Haruspex

In Roman and Etruscan religious practice, a haruspex (plural haruspices; from PIE 'gher-, ghor-na' "bowels" (compare Latin 'hernia', "protruding viscera", 'hira', "empty gut") plus '-spex', "observer", from 'specere') was a person trained to practice a form of divination called haruspicy, hepatoscopy or hepatomancy. Haruspicy is the inspection of the entrails of sacrificed animals, especially the livers of sacrificed sheep and poultry. The rites were paralleled by other rites of divination such as the interpretation of lightning strikes, of the flight of birds (augury, auspicy), and of other natural omens.

Being a specific form of the general practice of extispicy, haruspicy is not original to Etruscans nor Romans. Rather, it is now considered to have originated from the Near East where one would once find Hittites and Babylonians performing similar rites with entrails and producing comparable stylized models of the sheep's liver.