Liber Linteus
Encyclopedia
The Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis (also rarely known as Liber Agramensis) (Latin for Linen Book of Zagreb or Book of Agram
) is the longest Etruscan
text and the only extant linen
book. It remains mostly untranslated because of the lack of knowledge about the Etruscan language, though the few words which can be understood indicate that the text is most likely a ritual calendar
.
The fabric of the book was preserved when it was used for mummy
wrappings in Ptolemaic Egypt
. The mummy and the manuscript
are now kept in a refrigerated room at the Archaeological Museum
in Zagreb
, Croatia
.
Royal Chancellery, resigned his post and embarked upon a tour of several countries, including Egypt
. While in Alexandria, he purchased a sarcophagus
containing a female mummy, as a souvenir of his travels.
Barić displayed the mummy at his home in Vienna
, standing it upright in the corner of his sitting room. At some point he removed the linen wrappings and put them on display in a separate glass case, though he seems to have never realised either the writing or its importance.
The mummy remained on display at his home until his death in 1859, when it passed into the possession of his brother Ilija, a priest in Slavonia
. He took no interest in the mummy, and, in 1867, donated it to the State Institute of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia in Zagreb (now the Archaeological Museum). Their catalogue described it as follows:
Heinrich Brugsch, who noticed the text, but believed them to be Egyptian hieroglyphs. He did not undertake any further research on the text, until 1877, when a chance conversation with Richard Burton
about runes
made him realise that the writing was not Egyptian. They realised the text was potentially important, but wrongly concluded that it was a transliteration of the Egyptian Book of the Dead
in the Arabic script
.
In 1891, the wrappings were transported to Vienna, where they were thoroughly examined by Jacob Krall, an expert on the Coptic language
, who expected the writing to be either Coptic, Libyan
or Carian
. Krall was the first to identify the language as Etruscan and reassemble the strips. It was his work that established that the linen wrappings constituted a manuscript written in Etruscan.
near Lake Trasimeno
, where four major Etruscan cities were located: modern day Arezzo
, Perugia
, Chiusi
and Cortona
. Such municipalities would have likely had one or more temples in which the Liber Linteus was produced or utilized.
The age of the book is unknown. However, by comparing the shape and style of the characters contained within the text to those found on other Etruscan artifacts it is possible to infer an approximate date of 250 BCE. The manuscript must have been created prior to the wholesale decline of the Etruscan language in favor of Latin
; as such a work could have only been produced by a priest or highly educated person possessing special religious knowledge and literacy in Etruscan.
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is intact, showing the definite end of the book.
There are 230 lines of text, with 1200 legible words. Black ink has been used for the main text, and red ink for lines and diacritic
s.
In use it would have been folded so that one page sat atop another like a codex
, rather than being wound along like a scroll
. Julius Caesar is said to have folded scrolls in similar accordion
fashion while on campaigns.
The theory that this is a religious text, although still untranslated, is strengthened by recurring words and phrases that are surmised to have liturgical or dedicatory meanings. Some notable formulae on the Liber Linteus include a hymn-like repetition of in column 7 as well as variations on the phrase <šacni-cle-ri cilθl, špure-ri, meθlume-ri enaš> ("for the spirits of night, for (the) city (and) for (the) people everlasting" ) found throughout the text.
In the first century BCE, the Roman Empire
conquered Egypt. Like the Greeks
before them, Roman settlers embraced many aspects of Egyptian culture, including mummification. Such was the vogue of this burial practice in the first century CE that there was a widespread shortage of cloth. The price of cloth rose sharply, and corpses were wrapped in anything available (one has been found wrapped in a sail). The Liber Linteus might have been sold for this purpose.
At first, the provenance and identity of the mummy were unknown, due to the irregular nature of its excavation and sale. This led to speculation that the mummy may have had some connection to either the Liber Linteus or the Etruscans
. But a papyrus buried with her proves that she was Egyptian and gives her identity as Nesi-hensu, the wife of Paher-hensu, a tailor from Thebes
.
Agram
Agram may refer to:Places*Agram, the historic Austrian German name for Zagreb, Croatia*Agram Township, Minnesota, United States*Agram mountains, a small range in north eastern Niger...
) is the longest Etruscan
Etruscan language
The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna...
text and the only extant linen
Linen
Linen is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum. Linen is labor-intensive to manufacture, but when it is made into garments, it is valued for its exceptional coolness and freshness in hot weather....
book. It remains mostly untranslated because of the lack of knowledge about the Etruscan language, though the few words which can be understood indicate that the text is most likely a ritual calendar
Calendar
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...
.
The fabric of the book was preserved when it was used for mummy
Mummy
A mummy is a body, human or animal, whose skin and organs have been preserved by either intentional or incidental exposure to chemicals, extreme coldness , very low humidity, or lack of air when bodies are submerged in bogs, so that the recovered body will not decay further if kept in cool and dry...
wrappings in Ptolemaic Egypt
Ptolemaic Egypt
Ptolemaic Egypt began when Ptolemy I Soter invaded Egypt and declared himself Pharaoh of Egypt in 305 BC and ended with the death of queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and the Roman conquest in 30 BC. The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state, extending from southern Syria in the east, to...
. The mummy and the manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
are now kept in a refrigerated room at the Archaeological Museum
Archaeological Museum, Zagreb
The Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, Croatia is an archaeological museum with over 450,000 varied artifacts and monuments, gathered from various sources.Some of the famous artifacts include:...
in Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
, Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
.
Purchase of the mummy
In 1848, Mihajlo Barić (1791–1859), a Croatian minor official in the HungarianKingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
Royal Chancellery, resigned his post and embarked upon a tour of several countries, including Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. While in Alexandria, he purchased a sarcophagus
Sarcophagus
A sarcophagus is a funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved or cut from stone. The word "sarcophagus" comes from the Greek σαρξ sarx meaning "flesh", and φαγειν phagein meaning "to eat", hence sarkophagus means "flesh-eating"; from the phrase lithos sarkophagos...
containing a female mummy, as a souvenir of his travels.
Barić displayed the mummy at his home in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, standing it upright in the corner of his sitting room. At some point he removed the linen wrappings and put them on display in a separate glass case, though he seems to have never realised either the writing or its importance.
The mummy remained on display at his home until his death in 1859, when it passed into the possession of his brother Ilija, a priest in Slavonia
Slavonia
Slavonia is a geographical and historical region in eastern Croatia...
. He took no interest in the mummy, and, in 1867, donated it to the State Institute of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia in Zagreb (now the Archaeological Museum). Their catalogue described it as follows:
- Mummy of a young woman (with wrappings removed) standing in a glass case and held upright by an iron rod. Another glass case contains the mummy's bandages which are completely covered with writing in an unknown and hitherto undeciphered language, representing an outstanding treasure of the National Museum.
Initial examinations
The mummy and its wrappings were examined the same year by the German EgyptologistEgyptology
Egyptology is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious practices in the AD 4th century. A practitioner of the discipline is an “Egyptologist”...
Heinrich Brugsch, who noticed the text, but believed them to be Egyptian hieroglyphs. He did not undertake any further research on the text, until 1877, when a chance conversation with Richard Burton
Richard Francis Burton
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS was a British geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas as well as his...
about runes
Runic alphabet
The runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes to write various Germanic languages before the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter...
made him realise that the writing was not Egyptian. They realised the text was potentially important, but wrongly concluded that it was a transliteration of the Egyptian Book of the Dead
Book of the Dead
The Book of the Dead is the modern name of an ancient Egyptian funerary text, used from the beginning of the New Kingdom to around 50 BC. The original Egyptian name for the text, transliterated rw nw prt m hrw is translated as "Book of Coming Forth by Day". Another translation would be "Book of...
in the Arabic script
Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
.
In 1891, the wrappings were transported to Vienna, where they were thoroughly examined by Jacob Krall, an expert on the Coptic language
Coptic language
Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the current stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the 1st century...
, who expected the writing to be either Coptic, Libyan
Berber languages
The Berber languages are a family of languages indigenous to North Africa, spoken from Siwa Oasis in Egypt to Morocco , and south to the countries of the Sahara Desert...
or Carian
Carian language
The Carian language is an extinct language of the Luwian subgroup of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. The Carian language was spoken in Caria, a region of western Anatolia between the ancient regions of Lycia and Lydia, by the Carians, a name possibly first mentioned in...
. Krall was the first to identify the language as Etruscan and reassemble the strips. It was his work that established that the linen wrappings constituted a manuscript written in Etruscan.
Production
Certain local gods mentioned within the text allow the Liber Linteus's place of production to be narrowed to a small area in the southeast of TuscanyTuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
near Lake Trasimeno
Lake Trasimeno
Lake Trasimeno , also referred to as Trasimene or Thrasimene in English, is the largest lake on the Italian peninsula south of the Po River with a surface area of 128 km2, slightly less than Lake Como...
, where four major Etruscan cities were located: modern day Arezzo
Arezzo
Arezzo is a city and comune in Central Italy, capital of the province of the same name, located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about 80 km southeast of Florence, at an elevation of 296 m above sea level. In 2011 the population was about 100,000....
, Perugia
Perugia
Perugia is the capital city of the region of Umbria in central Italy, near the River Tiber, and the capital of the province of Perugia. The city is located about north of Rome. It covers a high hilltop and part of the valleys around the area....
, Chiusi
Chiusi
Chiusi is a town and comune in province of Siena, Tuscany, Italy.-History:It was one of the more powerful among the Etruscan 12‑city confederation...
and Cortona
Cortona
Cortona is a town and comune in the province of Arezzo, in Tuscany, Italy. It is the main cultural and artistic center of the Val di Chiana after Arezzo.-History:...
. Such municipalities would have likely had one or more temples in which the Liber Linteus was produced or utilized.
The age of the book is unknown. However, by comparing the shape and style of the characters contained within the text to those found on other Etruscan artifacts it is possible to infer an approximate date of 250 BCE. The manuscript must have been created prior to the wholesale decline of the Etruscan language in favor of Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
; as such a work could have only been produced by a priest or highly educated person possessing special religious knowledge and literacy in Etruscan.
Text
Structure
The book is laid out in twelve columns from right to left, each one representing a "page". Much of the first three columns are missing, and it is not known where the book begins. Closer to the end of the book the text is almost complete (there is a strip missing that runs the entire length of the book). By the end of the last page the cloth is blank and the selvageSelvage
The selvage or selvedge is the term for the self-finished edges of fabric. The selvages keep the fabric from unraveling or fraying. The selvages are a result of how the fabric is created...
is intact, showing the definite end of the book.
There are 230 lines of text, with 1200 legible words. Black ink has been used for the main text, and red ink for lines and diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s.
In use it would have been folded so that one page sat atop another like a codex
Codex
A codex is a book in the format used for modern books, with multiple quires or gatherings typically bound together and given a cover.Developed by the Romans from wooden writing tablets, its gradual replacement...
, rather than being wound along like a scroll
Scroll
A scroll is a roll of parchment, papyrus, or paper, which has been drawn or written upon.Scroll may also refer to:*Scroll , the decoratively curved end of the pegbox of string instruments such as violins...
. Julius Caesar is said to have folded scrolls in similar accordion
Accordion
The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
fashion while on campaigns.
Content
Though the Etruscan language is not fully understood, certain words can be picked out of the text to give us an indication of the subject matter. Both dates and the names of gods are found throughout the text, giving the impression that the book is a religious calendar. Such calendars are known from the Roman world, giving not only the dates of ceremonies and processions, but also the rituals and liturgies involved. There is even a collection of rituals in Latin (Libri Rituales) translated from the original Etruscan rites, like those in the Liber Linteus.The theory that this is a religious text, although still untranslated, is strengthened by recurring words and phrases that are surmised to have liturgical or dedicatory meanings. Some notable formulae on the Liber Linteus include a hymn-like repetition of
Disuse and disposal
As the Etruscan tongue slowly died out, the meaning of the Liber Linteus would have been forgotten: first as a text, and then as a sacred object. New calendars were written in Latin, and new customs would have prevailed. Perhaps the community who wrote it, like the language and the book itself, declined and fell into obscurity. For many years the book would have lain untouched, its owners considering it no more than a worthless anachronism.In the first century BCE, the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
conquered Egypt. Like the Greeks
Hellenistic civilization
Hellenistic civilization represents the zenith of Greek influence in the ancient world from 323 BCE to about 146 BCE...
before them, Roman settlers embraced many aspects of Egyptian culture, including mummification. Such was the vogue of this burial practice in the first century CE that there was a widespread shortage of cloth. The price of cloth rose sharply, and corpses were wrapped in anything available (one has been found wrapped in a sail). The Liber Linteus might have been sold for this purpose.
At first, the provenance and identity of the mummy were unknown, due to the irregular nature of its excavation and sale. This led to speculation that the mummy may have had some connection to either the Liber Linteus or the Etruscans
Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...
. But a papyrus buried with her proves that she was Egyptian and gives her identity as Nesi-hensu, the wife of Paher-hensu, a tailor from Thebes
Thebes, Egypt
Thebes is the Greek name for a city in Ancient Egypt located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile within the modern city of Luxor. The Theban Necropolis is situated nearby on the west bank of the Nile.-History:...
.
See also
- Tabula CortonensisTabula CortonensisThe Tabula Cortonensis is a 2200-year-old, bronze artifact of Etruscan origin, discovered in Cortona, Italy. It may record for posterity the details of an ancient real estate transaction which took place in the ancient Tuscan city of Cortona, known to the Etruscans as Curtun...
- An Etruscan inscription. - Cippus perusinusCippus PerusinusThe Cippus Perusinus is a stone tablet discovered on the hill of San Marco, near Perugia, Italy, in 1822. The tablet bears 46 lines of Etruscan text exquisitely carved into it...
- An Etruscan inscription. - Pyrgi TabletsPyrgi TabletsThe Pyrgi Tablets, found in a 1964 excavation of a sanctuary of ancient Pyrgi on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy , are three golden leaves that record a dedication made around 500 BC by Thefarie Velianas, king of Caere, to the Phoenician goddess ʻAshtaret. Pyrgi was the port of the southern Etruscan...
- A bilingual Etruscan-Phoenician inscription. - Etruscan civilizationEtruscan civilizationEtruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...
- EtruriaEtruriaEtruria—usually referred to in Greek and Latin source texts as Tyrrhenia—was a region of Central Italy, an area that covered part of what now are Tuscany, Latium, Emilia-Romagna, and Umbria. A particularly noteworthy work dealing with Etruscan locations is D. H...
Further reading
- L. B. van der Meer, Liber linteus zagrabiensis. The Linen Book of Zagreb. A Comment on the Longest Etruscan Text. Louvain/Dudley, MA 2007.