Blog Post #5: “To Make Sacred”: Human Sacrifice in the Ancient World with Megan J. Daniels

Human sacrifice in the ancient world seems to have occurred for a number of different reasons. Victims may have been sacrificed in order to accompany elites to the afterlife, to dishonour defeated enemies, or to accomplish a societal need via a costly sacrifice to transcendent powers. The very word “sacrifice” comes from the Latin words sacer (“sacred”) and facere (“to do”)—literally “to make sacred”. Human sacrifice was practiced all over the world and in many different periods. Perhaps the most well-known example (at least the one made most famous in modern film) is the human sacrifice that took place with the Aztecs at the Great Pyramid at Tenochtitlan in the fifteenth century CE (Figure 1).

The practice of human sacrifice dates back much earlier. At the Mesopotamian city-state of Ur, a large cemetery was found that dates back to the third millennium BCE and was used for thousands of burials, including a few extravagant tombs for the elite (maybe royal) inhabitants (Figure 2).

In addition to these wealthy burial objects, the “royal” tombs of Ur also included other buried people within the main chambers or adjacent pits. The largest pit contained the remains of 74 individuals (Figure 5). These deceased have been identified as the retainers of the deceased individual, sacrificed in order to accompany them to the afterlife. Woolley labelled these burials “death pits”, and assumed that these attendants were killed as part of “brutal” massacres, either within the “death pits” or elsewhere. When he could find no clear evidence of violence, Woolley later changed his theory, and suggested that the entire retinue took a “deadly or soporific drug” within these pits, and quietly lay down to die. This led Woolley to wonder about the meaning of human sacrifice at Ur:

If it be true that the members of the king’s court who went down with music into his grave did so more or less voluntarily, that it was a privilege rather than a doom pronounced on them, then it is a fact most important for our view of early Sumerian religion and culture.

(Woolley 1934, 4)

Human sacrifice did not always involve royal servants (“retainer sacrifice”), however. At the ancient city at Tell Umm el-Marra in northern Syria, east of Aleppo, excavators uncovered a grave dating to the early second millennium BCE. This burial contained 13 individuals—men, women, and children—interred at the very bottom with no grave goods. Analysis of the well preserved skulls from these remains suggests death by blunt force trauma. Above these individuals were deposited 10 layers of sacrificed animals, specifically horses, donkeys, dogs, and vultures. Whether these were interred all at once or over a period of months or years is difficult to say. This pit has been interpreted as perhaps a “high-intensity” ritual performed to win the gods’ favour in a time of crisis. Another theory is that the dead may represent defeated enemies and their relatives, as vultures symbolized dishonour in the afterlife (Schwartz 2013). From this same time period comes further evidence of a ritual human sacrifice from a temple on the slopes of Mount Juktas in Crete, captured in dramatic fashion in a 1981 National Geographic Article, “The Drama of Death in a Minoan Temple” (Figure 8).

The later Greeks and Romans also saw rare examples of human sacrifice, though the practice was common in historical and mythical accounts. For example, the fifth-century plays of the Greek playwright Euripides tell of human sacrifices, including Iphigenia’s sacrifice at the hands of her father, Agamemnon, to appease Artemis and allow the Greeks to sail to Troy. Euripides also describes the sacrifice of one of Priam’s daughters, Polyxena, over the grave of Achilles, a scene captured in brutal fashion in Greek vase painting (Figure 9) (Bremmer 2007). The Roman historian Livy (22.55-57) tells us that after the Roman defeat at Cannae in 216 BCE, two Gauls and two Greeks were buried alive under the Forum Boarium. According to Pliny the Elder (Natural History 30.3.12), Rome abolished human sacrifice in 97 BCE.

Whatever the original purpose, our modern accounts tend to sensationalize these practices as horrific rituals performed by civilizations shrouded in mystique (check out my discussion of the discussion of the Phoenicians including the fascination with infant sacrifice here). Societies who practice human sacrifice have been forced onto a stage to shock and intrigue us (Figure 10). Yet it is our job to try to understand these cultures and practices in their own contexts (though this doesn’t mean that we have to condone sacrificing other humans). In many cases, these were not acts of terror, but part of a very complex set of beliefs about the afterlife and one’s responsibility on this earth. Japanese vassals, for instance, for centuries practiced junshi (“following the lord in death”), committing voluntary suicide upon the death of one’s superior, including the emperor.** In many cases, sacrificed humans were indeed made sacred and honoured in death. Perhaps the intentional mercury preservation of the corpses at Ur hints at the need to preserve those honoured through their ultimate sacrifices.

Although human sacrifice is often sensationalized, it was only one form of violence in the ancient world. It is important to remember that many other acts that we don’t necessarily call “human sacrifice” served similar functions. For example, the Roman gladiatorial games involved brutal killing, and were used to reinforce societal power structures. Just like the gladiatorial games, violence has been tied to ritual and entertainment throughout human history, as it continues to be today. It makes you wonder what how historians five thousand years from now might interpret violence in our sports or media – just some Halloween candy for thought as you sit down to watch your annual horror movie. . . Stay tuned for more Halloween-related content in the coming weeks!!