While some 13,000 Etruscan texts exist, most of these are very short. Consequently, much of what we know about the Etruscans comes not from historical evidence, but from their art and the archaeological record.

We have no surviving histories or literature in Etruscan, and the only extant writing that can be considered a text, as opposed to an inscription, was painted in ink on linen, preserved through the fortuitous reuse of the linen as wrappings for an Egyptian mummy.

A celebrated statue of the goddess of love, Aphrodite, is now on display in The Met’s Greek and Roman galleries as a five-year loan until 2028.

Assistant Curator Kiki Karoglou discusses the fascination around the colossal lost works in the exhibition Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World.

The Metropolitan Museum's outstanding collection of ancient Etruscan art includes over one thousand objects dating from about 900 B.C. to about 100 B.C. They have been acquired either in groups or individually since the first group of Etruscan vases was donated in 1875 by Luigi Palma di Cesnola, the Museum's first director from 1879 to 1904. In 2007, the Department of Greek and Roman Art updated and greatly enhanced the display of Etruscan art with the opening of a reinstalled permanent gallery devoted to more than 550 of the most important works from pre-Roman Italy, assembled on the mezzanine that overlooks the new Leon Levy and Shelby White Court. In addition, the adjacent Study Collection gallery that covers all aspects of the collection of the Museum's Department of Greek and Roman Art holds another 150 objects from ancient Etruria. Now, the collection is thoroughly documented in print, combining the most up-to-date scholarship with brilliant digital photography. Many of the objects had never been published before or only many decades ago. In addition, visual and textual information on these works has been augmented digitally on the Museum's ever-expanding website. The art of ancient Etruria retains its fascination even to the modern age. Artists and writers—notably Alberto Giacometti and D. H. Lawrence—have found inspiration in these intriguing objects. Contemporary artists, scholars, and the Metropolitan Museum's broad public will now benefit greatly from this informative volume on these extraordinary works of art.

Although many Roman sculptures are purely Roman in their conception, others are carefully measured, exact copies of Greek statues, or variants of Greek prototypes adapted to the taste of the Roman patron.

Few statues from antiquity have survived both in situ and intact, but the evidence suggests an ever-changing and expanding range of contexts for their display.

Known as the father of Ethio-jazz, composer and multi-instrumentalist Mulatu Astatke rose to international fame in the 1970s and 1980s with his unique mix of American jazz and Ethiopian music, drawing comparisons to jazz giants Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.

Traditional Bamana society was a gerontocracy governed by a council of elders, and the tòn enabled young Bamana men to organize themselves into a workforce and represent their interests to their superiors.