The so-called Liver of Piacenza was found in 1887 near the city and is datable to around 100 BCE. It stands as a remarkable testimony to the Etruscan practice of haruspicy, the divinatory rituals associated with examining and interpreting the inner organs of sacrificed animals. The liver, regarded as being an organ associated with the origin of blood and life, would have been meticulously observed by the haruspex during a specific ritual, and was considered particularly reliable in predicting the future.
Initially mistaken for a fake on account of its sheer exceptionality, the Liver of Piacenza is in the shape of a ram’s liver and features numerous inscriptions in Etruscan, including the names of about forty divinities within a full representation of the world and precise subdivisions of the cosmos. Such an object would have functioned as an interpretative tool in the hands of the haruspex and as a precision guide for the reading of the entrails.