Human sacrifice

Human sacrifice was practiced in many ancient cultures. Victims were ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease gods or spirits. On very rare occasions human sacrifices still occur today.

Reasons for human sacrifice include:

• Sacrifice to accompany the dedication of a new building like a temple or bridge. Chinese legends hold that thousands of people were entombed into the Great Wall of China.
• Sacrifice upon the death of a king, high priest or great leader; the sacrifices were to serve or accompany the deceased leader in the next life. Mongols, Scythians and various Mesoamerican chiefs could take most of their household, including servants and concubines, with them to the next world.
• Sacrifice for divination; priest would try to divine the future from the body parts of a slain prisoner or slave. According to Strabo, Celts stabbed a victim with a sword and divined the future from his death spasms.
• Sacrifice in times of natural disaster. Droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions etc. were seen as a sign of anger or displeasure of gods and sacrifices were made to appease the divine ire. Bronze age Celtic religions in Europe, and in rituals related to worship of Norse gods (modern Ásatrú and Druidism do not condone such practices). However, because most of the information comes from outside sources (Greeks and Romans for Celts and Medieval Christians for Norsemen) who may have had ulterior propaganda motives, some historians consider them suspect.

Sacrifice in the classical world

Ancient Greeks practiced human sacrifice; there are references to sacrifice of maidens to Artemis.

According to Roman sources, Phoenicians and Carthaginians sacrificed infants to their gods; since Carthaginians were rivals to Roman power in the Mediterranean, this information is also sometimes considered suspect.

Early Romans practiced various forms of human sacrifice in their first centuries; from Etruscans (or, according to other sources, Sabellians), they adopted the original form of gladiatorial combat where the victim was slain in a ritual combat. During the early republic, criminals who had broken their oaths or defrauded others were sometimes "given to the gods" (that is, executed as a human sacrifice). Prisoners of war and vestal virgins were buried alive as offerings to Manes and Dil Inferi (infernal gods). Archaeologists have found sacrificial victims buried in building foundations. Note that Romans usually cremated their dead.

Religious practices changed over the centuries. According to Pliny, human sacrifice was abolished by a senatorial degree in 97 BCE. Most of the rituals turned to animal sacrifice like taurobolium or became merely symbolic. Roman general could bury a statue of his likeness to thank the gods for victory. Cicero refers to a sacrifice of rush puppets in the Vestal ritual that might have originally included sacrifice of old men. When the Roman Empire expanded, Romans stopped human sacrifices as barbarian.

Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible generally condemns human sacrifice. In Genesis 22 there is a story about the near sacrifice of Isaac. In this story, God tests Abraham by asking him to present his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice on Mount Horeb. No reason is given within the text. Abraham agrees to this command without arguing. According to the text, God does not want Abraham to actually sacrifice his son; it states from the beginning that this is only a test. The story ends with God stopping Abraham at the last minute and making Isaac's sacrifice unnecessary by providing a goat to be sacrificed, which had become caught in some bushes nearby.

Some scholars have suggested this story's origin was a remembrance of an era when human sacrifice was abolished in favor of animal sacrifice.

Many places in the Hebrew Bible state that human sacrifice was a great abomination; these practices were associated with the worship of foreign gods, and were forbidden. See, however, Judges 11:39, in which the Israelite leader Jephthah offered his daughter as a sacrifice in fulfilment of a vow. Although Jephthah's practice is not condoned (and is considered by rabbinic interpretation to be an epitome of a misguided and incorrect application of halakha), it shows that the practice did not die out completely within the world of the Israelites.

The practice of "banning" an enemy town in war by killing all its inhabitants - or variously only the people but not the animals; only the males; or only the adults -, is commanded in several places. Where it was commanded, the act was subsequently considered a religious act pleasing to God. Some have argued this is a form of human sacrifice. King Saul is removed from the kingship for not rigorously carrying out this procedure when ordered by Samuel the prophet.

Jewish, Christian, Muslim and modern historians views on this subject can be found in the article on the near sacrifice of Isaac.

Celtic sacrifice

According to Roman sources, Celtic druids used human sacrifice extensively. According to Julius Caesar, Gauls built wicker figures that were filled with living human sacrifices and then burned with them. Druids at least supervised the sacrifice. During her rebellion against Roman occupation, Boudicca impaled any Romans she came across (such as in London) as offerings to gods, although several modern day druidic scholars question this.

Different gods reportedly required different kind of sacrifices. Worship of Attis included a selection of a young man who was treated as a king for a year and then sacrificed to ensure a good harvest. Victims meant for Esus were hanged, those meant for Taranis immolated and those for Teutates drowned. Some, like the Lindow Man, may have gone to their deaths willingly.

Viking sacrifice

According to Norse mythology, Odin hanged himself from the world-tree Yggdrasil to attain divine wisdom; he emerged alive with only a loss of one eye. According to medieval Christian sources, Norsemen sometimes sacrificed prisoners by hanging them to trees but in what extent is unclear.

Norse warriors were sometimes buried with slave girls with a belief that the women would become their wives in Valhalla.

A detailed eye-witness account of such a burial is given by Ahmad ibn Fadlan as part of his account of an embassy to the Volga Bulgars in 921. In his description of the funeral of a Rus′ notable, a slave girl volunteers to die with her master. After ten days of festivities, she is stabbed to death by an old woman (a sort of priestess who is referred to as 'Angel of Death') and is burnt together with the deceased in his boat (ship burial).

Chinese sacrifice

Ancient Chinese are known to have made sacrifices of young men and women to river deities, and to have buried slaves alive with their owners upon death as part of a funeral service.

Mesoamerican sacrifice

One of the most famous forms of ancient human sacrifice was practiced by various Pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica.

• The Aztec were particularly noted for practicing this on a large scale; a human sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli would be made every day to aid the Sun in rising. The dedication of the great temple at Tenochtitlán was reportedly marked with the sacrifice of thousands.

Sacrifices to Xipe Totec were bound to a post and shot full of arrows. Earth mother Teteoinnan required flayed female victims. According to Spanish sources, original form of Aztec game ulama included sacrifice of the whole losing team.

Aztecs practiced warfare, the so-called Flowery Wars, for capturing prisoners for sacrifice. There are multiple accounts of captured Conquistadores being sacrificed during the wars of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico.

Aztecs sometimes killed the more aristocratic victims in ritual combat; the victim wearing only a loincloth was chained to the floor and given a weapon and a shield and he died fighting against fully armoured Jaguar knight or warrior.

• Inca: A number of presumably sacrificial victims have been discovered in the Inca regions South America.

Hindu human sacrifice

See Sati.

Modern human sacrifice

Human sacrifice still happens in some traditional religions, for example in muti killings in Eastern Africa. Human sacrifice is no longer officially condoned in any country, and such cases are regarded as murder.

Some people in India are adherents of a religion called Tantrism (not to be confused with Tantric Buddhism); a very small percent of them still engage in real human sacrifice. Most either use animal sacrifice or symbolic effigies.

Local authorities seem to agree. After a rash of similar killings in the area -- according to an unofficial tally in the English-language Hindustan Times, there have been 25 human sacrifices in western Uttar Pradesh in the last six months alone -- police have cracked down against tantriks, jailing four and forcing scores of others to close their businesses and pull their ads from newspapers and television stations. The killings and the stern official response have focused renewed attention on tantrism, an amalgam of mystical practices that grew out of Hinduism. (In India, case links mysticism, murder John Lancaster, Washington Post, 11/29/2003)

In western cultures there is no human sacrifice beyond murders committed by serial killers or the largely unsubstantiated rumours of Satanic ritual abuse. Modern occultists consider such sacrifice unnecessary, or use them only in the symbolic form where the volunteer "sacrifice" is not killed for real. Christianity holds that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was history's most important sacrifice.

Some people have tried to extend the use of this terminology. A few writers have written that war--so often charged with religious and nationalistic symbols--is a form of human sacrifice. Lindow Man in UK

• Tollund Man in Denmark

Books:

• Miranda Aldhouse Green - Dying for the Gods (2001)