Divination Model of a Sheep's Intestines
Unknown · Second millennium BC
A round clay disc a little over eleven centimetres across is modelled with a tightly coiled spiral: the intestines of a sheep, as they looked when a diviner opened the animal after sacrifice. Mesopotamian priests believed the gods wrote their answers in the entrails of a sacrificed sheep, and every fold and blemish had a meaning. On this model an anomaly is marked, and a short cuneiform note in Akkadian describes it in the museum's translation as: right and left meet on the right and there they are interrupted. The disc is chipped at the edge but the spiral is complete.
Objects like this were teaching aids and reference pieces for the baru, the specialist who read livers and entrails for kings and private clients before any important decision. The Louvre has a large collection of clay liver models with similar annotations; models of the coiled intestines are much rarer. The piece was purchased in 1912 and is assigned to Mesopotamia on the basis of its style and script. It is a reminder that in this culture the sciences of the body and of the future were one and the same.
Did You Know? Mesopotamian diviners had a technical vocabulary for the coils of a sheep's gut, and a single unexpected twist could change a king's plans.
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