Well I hope there is a factual answer to whatever the heck this is…the following are pictures of some sort of Submarine looking thing made out of clay. The clay is a reddish brown, it has many holes and an odd thumb grip on the bottom. The writing is Italian I think and there are several seals or stamps on the side of it. The only thing I don’t know is what the heck is it? Any Ideas?
Looks like some type of Ocarina…
Yes, it’s an ocarina.
I’m thinking it might be an ocarina.
1920’s BCE style death submarine
It’s an ocarina, sir.
You can now play that whistling gunslinger tune from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly on the original instrument!
Oh, of course it’s an Ocarina… 
I have never seen one of those. I wonder how old this one is.
The stamp in the third picture actually says “Ocarina”…
Okay, here’s what I found just googling around:
The large stamp says “2 MEDAGLIE TORINO EO A(?)NVERSA”. “Medaglie” is “medals” and “Torino” is “Turin”. The rest I don’t know.
The stamp on the underside is “SILVESTRI LUIGI, CAMISANO VICENTINO”. Luigi Silvestri was an instrument-maker in the late 19th/early 20th century. He died in 1927. So the instrument isn’t THAT old, but it’s definitely vintage.
Gosh, I saw the thread title and on mouseover I thought it might be some kind of ocarina.
In fact, can it be anything else?
I don’t want to say definitively, but it looks like it could be an ocarina.
Have we figured out what it is yet?
I’m not sure if anyone mentioned this, but it may just be an ocarina-type instrument.
I knew a girl from Ocarina once…
Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ocarina goes walking
And when she passes, each one she passes goes - ah
When she walks, she’s like a samba that swings so cool and sways so gently
That when she passes, each one she passes goes - aah
Ooh But he watches so sadly, How can he tell her he loves her,
Yes he would give his heart gladly,
but instead when she walks to the sea,
she looks straight ahead not at him,
Tall, and tan, and young, and lovely, the girl from Ocarina goes walking
And when she passes, he smiles - but she doesn’t see
“Rio” by Duran Duran
It’s amazing how close the yellow submarine from the Beatles carton The Yellow Submarine looks like the picture you posted. I wonder if they modeled it after the ocarina during one of the trips they took.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://shopping.animazing.com/cart/images/480.gif&imgrefurl=http://shopping.animazing.com/cgi-bin/cart/viewitem%3Fitem%3D480&h=287&w=420&sz=135&hl=en&start=8&um=1&tbnid=cYwmAMHrJkOzJM:&tbnh=85&tbnw=125&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dyellow%2Bsubmarine%26svnum%3D100%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN
Well put it there, on the table!
(ha! I was gonna post just that line!)
I was thinking “ocarina” when I saw the pictures, fwiw. Used to have one. Picked it up in London, actually. Loved to play it. Then my brother stomped it into dust. He didn’t appreciate my unique ocarina style.