Pair of shields with head of Acheloos
Etruscan, 6th century B.C.
Bronze
3 in. (7.62 cm) each
Munger Fund, 1998.115.1–2.M

These objects are not military shields but figural bosses designed to be left in Etruscan tombs. They may have originally been used to decorate furniture or for funerary ceremonies. Comparable examples have been found stacked up in a tomb near Tarquinia. Though the most common figures represent the man-bull deity Acheloos, lions’ and rams’ heads also occur. Acheloos was a river god who fought Herakles over Herakles’ wife, Deianara. Herakles defeated him by breaking off his horn. To get it back, Acheloos gave Herakles a magic horn. While the figures of Acheloos probably had roots in Etruscan fertility beliefs, he also served as an apotropaic image, one that wards off evil.