Turan

Summary

Turan is the goddess of love and beauty among the Etruscans, the counterpart of the Greek Aphrodite and the Roman Venus. With Uni and Menrva she is one of their greatest goddesses, and her name is genuinely Etruscan, not borrowed from their neighbours as Uni was from Juno and Menrva from Minerva. Her festivals fell in summer, and their month of July, Traneus, is said to have been named after her. She may be shown winged; her son is Turnu, the Greek Eros; and winged handmaids called Lasa attend her.

Her stories are engraved on bronze mirrors, which were given to brides and buried with women. Most often she is shown with Atunis, the Greek Adonis, the beautiful youth she loved. On a mirror found in 1989 near Orvieto Turan stands holding a love-wheel with Atunis beside her, while her son Turnu plays with the same wheel beside Apollo. On a mirror in the Hermitage the lovers sit with a huge goose and a winged goddess, surrounded by winged boys and girls of Turan's retinue. Atunis had a cult with Turan at Gravisca, the port of Tarquinii, from late Archaic times. Atunis is mortal like plants and flowers, his festival falls in high summer, in July, the month named after Turan, and then he goes down to the underworld, so that through her love for him the great goddess falls under the law of time and death.

On a mirror in Berlin the winged goddess of fate, named Athrpa after the Greek Atropos, drives a nail with a hammer; on one side of her sit Meleager and Atalanta, on the other Turan and Atunis, and above them is a boar's head. Both couples were caught up in a deadly boar hunt, and death parted both pairs of lovers. For the Etruscans the nail was the sign of a fate that cannot be turned back, and every year they drove a nail in the temple of Nortia at Volsinii to count the years.

Turan has her place in the Trojan story as the Etruscans drew it. In the judgment of Paris, whom they called Elcsntre, Turan wins, but a mirror in the Indiana University Art Museum seats her like a bride, with the losers Uni and Menrva coming to her as friends visit a bride. A mirror in the Metropolitan Museum of the early fourth century BCE shows Paris, Turan and Helen, whom they called Elinai. On a mirror from Caere in the British Museum, of 330–300 BCE, Menle, that is Menelaus, seizes Helen as she clings to the statue of Athena, with Turan behind her, while Thetis holds his sword arm: the goddess who gave Helen to Paris stands behind her when her husband comes to take her back. On another British Museum mirror a seated woman is being adorned, one attendant adjusting her headdress and another holding a mirror, while Turan looks on.

Her husband is Laran, the Etruscan god of war, that is Mars. On a mirror in Berlin they stand with Menrva and two infants, and on a sarcophagus from Tuscania Laran and Turan stand as a loving couple behind an altar. Simon hears in this the Theban story of Ares and Aphrodite, whose daughter was Harmonia, concord, and thinks an Etruscan goddess called Alpan may be her.

The idea her pictures turn on is that love reconciles rather than fights, but cannot keep death away. Turan wins the judgment of Paris and does not gloat over the losers; she marries the god of war and their fruit is concord. But she loves a mortal youth and watches him go down to the underworld, and she stands beside the goddess of fate as the nail is driven in. Her story with Atunis is one of the stories of death and return, and one of the sacred marriages in which a goddess joins a mortal man and the man pays the price. At Pyrgi, where the king of Caere wrote his dedication in Etruscan and Phoenician, the Phoenician Astarte was matched with Uni, not with Turan, although Astarte is the goddess of love in the East.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Turan ends in the -an that closes other Etruscan divine names, Laran and Thesan. Tur- remains. The Etruscans wrote d as t, and on Turan's own mirrors Adonis became Atunis. So tur- is Arabic durr and darr. In Lane, darr is milk becoming copious and flowing; the sky darrat with rain; the world darrat on its people, was bountiful to them. Durr is large pearls, and kawkab durrī is a brightly shining star, named from pearls for its whiteness, clearness and beauty. On this reading Turan is the goddess of plenty and beauty: the lady of the summer month when fruit abounds, and the beauty seated like a bride on the mirrors. In Etruscan itself a verb tur- means "to give", written in dedications: turce, "gave". It is a reading proposed on the method.

Linguistic Root

Turan and darr

Lane: milk darra when it became copious and flowed; a she-camel darrat with her milk, yielded it abundantly; the sky darrat with rain, poured it down; the tax darra, its produce became abundant; darra bi-mā ʿindahu, he gave forth what he had; darrat ad-dunyā ʿalā ahlihā, the world was bountiful to its people. Durr is pearls, or large pearls, durra one of them. Kawkab durrī is a shining, brightly shining star, called so from durr because of its whiteness, clearness and beauty, as al-Farrāʾ and al-Zajjāj say.

The sounds: the Etruscans did not write d and wrote t for it, and the evidence is in Turan's own pictures: Atunis for Adonis. D belongs to the letters that become t or d in the European languages in the Juthoor tables. R is r, and the doubled r of darr answers a single r. The u of tur- answers the u of durr. -an is an ending shared by Etruscan divine names and is not counted as part of the root.

The limit that remains: we found no source that analyses the name into tur- and -an, and no one says her name comes from the verb of giving tur-; we mention it only because its consonants are those of the name's opening. The month Traneus is linked to her in modern studies, and the Latin text that preserves it says no more than that it is July.

The Roman essay and Venus

The Roman essay does not read Turan's name, but it reads the name of her Latin counterpart Venus as uns, from wanas, the companion in whom one finds comfort, and makes the Phoenician Astarte the goddess of love whom Venus absorbed. The two readings meet in a goddess people love and find comfort in, and part in that darr is plenty and giving, uns company and familiarity.

Key Mythic Narratives

The goddess of peace in the Aeneid

Simon thinks the peaceful Turan lives on in the Venus of the Aeneid, and that Virgil knew Etruscan religion. In the Aeneid Venus asks Neptune to bring the fleet of her son Aeneas safely home: she works for her son by asking and pleading, not by arms.

The naked goddess at Cannicella

In the Cannicella sanctuary at Orvieto stands a marble statue of a naked goddess of the late sixth century BCE, in the pose of the great Phoenician goddess. Some scholars have called her Turan, but Simon finds this problematic, because the sanctuary's inscriptions name a goddess Vei, the counterpart of Demeter, and the sanctuary lay among graves.

Symbolic Reading

The Roman essay in this project makes Venus "intimacy and affection", the goddess who became a comfort to humankind. Turan's pictures give that sense a visible form: a bride being adorned, handmaids holding the mirror, the love-wheel in her hand, friends visiting the winner. Then comes the limit she cannot pass: a mortal lover goes, and the nail of fate is driven. The mirror on which these pictures were engraved was a wedding gift and was buried with its owner, so that one object holds the wedding day and the burial day together.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Among the Greeks Aphrodite loves Adonis, among the Sumerians Inanna loves Dumuzi, and then the lover goes down to the underworld and is mourned. The Etruscans took Adonis's name from the Greeks, kept their goddess's own name, and set the two lovers on their mirrors beside the goddess of fate. Turan's marriage to Laran answers the union of Aphrodite and Ares in the Theban story, but the Etruscans made it a loving marriage behind an altar, not an adultery exposed by Hephaestus as in the Odyssey.