The Templum and the Liver of Piacenza in the works by Deecke, Körte, Van der Meer, Aveni and Romano

The Liver of Piacenza is an Etruscan bronze artifact found in 1877. It is a life-sized model of a sheep's liver engraved with Etruscan inscriptions. It is dated to the late 2nd century BC, when the Piacenza region was under Latin domination. The liver is subdivided into sections, inscribed with names of individual Etruscan deities, suitable for performing haruspicy as hepatoscopy. The rim of this bronze artifact is divided into 16 sections, and therefore the liver had been supposed to represent a model of the sky, with the 16 sections as "dwelling places" of deities. For this reason, after its discovery, the object was supposed to represent a templum. Here we consider literature about the liver as a templum.