Bronze Mirror: The Birth of Menrva (British Museum, 1856,1213.4)

An engraved Etruscan bronze mirror back, its handle terminating in a mule's head, showing the birth of Menrva bursting fully armed from the head of her father Tinia, an Etruscan retelling of the Greek myth of Athena's birth from Zeus. Six figures appear within a wreath border, identified by retrograde Etruscan names inscribed around the edge: Tinia, the sky god and head of the Etruscan pantheon; Menrva, goddess of wisdom, war and craft, shown emerging from his head; Uni, his consort, queen of the gods; and three further figures, Thalna, Laran and Maristiusta (probably corresponding to Poseidon), attending the scene. Such mirrors, engraved on the reverse of a polished bronze disc and given as gifts, most often to women, were a characteristic form of Etruscan luxury metalwork and a major surviving source for Etruscan religious iconography, since so much of the tradition's own textual record has been lost.