a document of days

Not only esteemed as a culinary delight, liver has a long history of admiration. While it has been on my mind for months, until I read Stiff (see column at right) I didn't consider the widespread and varied significance liver has had throughout the world. 

Many ancient cultures deemed the liver the center of life. Ancient Babylonians, Etruscans, and Romans believed that haruspicy, the 'reading' of a sheep's liver, could determine the will of the gods, diagnose human illness, and determine the course of the illness. In order to read the liver, it was separated into sections. The leanings of the deities were determined by examining the section of the liver assigned to a particular god. Similarly, to make medical diagnoses, the physical characteristics of each section were examined, marked with wooden pegs, and translated.

This Babylonian clay model of a sheep's liver, courtesy of the British Museum, is believed to be from about 1900-1600 BC.  You can  purchase your very own poster of this clay liver!
 

While we might think of our own livers merely as the collector of happy-hour buckets-o-beer, human livers were believed to be more important than the heart or brain. Roman anatomist Galen, whose anatomical beliefs were held as truth for centuries, believed that "blood originated in the liver, and sloshed back and forth through the body, passing through the heart, where it was mixed with air." (Eric Weisstein, scienceworld.wolfram.com) 

Mary Roach, author of Stiff, even suggests that some believed the liver to be the seat of the human soul. 

Though I don't believe that a liver will tell me my fortune, I just might give it a second look before dredging it in bread crumbs and tossing it into the skillet. Who knows? Maybe my lucky numbers will be revealed in a calf's liver.