page_title: Etruscan religion
section_title: Spirits and deities
hierarchical_section_title: Etruscan religion / Beliefs / Spirits and deities
caption_attribution_description: Etruscan bronze statue of a warrior, nearly life-size, product of a workshop in Orvieto. The warrior wears a cuirass and once held in his right hand a patera and a spear in the left. The inscription in etruscan letters states that Ahal Trutitis dedicated the statue.
context_page_description: Etruscan religion comprises a set of stories, beliefs, and religious practices of the Etruscan civilization, originating in the 7th century BC from the preceding Iron Age Villanovan culture, heavily influenced by the mythology of ancient Greece and Phoenicia, and sharing similarities with concurrent Roman mythology and religion. As the Etruscan civilization was assimilated into the Roman Republic in the 4th century BC, the Etruscan religion and mythology were partially incorporated into ancient Roman culture, following the Roman tendency to absorb some of the local gods and customs of conquered lands.
context_section_description: After the 5th century, iconographic depictions show the deceased traveling to the underworld.  In several instances of Etruscan art, such as in the François Tomb in Vulci, a spirit of the dead is identified by the term hinthial, literally "(one who is) underneath". the souls of the ancestors, called man or mani (Latin Manes), were believed to be found around the mun or muni, or tombs,
  A god was called an ais (later eis), which in the plural is aisar.  The abode of a god was a fanu or luth, a sacred place, such as a favi, a grave or temple. There, one would need to make a fler (plural flerchva), or "offering".
  Three layers of deities are portrayed in Etruscan art. One appears to be divinities of an indigenous origin: Voltumna or Vertumnus, a primordial, chthonic god; Usil, god(-dess) of the sun; Tivr, god of the moon; Turan, goddess of love; Laran, god of war; Maris, goddess of (child-)birth; Leinth, goddess of death; Selvans, god of the woods; Nethuns, god of the waters; Thalna, god of trade; Turms, messenger of the gods; Fufluns, god of wine; the heroic figure Hercle; and Catha, whose religious sphere is uncertain.
  Ruling over them were higher deities that seem to reflect the Indo-European system: Tin or Tinia, the sky, Uni his wife (Juno), and Cel, the earth goddess.
  As a third layer, the Greek gods were adopted by the Etruscan system during the Etruscan Orientalizing Period of 750/700–600 BC. Examples are Aritimi (Artemis), Menrva (Minerva; Latin equivalent of Athena), and Pacha (Bacchus; Latin equivalent of Dionysus), and over time the primary trinity became Tinia, Uni and Menrva. This triad of gods were venerated in Tripartite temples similar to the later Roman Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus
  A fourth group, the so-called dii involuti or "veiled gods", are sometimes mentioned as superior to all the other deities, but these were never worshipped, named, or depicted directly.
caption: The Mars of Todi, a life-sized Etruscan bronze sculpture of a soldier making a votive offering, most likely to Laran, the Etruscan god of war, late 5th to early 4th century BC
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