Professor Emeritus Massimo Pallottino

Massimo Pallottino was born in November 1909 and died at his home in Rome on 7 February 1995. Appointed Professor of Etruscology and Italic Antiquities in the University of Rome (`La Sapienza') in 1945, he was one of the foremost scholars of modern Etruscan studies embracing classical archaeology and prehistory, ancient history, epigraphy and linguistics, on all of which aspects he wrote articles or books. He was a founder member, in 1944, of the Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica (A.I.A.C.), an active member of its governing body and editor between 1945 and 1956 of its publication, Fasti Archaeologici (Annual Bulletin of Classical Archaeology), a unique international bibliographical reference work. The Association's president from 1984-9, Pallottino was a vigorous advocate of international co-operation and free communication between colleagues in all countries, aims promoted by the A.I.A.C.'s International Congress of Classical Archaeology held every five years. His first publications appeared in the thirties and forties: Tarquinia, Elementi di grammatica etrusca, La scuola du Vulca, L'origine degli Etruschi and, most notably, Etruscologia (1942) was revised several times and translated into many languages. Pallottino exercised enormous influence, not only on Etruscan studies but on the whole of Italian archaeology, and his exhibition `Art and Civilisation of the Etruscans' held in 1955-6 received international acclaim. On relinquishing his editorship of the Fasti, (but remaining on the editorial board) he assumed responsibility for the Enciclopedia Universale dell'Arte, while publishing his own works: La Peinture etrusque, the very successful Testimonia linguae Etruscae, Cos'e l'archaeologia and Civiltà artistica etrusco-italica, and, from 1957, excavating at Pyrgi. In 1964 this excavation uncovered one of the greatest Italian finds of the century: the golden inscription, written in Etruscan and Phoenician, commemorating the gift by a king of Caere to the goddess Uni/Astarte. In the 1970s, Pallottinoturned his attention to the more generally Italic world of archaic Rome, mounting the exhibitions `Civiltà del Lazio primitivo', `Naissance de Rome' and `La grande Roma dei Tarquinii', and publishing his last book Origini e storia primitiva di Roma, which appeared in 1993. However, Etruscan studies were not abandoned. In the same period he launched the Thesaurus linguae Etruscae and, in 1992, organized the last of his great exhibitions, `Gli Etruschi e l`Europa'. Tireless to the end, when he died Pallottino was working on the first chapter of a book on the Etruscan language, his first and last love. He died on 7 February 1995.