ASTRONOMY AND ETRUSCAN RITUAL: THE CASE OF THE ARA DELLA REGINA IN TARQUINIA

The ancient town of Tarquinia is the key place of the Etruscan system of beliefs, since its foundations were credited to Tarchon, descendant of the Greek hero Herakles, founder of the Etruscan League, and discloser of the sacred texts of the Etrusca Disciplina. They were said to come from the infant oracle Tages, who sprang out from the terrain in front of Tarchon while he was ploughing a field. In order to gain a better understanding of the relationship between the archaeological records and the Etruscan symbolic world we investigate here on different orientations and on their possible symbolic meaning at the Ara della Regina, the sanctuary of Tarquinia. The main basement appears to be related to the sun rising a decades before Spring equinox, while the archaic altar - probably representing Tarchon's cenotaph - was orientated to the setting of the constellation Herakles.