Stone matrix from the Etruscan area of Civita Castellana (Viterbo, Italy). Discovered in the late 1800s, it was used to "mass-produce" terracotta antefixes.
They are often found together with their positives; sometimes only the matrix is found, as in the case.
Thanks to the collaboration with the Sapienza Museum Pole and the Department of Sciences of Antiquity, it was decided to use to reconstruct the object digitally through photogrammetry and make a virtual model of the antefix, from which a "positive" of the matrix under study could then be extrapolated.
The possibility of observing the positive of the Civita Castellana matrix allowed the interpretation of it, leading the scene depicted back to the myth of the sacrifice of Efigenia, by which her father Agamemnon won the war against Troy by ingratiating himself with the will of the gods.
It is now on display at the Archaeological Museum of the Agro Falisco and Fort Sangallo.