Reading Livers Through Reading Literature: HEPATOSCOPY and HARUSPICY in Iliad 20:469 ff & 24:212 ff, Aeneid 4:60 ff & 10.175 ff, Cicero and Pliny on Divination, among others
Co-authored research by Patrick Hunt, Stanford University, and Whitney de Luna, Stanford Hospital Liver Clinic
Fig. 1 Etruscan Bronze Mirror of Chalchas the Seer Reading a Liver (Vatican: Gregorian Museum, Rome, cat # 12240)
Figure 2 Sheep’s liver in clay. 14.6 cm across. Old Babylonian, circa 1900-1600 BC.
Provenance: likely Sippar in modern southern Iraq. British Museum, London, Western Asia Collection # ME 92668
Introduction
Divination by interpreting livers in the ancient world from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean and from the Bronze Age to the Classical world is a fascinating topic for study of religion, magic and science. Complicated long-term traditions governed haruspicy or hepatoscopy, i.e., liver interpretation or examination. One primary question to be asked is why was a liver used for divination and why a sheep’s liver, as this appears to be the most common organ used across many cultures and periods?
Here are some tentative thoughts. 1) Although it is relative to how much wealth individuals might possess, sheep were more easily sacrificed as smaller animals than expensive cattle. 2) On sacrifice or autopsy, the sheep liver is very close to the abdominal surface, is centrally located (center right) and small enough to manipulate. 3) The natural smoothness of the liver makes any abnormality easy to identify (i.e. coarseness), a surface characteristic that makes the liver relatively easier to read than other organs. 4) The ancients viewed blood as the source of life. Given that the liver is composed of dense tissue full of blood, the ancients understood the liver as vital to life. Extrapolating from human life, a severe flesh-penetrating wound to that part of the abdomen was often quickly fatal, thus supporting their perception.
