Origin from 1750 BCE
Barutu was the professional divinatory art of the baru priest, who read the will of the gods, chiefly Shamash the sun god and Adad the storm god, in the internal organs of a sacrificed sheep, above all the liver. Before consulting the gods on a matter of state, war, illness or private concern, the baru posed a yes or no question aloud, sacrificed an unblemished sheep, and examined the liver's lobes, gall bladder and a small protrusion called the presence of the god for anomalies, checking each feature against a codified reference. Clay models of sheep livers, some inscribed with omens and used for training or record keeping, survive from as early as the Old Babylonian period, and the divinatory series known as Baru covers thousands of standardized liver and organ omens compiled over centuries. The Assyrian and Babylonian royal courts retained baru priests as standing advisors, and no major state decision was normally taken without their reading.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1750 BCE falls within the Old Babylonian period, conventionally about 1894 to 1595 BCE, which its own text names as when the earliest surviving clay liver models were made. Place of Origin Historical OriginAttested from the Old Babylonian period onward, practiced by a specialized class of diviner priest whose readings of a sacrificed animal's liver and other organs were consulted before major royal and military decisions. 1 Status
Current StatusHas no living practitioners; everything known of it comes from surviving cuneiform omen compendia and the archaeological remains of the diviners who once performed it. 1 Attributions
TraditionAncient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses situates the diviner's reading of a sacrificed animal's liver and entrails within the wider Mesopotamian tradition of extispicy, a specialist craft distinct from astrology or dream interpretation and practiced by trained baru priests attached to temple and palace. 1 PurposePracticed to divine the will of the gods and the outcome of planned undertakings by reading the configuration of a sacrificed animal's liver and other organs. 2 Meaning
Literal MeaningNamed for the baru, the specialist diviner who performed it, so the discipline is identified by its practitioner's title rather than by the act of organ inspection itself. 2 Text
Source TextThe Baru series, thousands of standardized organ omens 2 Practice
Who Performs ItClergy or ordained officiants 2 Practitioner Detail FrequencyAs the occasion requires 2 Consulted before a decision of state, war, illness or private concern, not to a schedule. Use
OccasionConsulted before major undertakings such as military campaigns, building projects and royal decisions, when a diviner would examine the entrails of a sacrificed animal, especially the liver, for signs of divine favor or warning. 1 Form
Implements and MaterialsA sacrificed sheep, chiefly its liver; clay liver models used for reference and training 2 Learn More
Reading a Liver Like a Trained Text
Extispicy in Mesopotamia was a learned craft rather than a spontaneous inspiration. A baru trained for years memorizing the Baru omen series, thousands of entries each recording a specific liver feature, a fissure in a particular lobe, an unusual gall bladder shape, a mark on the presence of the god, alongside the historical or personal outcome it was believed to portend. Clay models of sheep livers, some marked with the anatomical zones diviners named and others inscribed with the omens themselves, functioned as both teaching aids and durable references, and examples survive from Old Babylonian Mari and elsewhere going back to the early second millennium BCE.
Before the sacrifice, the baru formally addressed Shamash and Adad, posing the specific question to be answered as a yes or no proposition, since Mesopotamian extispicy was fundamentally a binary consultation technique, not an open ended prophecy. The animal was then killed and its organs examined feature by feature against the trained catalogue, with unfavorable and favorable signs weighed against one another to reach a final verdict. Some clay liver models carry a short written verdict alongside the anatomical marking they illustrate, letting modern scholars reconstruct not just what a baru looked for but the specific historical judgment a particular configuration was once recorded as having produced.
A Practice That Outlasted Mesopotamia Itself
Extispicy was a matter of state in Mesopotamia to a degree few other divinatory arts achieved. Neo-Assyrian royal correspondence shows kings routinely refusing to launch a campaign, appoint an official or even leave the palace without a favorable baru reading, and the query tablets that survive, formal questions submitted to Shamash and Adad on the king's behalf, are detailed enough to reconstruct entire foreign policy decisions from the ritual paperwork alone. The technique also traveled.
Most historians of religion accept that Etruscan haruspicy, the liver divination practiced in Etruria and inherited by Rome, descended from Mesopotamian extispicy through contact somewhere in the ancient Near East or Anatolia, a transmission visible in the strikingly similar practice of consulting a sacrificed animal's liver and in the Etruscan bronze Liver of Piacenza, a divinatory model closely paralleling the older Mesopotamian clay liver models in both function and design. Whether the transmission ran through a single identifiable route or through longer, looser contact across the Iron Age Mediterranean remains debated among specialists, but the technical resemblance between the two practices, separated by well over a thousand years and a different language and culture entirely, is treated as too close for independent invention.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Addressed To
Utu, Deities Barutu extispicy sought the will of the gods chiefly through Shamash (Utu) the sun god, per the ritual's own description.
Associated With
Adad, Deities The baru priest of Barutu read the will of the gods, chiefly Shamash the sun god and Adad the storm god, in the liver of a sacrificed sheep.
Belongs to Tradition
Related To
Etruscan and Roman haruspicy is widely held to derive its liver divination technique from this older Mesopotamian practice, transmitted west through Anatolia.
Sources
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