Divining the Etruscan World The Brontoscopic Calendar and Religious Practice

The Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar is a rare document of omens foretold by thunder. It long lay hidden, embedded in a Greek translation within a Byzantine treatise from the age of Justinian. The first complete English translation of the Brontoscopic Calendar, this book provides an understanding of Etruscan Iron Age society as revealed through the ancient text, especially the Etruscans' concerns regarding the environment, food, health and disease. Jean MacIntosh Turfa also analyzes the ancient Near Eastern sources of the Calendar and the subjects of its predictions, thereby creating a picture of the complexity of Etruscan society reaching back before the advent of writing and the recording of the calendar.

Part I. Background: 1. The Brontoscopic Calendar and its transmission; 2. Etruscan religion in the classical world; 3. An ominous time: thunder, lightning, weather, and divination; Part II. The Brotoscopic Calendar: Greek Text and English Translation; Part III. Thematic Analysis of the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar: 4. Analysis of the Brontoscopic Calendar; 5. 'Reptiles with trouble habitations' – weather, fauna, agriculture, pests; 6. 'Plague, but not exceptionally life-threatening' – health and disease; 7. 'The women and the slaves will carry out assassinations' – the society of the Brontoscopic Calendar; Part IV. Sources and Successors of the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar: 8. Mesopotamian influences and Near Eastern predecessors of the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar; 9. Other Brontoscopia in the classical tradition; 10. Conclusion: assessing the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar and its heritage.

Jean MacIntosh Turfa is Rodney Young Fellow in the Mediterranean Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum and Adjunct Professor of Classics and Ancient Studies at St Joseph's University, Philadelphia. She has published catalogues of collections of Etruscan antiquities as well as articles on Etruscan art, seafaring, votive offerings, and divination and medicine.