The odd-shaped object you are looking at is none other than the Liver of Piacenza. This slightly three-dimensional object d’arte was fashioned by Etruscans living in the second century BCE. The main disk represents a sheep’s liver, with the three protrusions standing for the gall bladder and two other parts of a liver (called the caudate lobe and the posterior vena cava). Around the outer rim are sixteen sections, probably standing for Etruscan astrological houses, each a dwelling place for a deity, indicated with Etruscan writing. The Liver of Piacenza enabled Etruscan priests to conduct ritual prognostications in the practice known as _haruspicy_. The Liver was designed to be hand-held, and the different markings were meant to orient one in time and place, and thus it also functioned as a ritual-liturgical calendar. The Ancient Romans ate all of this up, but not literally: their haruspeces (liver-readers) continued the practice of divination throughout their existance.
