoneans first became involved with Jerusalem in 164, when Judah Maccabee succeeded in capturing the city and restoring the Temple to Judaic worship. During the years 152–137, they were continuously present in the city, both as high priests of the Temple and as rulers of Judea.

Jerusalem was to the Hasmoneans not just a religious capital but the center of government. This crucial role the city played could not be without effect on its layout and growth trends. The rulers' permanent residence in the capital favored its urban development and population increase. The number of inhabitants in Jerusalem likely started to rise the moment the Hasmoneans' authority over Judea had stabilized in the times of Simon and John Hyrcanus. The emergence and growth of the government's administrative institutions at the time, as a matter of course, brought to Jerusalem many high officials performing various functions at the ruler's side. Their duty to stay near him made them build residences that changed the face of the city. Unfortunately, very little archaeological evidence is available from the Hasmonean period to permit a reconstruction of such palaces. To a limited extent, this can be done based on remains of homes making up the residential quarter, revealed near David's Tower.

Introduction

Although we can detect a long process of social differentiation through Iron Age burial ritual, it remains doubtless that new ways of articulating such differentiation become evident at the end of the eighth century, and through the seventh century, with escalating higher quantities and quality of grave-goods and their deposition through ever-more complex sophisticated ritual performances and types of burials. Although becoming visible through Iron Age burial ritual, only at the end of the eighth century did elite groups choose to create and then exploit an Orientalising material culture that enabled them to articulate political authority through a new funerary ideology. This ideology was expressed in new modes of burial ritual at the multidepositional tomb: the ideology of the warrior, which had been materialised in Early Iron Age burial ritual through the use of funerary symbols such as the helmet-shaped lid and weapons, merged with a household ideology that made the house and its related aspects, the family group and landownership, the fulcrum of a discourse on political power in death.

As I discuss in detail in Chapter IV, this new funerary ideology stemmed from the earlier Iron Age funerary symbolism that I briefly analyse in the previous chapter, but was articulated through new symbols, which an Orientalising material culture afforded. The end of the eighth century and the seventh century therefore mark an important transition towards the expression of a new political authority in death, but this, I argue, was not of a monarchic or princely nature. In the first part of this chapter, I would like to defend this contention and challenge current views on the princely character of Orientalising Etruria. I suggest that these views rely on an orientalist and colonialist approach to the Orientalising ‘phenomenon’ or ‘movement’ and that this approach has subsequently influenced the interpretation of Late Iron Age high-status warrior burials, which are often defined as princely.

Introduction: Discourses of Death

As intimated in Chapter III, analysing the articulation of political authority in funerary material culture requires appreciating the symbolic language of death and its, at times, subversive character underlying discordances and contradictions of funerary ideology vis-à-vis reality. Anthropological studies have widely demonstrated how ritual acts in general are misstatements of reality, and death rituals in particular are generative acts of an ideal social order. Indeed, the tomb can be a ‘crystallised embodiment of the ideal community,’ and through it ‘an idealised material map of the permanent social order’ is constructed. More generally, studies on the archaeology of death have extensively validated the notion that there is no mirroring between funerary context and reality; rather the former becomes a locus for the ideological representation of the latter. Hence, whilst extrapolating reality directly from burials remains an unattainable task, death rituals are worthy of analysis precisely because they encapsulate the ideological representation of a community that is enacted through them.

Other, more sociologically oriented studies on the manipulation of reality as a form of power relations, namely, Bourdieu on the notions of habitus and misrecognition, have forcefully argued for the self-reproductive system of society's structure and its power relations that is acknowledged and recognised by all social groups through the practice of habitus. Misrecognition is in this case an enlightening concept: in any specific arena of interaction, social practices are carried out according to the schemes of habitus, yet habitus itself produces a sense of (false) reality that is naturalised through strategies of power relations by certain groups. Hence, habitus is both imposed and imposing. Reality thus produced is not simply forced upon the dominated groups, but (mis)recognized as such by those very groups. Misrecognition of reality can thus be institutionally organized and guaranteed through sets of practices and rituals, as seen in gift-exchange and in the maintenance of reciprocity relations. This process of naturalisation of reality through which power relations are euphemised is all the more effective in a field where habitus operates within a ritual sphere, as around the tomb.

Introduction

The seventh century was a revolutionary century that transformed the funerary landscape of urban centres across Tyrrhenian Etruria. In the last three chapters, I closely examine the material culture of this landscape in order to sustain the main proposition of this book: the transformation of funerary ideology in elite burial ritual and the manipulation of funerary symbolism that was materialised in the tomb, its structure, and/or architecture and grave-goods, disclose the political underpinnings of the early city in Etruria.

On the premise that material culture not only reflects the sociopolitical relations of a community but indeed plays a key role in the structuring of these relations, I have argued that the tomb constituted the physical, material, and conceptual space where elite groups transformed their prestige into political authority; therefore it is at the tomb that political relations themselves within the early city were structured. A discourse of power centred on the merging of military prowess and the house unfolded through the recursive practice of banqueting and drinking, which were collective rituals for the elites and public events for the community at large. Significantly, I have argued that these political developments actively transformed the funerary space as this latter, in turn, contributed to the former: in time, the tomb evoked a domestic environment, in some cases such as Caere quite literally. At the same time, the funerary landscape transformed the physical landscape of the early city into a political one: the placing of tombs around the settlement and further away along strategic routes or locations not only ensured the political control of that landscape by the city but also broadened the choreographic space for the articulation of political authority, as the performance of funerary ceremonies began at the city and culminated at the tomb.

Having dealt with the transformation of funerary ideology in Chapter IV, in the present Chapter I focus on the actual funerary rites taking place in and around the Orientalising tomb. The occurrence of several multidepositional graves under a single mound or several depositions within a single tomb indicates that funerary rituals were repeated at more or less regular intervals, at each successive interment. Ritual repetition at the same location and in relation to past interments established continuity of ritual action and, more importantly, became an effective medium for transforming what were ritual activities into institutionalising practices. This in turn transformed what was merely elite social prestige into political authority.

Correspondingly, as rituals were repeated at the same tomb, the tomb's architectural structure became increasingly complex reaching monumental proportions in some cases and replicating the house in accordance with the new Orientalising funerary ideology. The tomb's complex architecture is thus a reflection of the discursive relationship between ritual space and action. As the tomb interior space was radically transformed, so did its outwards appearance and its surroundings, namely, the cemetery space and the landscape outside the urban cemeteries as exceptionally monumental tumuli dotted the land in isolated locations, transforming the empty agricultural landscape into a landscape of power.

Etruria, the Most Enduring Network of Cities

Writing about the origins of Rome, Arnaldo Momigliano, in his inimitable style, touched on the heart of a problem still debated around the Early Iron Age in Etruria, also known as Villanovan period: how did Etruscan centres become cities of such a complex type and in such a swift fashion?

Momigliano's scepticism as to our ability to understand the problem is surely shared by some still today and is mainly motivated by the virtual absence of Etruscan written sources. This is a remarkable and certainly frustrating, if not unique, state of affairs: it prevents us from accessing a richness of information that only textual evidence can provide and prevents us from perusing some aspects – the mentalité, the imaginary, above all, the sociopolitical institutions – of a civilisation, the Etruscans, that was as sophisticated as Greece and Rome.

Momigliano's astonishment at the rapid transformation of ‘Villanovan’ Etruria into a network of cities sounds anachronistic today, as research during the last few decades has brought to light the longevity of processes that led to this transformation. Yet, although there is agreement on the longevity of these processes and the stages through which they unfolded, as I briefly summarise in Chapter I, a key question remains to be answered: was the new sociopolitical organisation of the large protourban communities the cause or result of their formation? In other words, was the sociopolitical organisation of these communities already in place when they came together, or did it develop once dispersed smaller communities came to form a larger single one? This is not a simple issue of chronology; it also bears on the question on the socioeconomic complexity of Final Bronze Age settlements and its role on later developments. If we answer the question by sustaining the former option, we must necessarily recognise that Final Bronze Age settlements were characterised by a high level of complexity, which we need to take into account in order to understand the new sociopolitical organization of protourban communities. According to some scholars, the socioeconomic organisation of these settlements was, in fact, so advanced that the occupation of large plateaux by smaller communities may have been a joint venture involving a clear plan of occupation of the landscape.

Conversely, if we answer our fundamental question by taking the second stance and thus argue for a denser and larger community coming together to establish a complex production and exchange system and engendering new forms of sociopolitical relations, we emphasise sociopolitical integration at the basis of urbanisation. This is, in fact, borne out by contemporary burial evidence, as we shall see in the course of this chapter. Yet, it is not until the seventh century that elite burials disclosed an additional indication of the community becoming urban: accessibility to resources and to a wider world. In the course of this chapter, I argue that this is a key aspect of urbanisation, which the elites made public and publicised in the tomb through an Orientalising material culture, as I discuss in the following chapter, and which they exploited to affirm political authority, as I argue in Chapter VI.