Sacrificial tripod

A sacrificial tripod, whose name comes from the Greek meaning "three-footed", is a three-legged piece of religious furniture used in offerings and other ritual procedures.

The seat was formed by a circular slab on the top of the tripod, on which a branch of laurel was deposited when it was unoccupied by the priestess.

Tripods were frequently mentioned by Homer as prizes in athletic games and as complimentary gifts; in later times, highly decorated and bearing inscriptions, they served the same purpose.

"Our guest has already packed up the clothes, wrought gold, and other valuables which you have brought for his acceptance; let us now, therefore, present him further, each one of us, with a large tripod and a cauldron.

S. Butler] They also were used as dedicatory offerings to the deities, and in the dramatic contests at the Dionysia the victorious choregus (a wealthy citizen who bore the expense of equipping and training the chorus) received a crown and a tripod.

He cites her sitting in a cauldron on a tripod, while making her prophecies, her being in an ecstatic trance state, similar to shamans, and her utterings, unintelligible.

During the Orientalising period, the tripods were frequently decorated with figural protomes, in the shape of griffins, sphinxes and other fantastic creatures.

In the museum there is a distinctive specimen: on a fine, bronze tripod standing on cast legs, lay a large globular cauldron.

In reference to Ancient Greek tripod cauldrons, after the 8th century most increased in both size and amount of detail, becoming more decorative, and were used almost exclusively as dedication to the gods in sanctuaries.

[6] Tripod pottery has been part of the archaeological assemblage in China since the earliest Neolithic cultures of Cishan and Peiligang in the 7th and 8th millennium BC.