Human sacrifice
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.
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.
[26][27] A 2009 examination of skulls from the royal cemetery at Ur, discovered in Iraq in the 1920s by a team led by C. Leonard Woolley, appears to support a more grisly interpretation of human sacrifices associated with elite burials in ancient Mesopotamia than had previously been recognized.
[30][31][32] The ancient ritual of expelling certain slaves, cripples, or criminals from a community to ward off disaster (known as pharmakos), would at times involve publicly executing the chosen prisoner by throwing them off of a cliff.
[citation needed] According to Pliny the Elder, human sacrifice was banned by law during the consulship of Publius Licinius Crassus and Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus in 97 BCE, although by this time it was so rare that the decree was largely symbolic.
[50] The medieval Dindsenchas (Lore of Places) says that, in pagan Ireland, first-born children were sacrificed at an idol called Crom Cruach, whose worship was ended by Saint Patrick.
[63][64] According to written sources from the 13th-14th centuries, the Lithuanians and Prussians made sacrifices to their pagan gods at their sacred places, alka hills, battlefields and near natural objects (sea, rivers, lakes, etc.).
[65] In 1389 following the military victories in the land of Medininkai the Samogitians cast lots which indicated Marquard von Raschau, the commander of Klaipėda (Memel), as a suitable victim for gods and burnt him on horseback in full armour.
[66] Pope Gregory IX described in a papal letter how the Tavastians in Finland sacrificed Christians to their pagan gods: "The little children, to whom the light of Christ was revealed in baptism, they violently tore from this light and killed, and adult men, after pulling out their entrails, they sacrifice them to evil spirits and force others to run around trees until death, and some of the priests they blind, from others they brutally sever their hands and other limbs and wrap what is left behind in straws and burn them alive.
[69] According to the Livonian Chronicle, describing the events after the Battle of Ümera, "Estonians had seized some Germans, Livs, and Latvians, and some of them they simply killed, others they burned alive and tore the shirts off some of them, carved crosses on their backs with a sword and then beheaded".
After ten days of festivities, she was given an intoxicating drink, repeatedly raped by other chiefs, stabbed to death by a priestess, and burnt together with the dead chieftain in his boat (see ship burial).
[citation needed] In the 10th century, Persian explorer Ahmad ibn Rustah described funerary rites for the Rus' (Scandinavian Norsemen traders in northeastern Europe) including the sacrifice of a young female slave.
[107][108] Although not accepted by larger section of Hindu culture[citation needed] certain Tantric cults performed human sacrifice until around the same time, both actual and symbolic; it was a highly ritualised act, and on occasion took many months to complete.
[119] The Aztecs were particularly noted for practicing human sacrifice on a large scale; an offering to Huitzilopochtli would be made to restore the blood he lost, as the sun was engaged in a daily battle.
In the 1487 re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan some estimate that 80,400 prisoners were sacrificed[120][121] though numbers are difficult to quantify, as all obtainable Aztec texts were destroyed by Christian missionaries during the period 1528–1548.
[citation needed] Michael Harner, in his 1997 article The Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice, estimates the number of persons sacrificed in central Mexico in the 15th century as high as 250,000 per year.
[125] Mound 72 at Cahokia (the largest Mississippian site), located near modern St. Louis, Missouri, was found to have numerous pits filled with mass burials thought to have been retainer sacrifices.
[130] After a funeral procession with the chief's body carried on a litter made of cane matting and cedar poles ended at the temple (which was located on top of a low platform mound), the retainers, with their faces painted red and drugged with large doses of nicotine, were ritually strangled.
[133] The study of the images seen in Moche art has enabled researchers to reconstruct the culture's most important ceremonial sequence, which began with ritual combat and culminated in the sacrifice of those defeated in battle.
Some Talmudic scholars assert that its replacement is the sacrificial offering of animals at the Temple – using Exodus 13:2–12ff; 22:28ff; 34:19ff; Numeri 3:1ff; 18:15; Deuteronomy 15:19 – others view that as being superseded by the symbolic pars-pro-toto sacrifice of the covenant of circumcision.
[151] The 1st-century CE Jewish-Hellenistic historian Flavius Josephus, however, stated that Jephthah "sacrificed his child as a burnt-offering – a sacrifice neither sanctioned by the law nor well-pleasing to God; for he had not by reflection probed what might befall or in what aspect the deed would appear to them that heard of it".
[153][154] Allegations accusing Jews of committing ritual murder – called the "blood libel" – were widespread during the Middle Ages, often leading to the slaughter of entire Jewish communities.
[166][non-primary source needed] Many Indian religions, including Buddhism, Jainism and some sects of Hinduism, embrace the teaching of ahimsa (non-violence) which imposes vegetarianism and outlaws animal as well as human sacrifice.
In the case of Buddhism, both bhikkhus (monks) and bhikkhunis (nuns) were forbidden to take life in any form as part of the monastic code, while non-violence was promoted among laity through encouragement of the Five Precepts.
According to Chinese sources, in the year 1948, 21 individuals were murdered by state sacrificial priests from Lhasa as part of a ritual of enemy destruction, because their organs were required as magical ingredients.
[175][non-primary source needed] In the city of Altamira, State of Pará, several children were raped, with their genitalia mutilated for what appear to be ritual purposes, and then stabbed to death, between 1989 and 1993.
[180][181] The victim was 5 year-old José Luis Painecur, called an "orphan" (huacho) because his mother had gone to Santiago, for employment as a domestic worker, and left her son under the care of her father.
[200] In 2023, five men were arrested for the killing and decapitation of a woman with a machete in 2019, as part of a religious rite to mark the anniversary of the ringleader's brother's death, after visiting a Hindu temple in Guwahati.
[202] In January 2008, Milton Blahyi of Liberia confessed to being part of human sacrifices which "included the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart, which was divided into pieces for us to eat."
[208] In India there is a festival (Seega Maramma) where a person is chosen as a "sacrifice", and is believed by participants to die during the ritual, although they actually remain alive and are "raised" from the dead at the end after a period of lying still.
