Human sacrifice—the deliberate killing of humans for religious reasons—has been documented in many different cultures around the world. One of the most common forms of human sacrifice is seen in the burials of high-status individuals where people had been sacrificed and buried with a prominent leader. High status individuals had servants so when these individuals were buried it was not uncommon for their servants to be killed and buried with them to accompany them on their journey to the afterlife.
In his book Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study, Bruce Trigger writes:
“An interesting indication of how kings were viewed in early civilizations is the extent to which retainers and other human victims, willingly or unwillingly, were slain at the funerals of kings and high-ranking members of the nobility.”
Bruce Trigger also writes:
“Whatever the purposes served by the killing of humans in funerary contexts, it is clear that it was not a unitary phenomenon. Some killings appear to have been, like animal sacrifices, blood offerings intended to strengthen the soul of the dead person with the victim’s life-force.”
There is great evidence of this type of human sacrifice in conjunction with the royal funerals in Egypt. According to Bruce Trigger: “Hundreds of female and male servants, as well as artisans were slain and buried around the Egyptian royal funerary complexes of the First Dynasty at Abydos and in smaller numbers around the tombs of the highest-ranking officials at Memphis.” At the tomb of the Pharaoh Aha at Abydos, for example, archaeologists found the remains of 33 young males (20-25 years-old) who had apparently been killed when the king was buried.
Another example of human sacrifice in connection with elite burials is seen in Charles Leonard Woolley’s excavation of the Royal Cemetery at Ur in southern Iraq which dates to the middle of the third millennium BCE. Woolley uncovered a series of what he called “death pits” where dozens of courtiers took poison and then lay down in the pit to die with their master or mistress. In one of the sixteen royal tombs, a woman had been buried with 23 of her retainers.
Amanda Podany, in her book The Ancient Near East: A Very Short Introduction, describes the scene uncovered by archaeologists at one of the royal tombs of Ur:
“In it lay the bodies of six men-servants and sixty-eight women; the men lay along the side by the door, the bodies of the women were disposed in regular rows across the floor, every one lying on her side with legs slightly bent and hands brought up near the face, so close together that the heads of those in one row rested on the legs of those in the row above.”
Amanda Podany writes:
“These were not the bodies of kings or queens but of men and women who had been sacrificed in order to be buried with their lord or lady.”
While the royal tombs of Ur contained the bodies of many sacrificial victims and it is generally assumed that these people were sacrificed so that they could accompany the royalty to the afterlife, it is interesting to note that the people of this time and place rarely wrote about the afterlife.
In the Ukraine, the burials of the ancient Sythian kings and queens were often accompanied with both feasting and human sacrifice. At the Sythian burial mound (kurgan) of Alexandropol, archaeologists found evidence for feasting in the form of bones from domestic species (cow, horse, sheep, dog, pig, and goat) and some wild animals (deer and hare). In their report on the site in Current World Archaeology, Sergei Polin and Marina Daragan report:
“Several fragments of human bone were also found, which may possibly indicate the existence of ritual cannibalism.”
Excavations at Alexandropol also revealed the burials of 11 sacrificial victims. Sergei Polin and Marina Daragan report:
“All of these sacrificial victims were dispatched in accordance with the rites appropriate to the deceased king or queen, while the presence of arrowheads both lying loose in the graves and lodged in the bones reveals how these human offerings were slain.”
There is also some evidence of human sacrifice in the burials of elite members of Sarmatian society, a nomadic culture which controlled the steppes of Eastern Europe and Central Asia from about the middle of the fifteenth century BCE until about 400 CE. In one grave—designated as Kurgan 16—archaeologists found the skeleton of a young man in an upright sitting position on a horse which was interpreted as an example of human sacrifice.
Another example of this type of sacrifice can be seen in an account of a Viking (Rus) funeral on the Volga River recorded by a Muslim observer. The friends of the king walked among the women—the slave women who had served the king—and asked who would go with the king. The woman who agreed was sacrificed and her body placed on the burial ship along with the body of the dead king. The ship was then set on fire.
In South America, in the Inka civilization, the death of a king would be accompanied by human sacrifice. Bruce Trigger writes:
“It is reported that when an Inka king died, his favourite secondary wives, servants, and some officials were strangled, many of them voluntarily. In addition, one thousand boys and girls five to six years old, many of them children of the non-Inka provincial nobility were assembled and buried in pairs throughout the kingdom.”
An example of human sacrifice in North America which was witnessed by outsiders is the burial of Tattooed Serpent, a Natchez war chief in Mississippi in 1725. As a part of the traditional Natchez death rituals for high class individuals, two of his wives, one of his sisters, and several of his aides were strangled and were buried with him in a trench on top of the village’s temple mound. The temple structure was burned and then the entire mound was covered with baskets of earth. This event was witnessed by the French who had a trading post in the area.
The archaeological record is filled with examples of high-status graves which include the remains of people who have been sacrificed and placed in the tomb or grave. At the prehistoric North American city of Cahokia, whose Mississippian culture was related to the later Natchez, archaeologists found that Mound 72 (dating between 1050 and 1150 CE) contained numerous graves. In one elite man’s burial, 53 women between the ages of 20 and 25 were ceremonially executed and buried alongside of him. Christina Snyder, in her book Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America, writes:
“The retainers of the burial mound were almost certainly captives, enemies obtained through war or trade whose deaths were engineered to enhance the prestige of Cahokia’s ruling lineage.”
Analysis of the remains of the executed women shows that they came from outside of the region and that they had been under nutritional stress.
While most of the examples of human sacrifice in association with high-status burials come from highly developed, complex agricultural societies, there are some examples from other societies. The Achumawi are a California Indian tribe in which there was human sacrifice at the death of a great chief. In their chapter on the Achumawi in the Handbook of North American Indians, D.I. Olmsted and Omer Stewart report:
“On such an occasion, two or three other members of the band were killed to add to the dignity of the chief’s departure and to provide him with traveling companions on his journey to the western mountains. Those selected were the least popular—an old scold, an idiot, or a shaman suspected of evil practices. They were surprised from the rear and killed quietly.”
Religion 101
Religion 101 is a series of essays exploring various religious topic in which the concept of religion is not restricted to religions based on a concept of a god or deity. More from this series:
Religion 201: Human Sacrifice
Religion 101: Ceremonial Human Sacrifice
Religion 101: The Meaning of Ghosts
Religion 101: Ghosts in Different Cultures
Religion 201: Reincarnation
Religion 201: An Introduction to Ancestor Worship and Veneration
Religion 101: Ancestor Worship in China and Japan