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Lifestyle
Selena Wisnom, Lecturer in the Heritage of the Middle East, University of Leicester

Why ancient Mesopotamians would have used a sheep’s liver to predict Donald Trump’s election odds

Donald Trump United States Mesopotamia King Charles III
With one week to go, the US presidential election race is on a knife-edge. Jonah Elkowitz / Shutterstock

I’m standing in a basement kitchen prodding at a sheep’s liver, looking for marks on its smooth surface. People crowd around to film the proceedings, since I’m here to ask a question that everyone wants to know the answer to: will Donald Trump win the US election?

I’m following instructions that were first written down by the ancient Babylonians 4,000 years ago, and still survive today. Every crease on the liver has a meaning, and cuneiform tablets discovered in modern-day Iraq explain how to interpret them.

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