Haruspex

The Latin terms haruspex and haruspicina are from an archaic word, hīra = "entrails, intestines" (cognate with hernia = "protruding viscera" and hira = "empty gut"; PIE *ǵʰer-) and from the root spec- = "to watch, observe".

The mobility of migrant charismatics is the natural prerequisite for this diffusion, the international role of sought-after specialists, who were, as far as their art was concerned, nevertheless bound to their father-teachers.

A collection of sacred texts called the Etrusca disciplina, written in Etruscan, were essentially guides on different forms of divination, including haruspicy and augury.

These include a bronze mirror with an image of a haruspex dressed in Etruscan priest's clothing, holding a liver while a crowd gathers near him.

[8] Artifacts depicting haruspicy exist from the ancient Roman world as well, such as stone relief carvings located in Trajan's Forum.

[6] In southwest Ethiopia and adjacent area of South Sudan, a number of ethnic communities have had the practice of reading animal entrails to divine the future.

Diagram of the sheep's liver found near Piacenza with Etruscan inscriptions on the bronze sheep's Liver of Piacenza
Akkadian language clay sheep liver models written in a local dialect, recovered from the palace at Mari , dated to the 19th or 18th century BC.
Diagram of the bronze liver of Piacenza
Relief depicting a haruspex from the Roman Temple of Hercules