page_title: Bārûtu
hierarchical_section_title: Bārûtu
caption_attribution_description: English: Divinatory livers, clay models for the training of soothsayers. The one in the middle is interpreted as fortelling the destruction of small cities. Baken clay, 19th–18th centuries BC, found in the royal palace at Mari (now in Syria). Français&#160;: Foies divinatoires, modèles d'apprentissage pour devins. La conformation du foie du milieu présage la destruction de petites villes. Argile, XIXe–XVIIIe siècles av. J.-C., palais de Mari.
context_page_description: The Bārûtu, the “art of the diviner, ” is a monumental ancient Mesopotamian compendium of the science of extispicy or sacrificial omens stretching over around a hundred cuneiform tablets which was assembled in the Neo-Assyrian/Babylonian period based upon earlier recensions. At the Assyrian court, the term extended to encompass sacrificial prayers and rituals, commentaries and organ models. The ikribu was the name of collections of incantations to accompany the extispicy. The bārûtu's extant predecessors date back to Old Babylonian times with the liver models from Mari and where the order of the exta were largely fixed.
  The task of the bārû, or diviner, was summarized as lipit qāti hiniq immeri naqē niqē nēpešti bārûti, “the ‘touch of hand’, the restriction of the sheep, the offering of the sacrifice, the performance of extispicy.” This required elaborate ritual purity, achieved through washing hands and mouth, donning fresh clothing, placing tamarisk and cedar into the diviner's ears, anointing and fumigation with sulfur – all measures to avoid the outcome of the apodosis lā ellu niqâ ilput, “an unclean person has touched the sacrifice.”
context_section_description: The Bārûtu, the “art of the diviner,” is a monumental ancient Mesopotamian compendium of the science of extispicy or sacrificial omens stretching over around a hundred cuneiform tablets which was assembled in the Neo-Assyrian/Babylonian period based upon earlier recensions. At the Assyrian court, the term extended to encompass sacrificial prayers and rituals, commentaries and organ models. The ikribu was the name of collections of incantations to accompany the extispicy. The bārûtu's extant predecessors date back to Old Babylonian times with the liver models from Mari (pictured right) and where the order of the exta were largely fixed.
  The task of the bārû, or diviner, was summarized as lipit qāti hiniq immeri naqē niqē nēpešti bārûti, “the ‘touch of hand’, the restriction of the sheep, the offering of the sacrifice, the performance of extispicy.” This required elaborate ritual purity, achieved through washing hands and mouth, donning fresh clothing, placing tamarisk and cedar into the diviner's ears, anointing and fumigation with sulfur – all measures to avoid the outcome of the apodosis lā ellu niqâ ilput, “an unclean person has touched the sacrifice.” The autopsy then proceeded in a counter-clockwise direction, beginning with the liver, the lungs, then the breastbone, vertebrae, ribs, colon and finally the heart.
caption: Divinatory livers, clay models for the training of soothsayers, in the Louvre.
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