While some 13,000 Etruscan texts exist, most of these are very short. Consequently, much of what we know about the Etruscans comes not from historical evidence, but from their art and the archaeological record.

We have no surviving histories or literature in Etruscan, and the only extant writing that can be considered a text, as opposed to an inscription, was painted in ink on linen, preserved through the fortuitous reuse of the linen as wrappings for an Egyptian mummy.

The Metropolitan Museum's outstanding collection of ancient Etruscan art includes over one thousand objects dating from about 900 B.C. to about 100 B.C. They have been acquired either in groups or individually since the first group of Etruscan vases was donated in 1875 by Luigi Palma di Cesnola, the Museum's first director from 1879 to 1904. In 2007, the Department of Greek and Roman Art updated and greatly enhanced the display of Etruscan art with the opening of a reinstalled permanent gallery devoted to more than 550 of the most important works from pre-Roman Italy, assembled on the mezzanine that overlooks the new Leon Levy and Shelby White Court. In addition, the adjacent Study Collection gallery that covers all aspects of the collection of the Museum's Department of Greek and Roman Art holds another 150 objects from ancient Etruria. Now, the collection is thoroughly documented in print, combining the most up-to-date scholarship with brilliant digital photography. Many of the objects had never been published before or only many decades ago. In addition, visual and textual information on these works has been augmented digitally on the Museum's ever-expanding website. The art of ancient Etruria retains its fascination even to the modern age. Artists and writers—notably Alberto Giacometti and D. H. Lawrence—have found inspiration in these intriguing objects. Contemporary artists, scholars, and the Metropolitan Museum's broad public will now benefit greatly from this informative volume on these extraordinary works of art.

The invention of glassblowing led to an enormous increase in the range of shapes and designs that glassworkers could produce, and the mold-blowing process soon developed as an offshoot of free-blowing.

Although gold as a commodity appears to have been largely controlled by the king, Egyptians of less than royal status also owned gold jewelry.

Pamela, a participant in this summer's Digital Stories workshop, discusses some of the differences between black-and-white and color photography.

During the earliest years of European expansion onto the American continents, the search for gold was one of the driving factors in the exploration and colonization of the vast lands.

The prosperous upper classes of Augustan Rome appreciated [gold-band] glass for its stylistic value and apparent opulence

Alfred Lucas, one of the foremost early researchers in the study of ancient Egyptian technology, correctly surmised that the vast majority of such colorations resulted from fortuitous tarnishing of silver-bearing gold and also recognized correctly that a smaller group of objects bearing a distinctly different red coloration represented another phenomenon altogether.