ENIGMAS14 MAY/JUNE 2022I
n 1868 the Museum of Za-
greb in Croatia, then part
of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, acquired an Egyp-
tian mummy of a woman.
Her previous owner had re-
moved her wrappings but held
on to them. She had been an
ordinary person, not royalty
or of the priestly class. Her
wrappings, however, held a
fascinating puzzle. There was
writing on the linen strips,
but German Egyptologist
Heinrich Brugsch noted that
they were not Egyptian hi-
eroglyphics. It was a script
unknown to him.
Two decades later, in 1891,
museum authorities agreed to
send the wrappings to Vienna
to see if they could translatethe markings. The bandages
were examined by the Aus-
trian Egyptologist Jakob Krall,
who was able to finally break
the code: The letters were not
Coptic, as some had speculat-
ed, but Etruscan, the words of
a culture that had dominated
pre-Roman Italy. Whoev-
er had wrapped the mummy
centuries before had used
strips torn from an Etruscan
linen book.
The discovery was sensa-
tional. References to Etruscan
linen books can be found in
many classical works, but sur-
viving specimens had been im-
possible to find. The arid cli-
mate of Egypt coupled with the
desiccants used to dry out the
mummy had created a perfectenvironment to preserve the
fragile textile. The mummy’s
wrappings were not only the
first linen Etruscan text found
intact but also the longest text
ever found in Etruscan. It could
be a gold mine of information
on the culture.
Krall’s identification of the
Linen Book of Zagreb (also
known by its Latin name, Liber
Linteus Zagrabiensis) raised
many questions about its con-
tents and when it was written.
Of equal interest was how an
Etruscan book came to wrap
an Egyptian mummy.Etruscan Enigmas
The modern Italian region of
Tuscany corresponds roughly
with the ancient EtruscanMessage in
the Mummy’s
Wr appi n g s
Mysterious markings written on an Egyptian mummy’s bandages were
confounding to the 19th-century scholars. It took decades to decipher
them and reveal the surprising identity of their authors—the Etruscans.homeland of Etruria. Emerg-
ing in the eighth century b.c.,
Etruria traded with Greek col-
onists and developed a so-
phisticated culture of met-
alworking, painting, and
carving. Trade brought
Etruria goods, Greek
gods, and the Euboean
Greek alphabet. The
Etruscans adapted it to cre-
ate their own script, which
was written from right to left.
The Etruscan language is
almost unique among Euro-
pean languages. Nearly all ofLONG RECOVERY
IN MARCH 2020 a magnitude 5.3 earthquake
severely damaged the Archaeological Museum
of Zagreb, home to the Linen Book of Zagreb
and many other Egyptian artifacts. Founded in
1846, the museum is still recovering from the
damage and has yet to reopen as of this writing.
EGYPTIAN NOBLEWOMAN, AMARNA STYLE, CA 1353–1336 B.C.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF ZAGREB TOM K PHOTO/AGE FOTOSTOCKETRUSCAN LETTERS
form the Linen Book
of Zagreb, later torn
into strips to use as
bandages to wrap an
Egyptian mummy.
Archaeological Museum
of Zagreb, Croatia
COURTESY OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF ZAGREB, PHOTOGRAPH BY IGOR KRAJCAR