Human sacrifice


Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, public or jurisdictional demands for justice by capital punishment, an authoritative/priestly figure, spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherein a monarch's servants are killed in order for them to continue to serve their master in the next life. Closely related practices found in some tribal societies are cannibalism and headhunting. Human sacrifice is also known as ritual murder.
Human sacrifice was practiced in many societies, beginning in prehistoric times. By the Iron Age with the associated developments in religion, human sacrifice was becoming less common throughout Africa, Europe, and Asia. During classical antiquity, it came to be looked down upon as barbaric. In the Americas, however, human sacrifice continued to be practiced, by some, to varying degrees until the European colonization of the Americas. Today, human sacrifice has become extremely rare.
Modern secular laws treat human sacrifices as murder. Most major religions in the modern day condemn the practice.

Evolution and context

Human sacrifice has been practiced on a number of different occasions and in many different cultures. The various rationalisations behind human sacrifice are the same that motivate religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice is typically intended to bring good fortune and to pacify the gods, for example in the context of the dedication of a completed building like a temple or bridge. Fertility was another common theme in ancient religious sacrifices, such as sacrifices to the Aztec god of agriculture Xipe Totec.
In ancient Japan, legends talk about hitobashira, in which people were buried alive at the base of or near some constructions to protect the buildings against disasters or enemy attacks, and almost identical accounts appear in the Balkans.
For the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they killed about 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days. According to Ross Hassig, author of Aztec Warfare, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed in the ceremony.
Human sacrifice can also have the intention of winning the gods' favor in warfare. In Homeric legend, Iphigeneia was to be sacrificed by her father Agamemnon to appease Artemis so she would allow the Greeks to wage the Trojan War.
In some notions of an afterlife, the deceased will benefit from victims killed at his funeral. Mongols, Scythians, early Egyptians and various Mesoamerican chiefs could take most of their household, including servants and concubines, with them to the next world. This is sometimes called a "retainer sacrifice", as the leader's retainers would be sacrificed along with their master, so that they could continue to serve him in the afterlife.
File:Arago – 'Supplice Sandwich'.jpg|thumb|Hawaiian sacrifice, from Jacques Arago's account of Freycinet's travels around the world from 1817 to 1820
Another purpose is divination from the body parts of the victim. According to Strabo, Celts stabbed a victim with a sword and divined the future from his death spasms.
Headhunting is the practice of taking the head of a killed adversary, for ceremonial or magical purposes, or for reasons of prestige. It was found in many pre-modern tribal societies.
Human sacrifice may be a ritual practiced in a stable society, and may even be conducive to enhancing societal unity, both by creating a bond unifying the sacrificing community, and by combining human sacrifice and capital punishment, by removing individuals that have an adverse effect on societal stability. However, outside of civil religion, human sacrifice may also result in outbursts of blood frenzy and mass killings that destabilize society.
Many cultures show traces of prehistoric human sacrifice in their mythologies and religious texts, but ceased the practice before the onset of historical records. Some see the story of Abraham and Isaac as an example of an etiological myth, explaining the abolition of human sacrifice. The Vedic Purushamedha is already a purely symbolic act in its earliest attestation. According to Pliny the Elder, human sacrifice in ancient Rome was abolished by a senatorial decree in 97 BCE, although by this time the practice had already become so rare that the decree was mostly a symbolic act. Human sacrifice once abolished is typically replaced by either animal sacrifice, or by the mock-sacrifice of effigies, such as the Argei in ancient Rome.

History by region

Ancient Near East

Successful agricultural cities had already emerged in the Near East by the Neolithic, some protected behind stone walls. Jericho is the best known of these cities but other similar settlements existed along the coast of the Levant extending north into Asia Minor and west to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Most of the land was arid and the religious culture of the entire region centered on fertility and rain. Many of the religious rituals, including human sacrifice, had an agricultural focus. Blood was mixed with soil to improve its fertility.

Ancient Egypt

There may be evidence of retainer sacrifice in the early dynastic period at Abydos, when on the death of a King he would be accompanied by servants, and possibly high officials, who would continue to serve him in eternal life. The skeletons that were found had no obvious signs of trauma, leading to speculation that the giving up of life to serve the King may have been a voluntary act, possibly carried out in a drug-induced state. At about 2800 BCE, any possible evidence of such practices disappeared, though echoes are perhaps to be seen in the burial of statues of servants in Old Kingdom tombs.
Servants of both royalty and high court officials were slain to accompany their masters into the next world. The number of retainers buried surrounding the king's tomb was much greater than those of high court officials, however, again suggesting the greater importance of the pharaoh. For example, King Djer had 318 retainer sacrifices buried in his tomb, and 269 retainer sacrifices buried in enclosures surrounding his tomb.

Biblical accounts

References in the Bible point to an awareness of and disdain of human sacrifice in the history of ancient Near Eastern practice. During a battle with the Israelites, the King of Moab gives his firstborn son and heir as a whole burnt offering . The Bible then recounts that, following the King's sacrifice, "There was great indignation against Israel" and that the Israelites had to raise their siege of the Moabite capital and go away. This verse had perplexed many later Jewish and Christian commentators, who tried to explain what the impact of the Moabite King's sacrifice was, to make those under siege emboldened while disheartening the Israelites, make God angry at the Israelites or the Israelites fear his anger, make Chemosh angry, or otherwise. Whatever the explanation, evidently at the time of writing, such an act of sacrificing the firstborn son and heir, while prohibited by Israelites, was considered as an emergency measure in the Ancient Near East, to be performed in exceptional cases where divine favor was desperately needed.
prohibits redeeming those destined for sacrifice. This concerned offenders condemned to death by penal Herem, an anathema pronounced solemnly by God or authority, akin to the Roman sacratio. Canaanites and Amorites were punished by God without possibility of redemption.
The binding of Isaac appears in the Book of Genesis, where God tests Abraham by asking him to present his son as a sacrifice on Moriah. Abraham agrees to this command without arguing. The story ends with an angel stopping Abraham at the last minute and providing a ram, caught in some nearby bushes, to be sacrificed instead. Many Bible scholars have suggested this story's origin was a remembrance of an era when human sacrifice was abolished in favour of animal sacrifice.
Another probable instance of human sacrifice mentioned in the Bible is Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter in Judges 11. Jephthah vows to sacrifice to God whatever comes to greet him at the door when he returns home if he is victorious in his war against the Ammonites. The vow is stated in the Book of Judges 11:31: "Then whoever comes of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord's, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering." When he returns from battle, his virgin daughter runs out to greet him, and Jephthah laments to her that he cannot take back his vow. She begs for, and is granted, "two months, so that I may go and wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, my companions and I", after which " did with her according to the vow he had made." Jewish rabbis, Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine of Hippo state that the daughter of Jephthah was sacrificed, but not according to the will of the Judeo-Christian God, but in a cruel and arbitrary manner.
Two kings of Judah, Ahaz and Manassah, sacrificed their sons. Ahaz, in 2 Kings 16:3, sacrificed his son. "... He even made his son pass through fire, according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel." King Manasseh sacrificed his sons in 2 Chronicles 33:6. "He made his son pass through fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom ... He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger." The valley symbolized hell in later religions, such as Christianity, as a result.
affirms that Gentiles do sacrifices to demons and not to God.

Phoenicia

According to Roman and Greek sources, Phoenicians and Carthaginians sacrificed infants to their gods. The bones of numerous infants have been found in Carthaginian archaeological sites in modern times, but their cause of death remain controversial. In a single child cemetery called the "Tophet" by archaeologists, an estimated 20,000 urns were deposited.
Plutarch mentions the practice, as do Tertullian, Orosius, Diodorus Siculus and Philo. Livy and Polybius do not. The Bible asserts that children were sacrificed at a place called the tophet to the god Moloch. According to Diodorus Siculus's Bibliotheca historica, "There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire."
Plutarch, however, claims that the children were already dead at the time, having been killed by their parents, whose consent – as well as that of the children – was required. Tertullian explains the acquiescence of the children as a product of their youthful trustfulness.
The accuracy of such stories is disputed by some modern historians and archaeologists.