Liber Linteus

Common card · No. 492367

The Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis (Latin for "Linen Book of Zagreb", also known rarely as Liber Agramensis, "Book of Agram") is the longest Etruscan text and the only extant linen book (libri lintei), dated to the 3rd century BC, making it arguably the oldest extant European book. (The second longest Etruscan text, Tabula Capuana, also seems to be a ritual calendar.) Much of it is untranslated because of the lack of knowledge about the Etruscan language, though the words and phrases which can be understood indicate that the text is most likely a ritual calendar. Miles Beckwith (2008) states with regard to this text that "in the last thirty or forty years, our understanding of Etruscan has increased substantially," and L. B. van der Meer has published a word-by-word analysis of the entire text. The fabric of the book was preserved when it was used for mummy wrappings in Ptolemaic Egypt. The mummy was bought in Alexandria in 1848 and since 1867 both the mummy and the manuscript have been kept...

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