In the religion of ancient Rome, a haruspex was a person trained to practise a form of divination called haruspicy, the inspection of the entrails of Animal sacrifice, especially the of sacrificed domestic sheep and poultry.
Various ancient cultures of the Near East, such as the Babylonians, also read omens specifically from the liver, a practice also known by the Greek term hepatoscopy (also hepatomancy).
The Roman concept is directly derived from Etruscan religion, as one of the three branches of the disciplina Etrusca.
Etymology
The Latin terms
haruspex and
haruspicina are from an archaic word,
hīra = "entrails, intestines" (cognate with
hernia = "protruding viscera" and
hira = "empty gut"; PIE
*ǵʰer-) and from the root
spec- = "to watch, observe". The Greek ἡπατοσκοπία
hēpatoskōpia is from
hēpar = "liver" and
skop- = "to examine".
Ancient Near East
[[File:Divinatory livers Louvre AO19837.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Assyria#Old Assyrian Empire, 2025–1522 BCE|
Akkadian language ]] clay sheep liver models written in a local dialect, recovered from the palace at Mari, dated to the 19th or 18th century BCE.]]
The Babylonians were famous for hepatoscopy. This practice is mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel 21:21:
One Babylonian clay model of a sheep's liver, dated between 1900 and 1600 BCE, is conserved in the British Museum.[ The Liver tablet 92668.]
The Assyro-Babylonian tradition was also adopted in Hittite religion. At least thirty-six liver-models have been excavated at Hattusa. Of these, the majority are inscribed in Akkadian, but a few examples also have inscriptions in the native Hittite language, indicating the adoption of haruspicy as part of the native, vernacular cult.[four specimens are known to Güterbock (1987): CTH 547 II, KBo 9 67, KBo 25, KUB 4 72 (VAT 8320 in Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin), for which see also George Sarton, Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece (1952, 1970), p. 93, citing Alfred Boissier, Mantique babylonienne et mantique hittite (1935).]
Ancient Italy
Roman haruspicy was a form of communication with the gods. Rather than strictly predicting future events, this form of Roman divination allowed humans to discern the attitudes of the gods and react in a way that would maintain harmony between the human and divine worlds (pax deorum).
[Johnston, Sarah Iles. "Divination: Greek and Roman Divination". In Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., edited by Lindsay Jones, 2375–2378. Vol. 4. Detroit, Michigan: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. Gale eBooks.] Before taking important actions, especially in battle, Romans conducted animal sacrifices to discover the will of the gods according to the information gathered through reading the animals' entrails.
The entrails (most importantly the liver, but also the lungs and heart) contained a large number of signs that indicated the gods' approval or disapproval. These signs could be interpreted according to the appearance of the organs, for example, if the liver was "smooth, shiny and full" or "rough and shrunken".
[Driediger-Murphy, Lindsay G, and Eidinow, Esther. Ancient Divination and Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press USA - OSO, 2019.] The Etruscans looked for the
caput iocineris, or "head of the liver". It was considered a bad omen if this part was missing from the animal's liver. The haruspex would then study the flat visceral side of the liver after examining the
caput iocineris.
[Stevens, Natalie L. C. “A New Reconstruction of the Etruscan Heaven.” American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 113, no. 2, Archaeological Institute of America, 2009]
Haruspicy in Ancient Italy originated with the Etruscans. Textual evidence for Etruscan divination comes from an Etruscan inscription: the priest Laris Pulenas' (250–200 BCE) epitaph mentions a book he wrote on haruspicy. A collection of sacred texts called the Etrusca disciplina, written in Etruscan, were essentially guides on different forms of divination, including haruspicy and augury.[MacIntosh Turfa, Jean, and Tambe, Ashwini, eds. The Etruscan World. London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central.] In addition, a number of archeological artifacts depict Etruscan haruspicy. These include a bronze mirror with an image of a haruspex dressed in Etruscan priest's clothing, holding a liver while a crowd gathers near him. Another significant artifact relating to haruspicy in Ancient Italy is the Piacenza Liver. This bronze model of a sheep's liver was found by chance by a farmer in 1877. Names of gods are etched into the surface and organized into different sections.
At the most influential time of haruspicy, the Roman senate decreed that 'a certain number of young Etruscans' should be instructed in it to provide haruspices for the state.[“LacusCurtius • Haruspices (Smith’s Dictionary, 1875).” Accessed March 19, 2025. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Haruspices.html.
] These Etruscans were later appointed as Roman augurs.[Kobori, K. 2013: “An Observation on the Religion of the Romans in
Republican Rome – on the concept of Religio”, PhD thesis (Tokyo
University)]
In later days when haruspicy became a neglected art,
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Northeast Africa
In southwest Ethiopia and adjacent area of
South Sudan, a number of ethnic communities have had the practice of reading animal entrails to divine the future.
[Abbink, Jon. "Reading the entrails: analysis of an African divination discourse." Man (1993): 705-726.] Some of the groups that have been documented as having this practice include
Surma people,
Mursi people,
Toposa people,
Nyangatom people,
Didinga people,
Murle people, Me'en,
Turkana people,
Konso people,
[Otto, Shako. "Traditional Konso culture and the missionary impact." In Annales d'Ethiopie, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 149-180. 2004.] Dime language,
[Todd, Dave M. "Herbalists, Diviners and Shamans in Dimam." Paideuma (1977): 189-204.] Karamojong,
[Knighton, Ben. "The State as Raider among the Karamojong:‘Where there are no Guns, they use the Threat of Guns’." Africa 73, no. 3 (2003): 427-455.] Dodoth people,
[Hazama, Itsuhiro. "A review of Kaori Kawai's works on Dodoth and raiding." Nomadic Peoples 14, no. 2 (2010): 164-167.] Kalenjin people[Karani, Shiyuka Elvis. Religious Experience of the Kalenjin of Kerio-Valley Cultural Complex, Kenya, 1800-1965. PhD Diss., Kenyatta University. 2023.]
Haruspication has also been practiced in Kenya, such as the Kamba people[Harris, Grace. "Possession “Hysteria” in a Kenya Tribe 1." American Anthropologist 59, no. 6 (1957): 1046-1066.] and the Kipsigis people.[Barton, Juxon. "Notes on the Kipsikis or Lumbwa Tribe of Kenya Colony." The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 53 (1923): 42-78.]
See also
Notes
Bibliography
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Walter Burkert, 1992. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Thames and Hudson), pp 46–51.
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Derek Collins, "Mapping the Entrails: The Practice of Greek Hepatoscopy" American Journal of Philology 129 2008: 319-345
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Marie-Laurence Haack, Les haruspices dans le monde romain (Bordeaux : Ausonius, 2003).
-
Hans Gustav Güterbock, 'Hittite liver models' in: Language, Literature and History (FS Reiner) (1987), 147–153, reprinted in Hoffner (ed.) Selected Writings, Assyriological Studies no. 26 (1997).[3]
External links
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This source suggests that Greek and Roman haruspices used the entrails of human corpses; the victim should be "without spot or blemish".
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Haruspices, article in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
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Figurine of Haruspex, 4th Cent. B.C. Vatican Museums Online, Gregorian Etruscan Museum, Room III
