NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 17used in the mummification
process, but in the 1930s, ad-
vances in infrared photogra-
phy allowed 90 more lines of
the Etruscan to be deciphered,
further clarifying what schol-
ars believed the book’s role
had been: a ritual calendar de-
tailing rites enacted through-
out the year.
The instructions in the
Etruscan book center on
when certain gods should be
worshipped and what rites,
such as a ritual libation or an-
imal sacrifice, should be per-
formed. Among the specific
deities mentioned is Neth-
uns, an Etruscan water god,
a figure closely related to the
Roman sea god, Neptune. The
text also references Usil, the
Etruscan sun god, similar to
Helios, the Greek solar god.
Further study identified
words and names that pin-
point the place of its compo-
sition. Etruscan experts be-
lieve the linen book was made
near the modern-day Italian
city of Perugia. While the
linen itself has been dated to
the fourth century b.c., tex-
tual clues place the writing to
much later. The inclusion of
the month of January as the
start of the ritual year is the
strongest indicator that the
text was written sometime
between 200 and 150 b.c. If
this later dating of the text
is correct, it opens a windowonto a way of life that was
soon to be swept away by the
expansion of Roman power.A Ritual Annual
Scholars still don’t know ex-
actly how this Etruscan text
ended up in Egypt. Several hy-
potheses have been put for-
ward. One is that the city of
Alexandria, where the mum-
my was purchased in the 19th
century, was a focus of inter-
national trade between the
fourth and the first centu-
ries b.c. In a cosmopolitan port
city, texts from other cultures
would not have been a rarity;
her body was simply mummi-
fied with the material available
at the time. According to thistheory, there is no special link
between the book itself and
the beliefs of the dead wom-
an. The mummifiers just used
what was around.
Another theory takes a rad-
ically different view, pointing
to Etruscan statuary that de-
picts linen books being placed
in tombs, much as Egyptians
placed the Book of the Dead
in theirs. If the dead woman
was of Etruscan ancestry, her
relatives might have buried
her according to the customs
of both her adoptive and an-
cestral cultures, using both the
Egyptian Book of the Dead and
the Etruscan linen text.—Marina Escolano-PovedaETRUSCAN ART, like this detail
from the sixth-century b.c. fresco
from the Etruscan Tomb of the
Augurs in Tarquinia, Italy, is a
major source of information about
this ancient culture.
SCALA, FLORENCE