Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis: The Linen Book of Zagreb, a Comment on the Longest Etruscan Text

L. B. van der Meer's Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis, The Linen Book of Zagreb, a Comment on the Longest Etruscan Text, published by Peeters in 2007 as part of the Monographs on Antiquity series, is a scholarly commentary on the Zagreb mummy wrappings, a linen text that survives because it was later cut into strips and used to wrap an Egyptian mummy, and remains the longest continuous Etruscan text known. Van der Meer works directly from the surviving text itself, which scholars can now read as Etruscan words but still cannot fully translate as meaningful sentences, since Etruscan itself remains only partially understood. Its strength is close, disciplined engagement with the actual primary text rather than speculative reconstruction beyond what the language currently allows. Its limit is the honest one the text itself imposes, that Etruscan's limited decipherment means any claim about the book's full content or purpose, generally read as a religious or ritual calendar, remains provisional rather than settled translation.