A01=Dennis D. Hughes
Ancient Greece
ancient myth interpretation
Artemis Tauropolos
Athena's Temple
Athenian Ritual
Author_Dennis D. Hughes
bronze
Bronze Age
Bronze Age cult evidence
captives
Category=NHC
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
Category=QRS
Children's Bones
Cut Marks
Early Greek Custom
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eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Funeral Gifts
funerary
funerary practices Greece
Funerary Sacrifices
Gold Cup
GREEK Myth
Greek religious rituals
Homer
Human Sacrifices
Human Victims
killing
killings
King Antigonus
pharmakos
Pharmakos Rituals
Pit Ii
ritual
ritual killing archaeology
ritual violence in classical antiquity
rituals
Sacred Slaughter
scapegoat rites pharmakos
Slave Burials
Tholos Tomb
trojan
Trojan Captives
vengeance
Vengeance Killing
Young Men
Zeus Lykaios
Product details
- ISBN 9780415034838
- Weight: 498g
- Dimensions: 138 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 25 Jul 1991
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Numerous ancient texts describe human sacrifices and other forms of ritual killing: in 480 BC Themistocles sacrifices three Persian captives to Dionysus; human scapegoats called pharmakoi are expelled yearly from Greek cities, and according to some authors they are killed; Locrin girls are hunted down and slain by the Trojans; on Mt Lykaion children are sacrificed and consumed by the worshippers; and many other texts report human sacrifices performed regularly in the cult of the gods or during emergencies such as war and plague. Archaeologists have frequently proposed human sacrifice as an explanation for their discoveries: from Minoan Crete children's bones with knife-cut marks, the skeleton of a youth lying on a platform with a bronze blade resting on his chest, skeletons, sometimes bound, in the dromoi of Mycenaean and Cypriot chamber tombs; and dual man-woman burials, where it is suggested that the woman was slain or took her own life at the man's funeral. If the archaeologists' interpretations and the claims in the ancient sources are accepted, they present a bloody and violent picture of the religious life of the ancient Greeks, from the Bronze Age well into historical times. But the author expresses caution. In many cases alternative, if less sensational, explanations of the archaeological are possible; and it can often be shown that human sacrifices in the literary texts are mythical or that late authors confused mythical details with actual practices.Whether the evidence is accepted or not, this study offers a fascinating glimpse into the religious thought of the ancient Greeks and into changing modern conceptions of their religious behaviour.
