Etruscan Religion: Gods, Sacrifices, Liver Divination | Early European History And Religion

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ETRUSCAN RELIGION

Liver of Piacenza
Etruscan religion was heavily influenced by ancient Greek mythology and shared similarities with Roman mythology and religion. As the Etruscan civilization was gradually assimilated into the Roman Republic from the 4th century B.C.. some Etruscan religion and mythology was partially incorporated into ancient Roman culture, following the Roman pattern of absorbing some of the local gods and customs of conquered lands. The first evidence of an Etruscan religion can be traced back to the Villanovan culture. [Source Wikipedia]

Etruscan religion and belief system has been described as immanent polytheism — meaning all visible phenomena were considered to be manifestations of divine power, and that power was embodied in deities who acted continually on the world but could be dissuaded or persuaded by mortals.

The Etruscans believed that the will of the gods was manifested through signs in the natural world. The patterns made by flying bird were read for auspicious signs. The word auspicious was originally used to describe a favorable flight of birds. A gold coloured fleece was a prophecy of future prosperity for the clan. Lightning and thunder were read for symbols of good and bad luck. The future was divined by observing the direction of thunderbolts. Roman leaders called on Etruscan soothsayers to direct lighting bolts at the Visigoths. Gladiator battle were thought to have evolved from Etruscan funerary games.

The A.D. 1st century Roman historian Seneca the Younger observed: “This is the difference between us and the Etruscans. We believe that lighting is caused by clouds colliding, whereas they believe that the clouds collide in order to create lightning. Since they attribute everything to the gods. They are led to believe not that events have a meaning because they have happened, but that they happen in order to express a meaning.”

Etruscan Gods

Etruscan gods fell into three categories: ones taken from the Greek colonies to the south, ones taken from other Italian cultures and ones they developed themselves. Etruscan religion was dominated by a triad of gods: the precursors of Juno, Jupiter and Minerva. The Etruscans also seemed to be especially interested in gods of the underworld and the afterlife.

Among the Etruscan deities of indigenous origin were Voltumna or Vertumnus, a primordial, chthonic god; Usil, goddess of the sun; Tivr, god of the moon; Turan, goddess of love; Maris, goddess of childbirth; Leinth, goddess of death; Laran, god of war; Fufluns, god of wine; Selvans, god of the woods; Thalna, god of trade; Turms, messenger of the gods; the heroic figure Hercle; and a number of underworld deities such as Catha, Lur, Suri, Thanr and Calus (all named on the Lead Plaque of Magliano), Ruling over them were higher deities that seem to reflect the Indo-European system: Tin or Tinia, the sky, Uni his wife (Juno), Nethuns, god of the waters, and Cel, the earth goddess. This triad of gods were venerated in Tripartite temples similar to the later Roman Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. [Source Wikipedia]

Etruscan deities with ties to Greek gods and heroes, adopted during the Etruscan Orientalizing Period of 750–600 B.C., include Aritimi (Artemis), Menrva (Minerva, Athena), the hero Hercle (Hercules), and Pacha (Bacchus, Dionysus), and over time the primary trinity became Tinia, Uni and Menrva. An additional group, the so-called dii involuti or "veiled gods", are sometimes mentioned as superior to all the other deities, but these were never worshipped, named, or depicted directly.

Etruscan Cult Temple

Necropolis in Sutri
In July 2024, archaeologists said they had discovered an Etruscan cult temple, called an oikos, at the necropolis of Sasso Pinzuto in Tuscany, Italy, dating to the 7th century B.C. The temple, which includes a transverse atrium and three rooms oriented north-northeast, was found among 120 tombs carved into a hillside, first found as early as 1830, according to the Center for Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies and University of Naples. “In all likelihood,” Alessandro Naso, professor at the University of Naples, said in a translated report from Italy’s Finestre sull Arte, “the Sass Pinzuto oikos will become a reference for funerary cults in archaic Etruscan necropolis.”

The necropolis contains roughly 120 chamber tombs, all dating from the 7th to 6th centuries B.C. Tim Newcomb wrote in Popular Mechanics: Three mounds contain the bulk of the burials. North of the largest mound, archaeologists found nine small pits dug for additional burials, and it was near this spot that the temple was discovered. Experts believe the entire site was designed for Etruscan elites. The architecture of the burial grounds shows off the style of ancient tombs with chambers dug into rock, divided into rooms that can be used by the same family for multiple generations. The temple itself includes an atrium along with more chambers on the long side of the structure.

In addition to the cult temple, archaeologists found further information that can help spell out what may have happened inside the temple. Decorated clay slabs depict ceremonies of the ancient Etruscan elites, chronicling everything from the use of horsemen and chariots to the purpose of dancers and musicians during banquets. Archaeologists also found the remains of clay and metal furnishings in the temple that looked to have been in use when the ancient society was using the cavernous space. “It is a further building block for the knowledge and protection of Tuscany’s archaeological sites,” added Simona Carosi, an area referent archaeological officer.

Etruscan Liver and Chicken Divination

The Etruscans used haruspicy (searching for omens in the entrails of animals) to predict the future. Etruscan fortunetellers were famed for their liver reading skills. After a sacrifice the body was opened up and the liver was examined. The liver was divided into region which correspond with the constellations in the sky. The right side denoted good luck and the left side, bad luck. A bronze liver unearthed by archaeologists at Piacenza was divided into forty regions, each marked with name of a different god. ["World Religions" edited by Geoffrey Parrinder, Facts on File Publications, New York]

According to the Encyclopedia of Religion: Etruscan soothsayers boasted of being able to foretell the future, either by examining the entrails of sacrificed animals (libri haruspicini), by observing lightning (libri fulgurales), or by interpreting marvels (libri rituales). The first method, divining by examination of entrails, was especially popular. It featured, among the exta (entrails) used, the liver, which was considered a microcosm of the world. Every lesion detected in some part of the former allowed an inference on the fate of the latter. [Source: Robert Schilling (1987), Jörg Rüpke (2005), Encyclopedia of Religion, Encyclopedia.com]

The custom of breaking a wishbone (the Y-shaped clavicle of a fowl) with a secret wish going to person with the bigger piece has been dated to Etruria in 400 B.C. The Etruscans believed that chickens were soothsayers because they foretold the laying of an egg with a squawk.

A 2nd century B.C. model of a sheep’s liver was divided into 16 regions corresponding to sections of the heavens and names of deities. According to the Etruscan "hen oracle," a circle was drawn on the ground with 20 parts, corresponding to letters in the Etruscan alphabet, with pieces of grain in each sector. A sacred chicken was placed in the middle and foretold the future by forming the letters for words by pecking at the grain in the letter's sector.When the sacred hen died, its bones were dried and the clavicle was stroked before making a wish and thus became known as the wishbone. The clavicle was selected over other bones because its Y-shape had some symbolic meaning. The customs of breaking it for a wish developed in Roman times partly as the result of to many people fighting over one bone.

Etruscan votive heads from the 4th to 2nd centuries BC found in different sanctuaries of Etruria

Liver Divination Among the Etruscans

A 2nd century B.C. bronze model of a sheep's liver, divided into 16 regions corresponding to sections of the heavens and names of deities, found near Piacenza in 1877. It shows the chief parts of the liver and is covered with Etruscan characters, which furnish for the most part names of deities. The model was probably used for purposes of instruction in the Etruscan system of hepatoscopy—just like a similar Babylonian model.

Historian Morris Jastrow said: “Among the Etruscans we...find liver divination not only occupying an important position in the official cult, but becoming a part of it. As a companion piece to the Babylonian model of a sheep’s liver, we have a bronze model, found” in 1877 “near Piacenza in Italy, which, covered with Etruscan characters, shows almost the same general design as the Babylonian model. This Etruscan model, dating probably from the third century B.C., but taking us back to a prototype that may be considerably older, served precisely the same purpose as its Babylonian counterpart: namely, to explain liver divination to the young haruspices of Etruria. The importance of this form of divination is illustrated by other Etruscan antiquities, such as the tomb of an haruspex, who holds in his left hand a liver as the sign-manual of his profession. [Source: Morris Jastrow, Lectures more than ten years after publishing his book “Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria” 1911]

Etruscans and Greek Sacrifices and Roman Liver Divination

Historian Morris Jastrow said: ““Through the Etruscans hepatoscopy came to the Romans, and it is significant that down through the days of the Roman Republic the official augurs were generally Etruscans, as Cicero and other writers expressly tell us.The references to liver divination are numerous in Latin writers, and although the term used by them is a more general one, exta ,—usually rendered “entrails,”—when we come to examine the passages, we find, in almost all cases, the omen specified is a sign noted on the liver of a sacrificial animal. So Livy, Valerius Maximus, Pliny, and Plutarch unite in recording that when the omens were taken shortly before the death of Marcellus, during the war against Hannibal, the liver of the sacrificial animal had no processus pyramidalis, which was regarded as an unfavourable sign, presaging the death of the Roman general. Pliny specifies a large number of historical occasions when forecasts were made by the augurs, and almost all his illustrations are concerned with signs observed on the liver. [Source: Morris Jastrow, Lectures more than ten years after publishing his book “Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria” 1911]

“The same is the case with the numerous references to divination through sacrificial animals found in Greek writers; for the Greeks and Romans alike resorted to this form of divination on all occasions. In Greek, too, the term applied to such divination is a general one, hiera or hiereia , the “sacred parts,” but the specific examples in every instance deal with signs on the liver. Thus, e.g., in the Electra of Euripides, Ægisthos, when surprised by Orestes, is represented in the act of examining the liver of an ox sacrificed on a festive occasion. Holding the liver in his hand, Ægisthos observes that “there was no lobe,and that the gate and the gall-bladder portended evil.” While Ægisthos is thus occupied, Orestes steals upon him from behind and deals the fatal blow. Æschylus, in the eloquent passage in which the Chorus describes the many benefits conferred on mankind by the unhappy Prometheus, ascribes to the Titan the art also of divination, but while using the general term, the liver is specified: ‘The smoothness of the entrails, and what the colour is, whether portending good fortune, and the multi-coloured well-formed gallbladder.’

Sarcophagus from Chiusi

“Whether or not the Greeks adopted this system of hepatoscopy through the influence likewise of the Etruscans, or whether or not it was due to more direct contact with Babylonian-Assyrian culture is an open question. The eastern origin of the Etruscans is now generally admitted, and it may well be that in the course of their migration westward they came in contact with settlements in Greece; but on the other hand, the close affiliation between Greece and Asia Minor furnishes a stronger presumption in favour of the more direct contact with the Babylonian system through its spread among Hittite settlements.

Etruscan Funerary Practices and Beliefs About the Dead

After the 5th century B.C., images in tombs and on pottery show the dead traveling to the underworld. In several examples, of Etruscan art, such as the François Tomb in Vulci, a spirit of the dead is identified by the term hinthial, literally "(one who is) underneath". The souls of the ancestors, called man or mani, were believed to be found around the mun or muni, or tombs. [Source Wikipedia]

The Roman custom of displaying the body of the dead, ritual lamentations and hired mourners appears to have originated with the Etruscans. Roman funerary art and architecture and concepts of the afterlife also seem to have also been shaped by the Etruscans.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated October 2024