--- related: - "[[2021-09-27 Sacrifice]]" ---# 📗 Ritual murder, burnt food, & the afterlife > I keep coming across references to human sacrifice in the academic texts I read. Before I started taking notes I never really realized how many different cultures do it, and now I'm trying to figure out if I should try to integrate it into my worldbuilding. I've seen a couple of books pull it off... ## Quick Facts - Deceased Scythians were often buried in their [kurgans](https://newsletter.eleanorkonik.com/tombs/) %% ( [[2020-09-07 Tombs]] ) %% alongside their horses, who were killed, i.e. sacrificed. - Sati (suttee?) was a historical Hindu practice, in which a widow sacrifices herself by sitting atop her deceased husband's funeral pyre. - There's some evidence that the attendants of royalty in Bronze Age Mesopotamia were ritually sacrificed and entombed with kings _and queens_. %% [[Brotherhood of Kings by Amanda Podany#Sacral Queenship in Bronze Age Iraq]] %% - There is a [ton of controversy](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/mwie4v/child_sacrifice_among_canaanites_a_compilation_of/) surrounding child sacrifice in the Punic world but my best guest is that it happened but it was rare. - Pre-state societies sometimes sacrifice surplus food, burning it ceremonially in times of plenty. %% [[excess surplus leads to ritual sacrifice]] %% ## Viking funerals According to Ibn Fadlan, a 10th century ambassador from Baghdad, Scandinavian immigrants to Russia had a funerary practice that can best be summed up as [the ritual murder of a rich guy's concubine-slave](https://travellerantiqueland.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/tall-as-date-palms-arab-meets-viking/) (apparently she volunteers — maybe her kids get something out of it?). He also saw them kill and cut up a dog, horses, chickens, but the sacrificial girl is definitely the eye-opening part. Evidently an old woman stabs her while men strangle her. Afterwards her body is burned with the animals and the dead rich guy. ## Celtic Sacrifice The [Celtic festival of Beltane involves sacrifice](https://www.atlasobscura.com/artices/how-to-make-beltane-bannock-oatcake). People at relatively recent festivals would pretend they're going to burn a guy to death. Apparently archaeologists do think that the Celts practiced human sacrifice: the Lindow Man apparently ate a "burnt bannock" before he was killed. It's a ritual food still used on Beltane, basically mistletoe pollen and unleavened bread. Then he was garroted, stabbed, and had his head bashed in before being tossed into a peat bog. ## Aztec Sacrifice We [don't really know how many people were actually sacrificed by the Aztecs](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4r4rww/did_the_aztecs_really_sacrifice_an_average_of_40/d4yhqm2/), and [may never know](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a8l01q/ive_read_that_20000_people_were_sacrificed/ecgjave/), but apparently there's an argument to be made that their habit of taking war captives to later sacrifice meant that their war-related casualties were actually _lower_ than what was seen in other societies with comparable technology and rates of war. ## Roman Sacrifice The Romans only considered the way they interred Greeks and Gauls alive to be religious sacrifice / ritual murder. They buried unchaste Vestal Virgins alive and drowned hermaphrodites but [since it wasn't "sacrifice"](https://www.jstor.org/stable/40666530) they kept doing it after they [banned human sacrifice around 97 BCE](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/mwie4v/child_sacrifice_among_canaanites_a_compilation_of/) (maybe as a reaction to stuff going on in Carthage?).