Sleep and Death cista handle: A 2,400-year-old sculpture depicting gods carrying away Zeus' son during the Trojan War

A small bronze sculpture from twenty-four hundred years ago offers a glimpse into ancient storytelling. Created by Etruscan artisans, it once decorated a box and depicts a haunting scene from Greek mythology—the gods Sleep and Death in the act of carrying away a figure from the Trojan War. According to Live Science, the piece reveals how deeply Etruscan culture embraced Greek mythological themes, and how artists of antiquity immortalized these narratives in durable bronze, preserving them across millennia.

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