Fragment of the "Liber linteus" bearing an inscription in Etruscan language and coming from the "mummy of Zagreb" • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS In 1847 or 1848, the secretary of the royal chancellery in Vienna, a Croat named Mihael Baric, bought a mummy in Egypt. It is then customary for travelers to buy ancient mummies from local traffickers and bring them back to Europe to display in private or public collections. Baric took it to Vienna and for the next 13 years kept it at home in a glass case. After his death, his brother Ilja Baric inherited it and donated it in 1861 to the National Museum of Zagreb, which became the Archaeological Museum from 1940. A surprise on the strips As is also customary in the 19 th century, Baric removes the bandages from the mummy to extract the amulets and other funerary ornaments. As he sets to work, he discovers between the strips several linen strips on which appears a text that is not written in the Egyptian language. The discovery immediately attracts the attention of researchers, who try in vain to decipher this text. In 1891, the Egyptologist Jakob Krall finally proposed to identify these indecipherable signs with Etruscan writing. This explains why the texts are written on linen. When we think of ancient books, the image of papyrus rolls immediately comes to mind, made from the fibers of the stem of the plant of the same name. However, other materials were also used to make books, such as leather, parchment (a specially treated and stretched animal skin) or linen. The Roman historian Livy explains that both the Etruscans and the Romans used linen books for, for example, the register of magistrates. A text of 1,330 words Thus, the strips of linen cloth bearing the fragments of Etruscan writing discovered in the mummy acquired by Baric originally come from an Etruscan book. According to specialists, the Liber linteus zagrabiensis (or Zagreb Linen Book, as it is called today) is a roll of linen 340 cm long and almost 45 cm high. On this roll is written a text in the Etruscan language spread over 12 columns, each composed of 35 lines. The part recovered between the strips of the mummy corresponds to 60% of the original text, or 1,330 words. The structure of the linen fabric lets you know that it was made in Etruria. But, for unknown reasons, the scroll was sent to the land of the Nile shortly after it was written, around the II e century BC. Furthermore, the Liber linteus has not come down to us in its original scroll form; it was cut in Egypt into seven strips and reused as bandages for a mummy from the Ptolemaic period (323-30 BC). This type of reusing linen fabric for making bandages for mummification was a common custom. The “Liber linteus” (or “linen book”) originally had the shape of a scroll. It was cut into seven long strips used for the mummification of a certain Neskhonsu. Although we don't know precisely how the Etruscan scroll got to Egypt, we can still guess who ordered its use as mummy wraps. In the administrative documents that reached the Zagreb museum with the mummy, it is noted that between the strips there was also a papyrus which could correspond to papyrus Zagreb 602, a Book of the Dead dated from the III e -II e centuries BC. J.-C. lived in the Ptolemaic period. Papyrus Zagreb 602, originally composed for Pakherkhonsu, is ultimately intended for his wife Neskhonsu, perhaps because she predeceased him. If the link between the mummy and Pakherkhonsu is proven, it is interesting to observe that, among the titles of this character inscribed on the papyrus, appears that of "supervisor of fabrics or clothes", a religious function involving the management of fabrics intended to dress the statue of the god Amon in his great temple of Karnak. Thus, it is likely that by virtue of his office, Pakherkhonsu had the Liber linteus cut up and reused. as bandages for the mummy of his wife. A still mysterious meaning However, the content of the text of the Liber linteus remains a mystery. The Etruscan language is indeed, even today, enigmatic. It is written from right to left using the archaic Greek alphabet, which arrived in the Italic peninsula through the intermediary of the Greek colonists who settled there in the VIII e century BC. Thus, as the signs used in the Etruscan inscriptions have the same phonetic value as in Greek, these inscriptions can be read without problem... but their meaning remains incomprehensible. Because, as is the case with the Iberian language, the Etruscan language has so far only been very partially deciphered. We know that it is not an Indo-European language, such as Latin or Greek, and it does not appear to be related to any other known language, which makes it difficult to decipher. Also read The Campanari, ambassadors of the Etruscan world We know proper names, titles, toponyms and a few words, as well as information on the functioning of the language, obtained through comparative analyzes of known Etruscan inscriptions – around 13,000 – with other texts of a similar format. in other languages, as well as from the mention of Etruscan terms by Latin authors. In fact, thanks to the long coexistence of Etruscan with Latin, the latter assimilated Etruscan vocabulary which has come down to us in words such as "element" (which in Etruscan refers to the letters of alphabet), “histrion” (from histrio , “actor”) or “person” (from the Etruscan phersu , " mask "). It is thanks to this means that we know part of the content of the Liber linteus and that it is even possible to partially translate certain lines. The Liber linteus is an official document containing the mention of nearly 15 rituals organized throughout the year, a priori linked to the solstices and the equinoxes, and dividing the year into four seasons. It was probably created by a religious fraternity, and we find references to dates, deities, types of priests, ritual actions and offerings. The many mentions of places related to water and woods indicate that these rituals are carried out outside the city, in streams and in sacred aquatic places, perhaps with funerary connotations. The deities mentioned appear to be gods of light and dark, possibly related to the change of seasons, genies or muses related to the gods Tinia and Nethuns, the Roman Jupiters and Neptunes respectively. Who was the deceased? The mummy in which the Liber linteus was discovered is that of a woman of about 30 or 40 years old, measuring 1.64 m. She wears under the bandages a necklace and a headdress of flowers. Gold and debris from a cat's skull were also discovered. His analysis did not reveal any pathologies that could explain his death.
