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The Spirit of Living Sacrifices in Tombs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

C. J. Gadd
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Extract

The splendid discoveries made by Sir Leonard Woolley at Ur in the years between 1927 and 1931, of tombs with a wealth of grave-goods unparalleled before or since in Western Asia, were given a sombre aspect by the revelation that such sacrifice of material wealth had been accompanied by no less lavish expenditure of lives. The principal occupants of those tombs had been attended by a whole cohort of human and animal victims, put to death at the time in their places and attitudes and with all the equipment which had been proper to them in their lives and services. So plainly was all this revealed by the excavations that the whole scene of the funeral could be reconstructed by a modern artist in a picture which scarcely needed to draw upon the imagination.

Some controversy took place in the succeeding years upon the character of these human sacrifices, but it would now be generally agreed, I think, that they were no other than at first supposed, a dramatic example of the ancient (though late-lingering) rite of sending a deceased lord into the other world fully furnished with all the ministers as well as all the gear of his earthly state. Both written descriptions and archaeological discoveries have repeatedly attested this gruesome practice in various parts of the world, and it is no longer true that in the abundant literature of Sumer and Akkad there is no trace of such an observance—I allude, of course, to the Sumerian fragment published by Dr. S. N. Kramer and called by him ‘The Death of Gilgamesh’.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 22 , Issue 1-2: Ur in Retrospect. In Memory of Sir C. Leonard Woolley , Spring-Autumn 1960 , pp. 51 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1960 

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References

1 Reproduced in C. L. Woolley, The Royal Cemetery, plate 30.

2 The arguments of those who proposed another explanation are summarized and fairly answered by Woolley himself, op. cit. pp. 38–42.

3 The last recorded slaughter of a horse, in Europe, to share its master's grave is said to have occurred at Trier in 1781: Tylor, E. B., Primitive Culture, I, p. 474 Google Scholar.

4 In B.A.S.O.R. no. 94, pp. 2 ff., revised translation in A.N.E.T. p. 51; if such is, in fact, the meaning of this unique and obscure text—concerning perhaps the burial of Enkidu, according to Böhl, F.M.T. de Liagre, Opera Minora, p. 247 Google Scholar. The list of companions there given has some contacts (wife, cupbearer, messenger) with the list of Scythian functionaries in Herodotus IV, 71. Compare also similar officers in the early Egyptian (and consequently in the heavenly) courts: Kees, H., Totenglauben und Jenseitsvorstellungen der alten Agypter (2te. Ausgabe), p. 81 Google Scholar. In late antiquity Lucian still specifies horses, concubines, cupbearers, and clothing ( De Luctu, ed. Iacobitz, C., vol. III, p. 80, 928 Google Scholar).

5 Already in the Iliad (XXIII, 176) the slaughter of twelve Trojan youths at the pyre of Patroclus is condemned by the poet as ‘evil deeds.’ This, however, was a killing of enemies for revenge, quite different from the sacrifice of (often willing) domestics for service. The former kind of killing had its counterpart in Egyptian practice, at certain times: see H. Kees, op. cit. p. 251, and Vandier, J., La Religion Égyptienne, p. 121, n. 2Google Scholar, on another kind of human(?) sacrifice called tekenu.

6 If cremation, not burial, was used as a primary disposal, anything combustible should be transmitted to the dead by fire. This applied particularly to clothes, as illustrated by the resolve of Andromache (Iliad XXII, 512), and especially by the engaging llerodotean (V, 92η) story of the tyrant Periander and the fine clothes which he robbed from the women of Corinth to burn them for the benefit of his dead wife Melissa—with various subsidiary topics of popular appeal, hidden treasure, necromancy, a ghost-story, a scandalous token. The rite is attested for the Middle Babylonian period by a recent discovery of cremated bodies with cremated vessels at Zembil, Tchoga, I.L.N. 06 13th, 1959 Google Scholar.

7 Westermarck, E., The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, Vol. I, pp. 437, 474 fGoogle Scholar.

8 Reisner, Nevertheless G. A., Harvard African Studies, Vol. V (1923): Kerma I-III, p. 74Google Scholar, gives evidence for human sacrifice in the Predynastic period.

9 Although A. Scharff, describing the discoveries in the Nubian burials at Kerma ( O.L.Z. XXIX, 92 Google Scholar), calls it a ‘viel umstrittene Frage,’ there seems little to be read upon this subject in the usual books on Egyptian religion. Kees has only, so far as I can find, a few dubious words (op. cit. p. 130), and the same is true of Junker, H., Pyramidenzeit, p. 51 Google Scholar, who dismisses it as a mere possibility at one time. It is surprising, again, that no mention seems to be made of it by Vandier, J. in his recent exhaustive discussion, Manuel d'Archéologie Égyptienne, I, 3me. partieGoogle Scholar, ‘Les deux premières Dynasties,’ nor in his Religion Égyptienne. The same appears to be true also of the older books.

10 See Edwards, I. E. S., The Pyramids of Egypt, pp. 104 ffGoogle Scholar.

11 Emery, W. B., Great Tombs of the First Dynasty, II, pp. 1 fGoogle Scholar.

12 For modern discoveries of Scythian and Central Asian tombs with burials of attendants in separate compartments see various examples in Minns, E. H., Scythians and Greeks, pp. 152 ffGoogle Scholar. and Talbot-Rice, T., The Scythians, p. 88 Google Scholar. Herodotus has them placed generally in the grave-space ἐν τῆ λοιπῆ εὐρνχωρίη. At Ur they were divided between the chamber itself and a space outside: Woolley, op. cit. p. 33.

13 If the Scythian king contented himself with no more than five men and one woman, he was reinforced by the squadron of fifty ‘horsemen’ a year afterwards. At Ur they numbered up to seventy or eighty.

14 With the possible exception of certain indications in the tombs of the Third Dynasty of Ur, reported by Woolley, op. cit. pp. 40 ff.

15 Again, there is the exception of a literary reminiscence in the legend of the ‘Death of Gilgamesh,’ (note 4 above).

16 The great exception to this was, of course, the Middle Kingdom burials at Kerma. If the victims there (as many as 322 were counted in one tomb) had all been Nubians it could have been ascribed to the contempt of the Egyptian rulers for a despised population which they felt entitled to sacrifice at their pleasure. But Reisner (p. 76) considers that most of the victims were Egyptians.

17 A succinct account of the development of ideas, with the resultant artefacts ending in the ushebti-figures, has been given by Černy, J., Ancient Egyptian Religion, pp. 91—94 Google Scholar.

18 Recently this discussion has been summarized and reconsidered, with some fresh arguments, by Speiser, E. A., ‘The Sumerian Problem Reviewed,’ (Hebrew Union College Annual, XXIII, pp. 339 ff.Google Scholar); see also Kantor, H. in J.N.E.S. XI, pp. 239 ffGoogle Scholar. These examinations do not include any reference to the most significant native traditions, of the ante-diluvian kings, and of Oannes with his successors. In these we have, it is true, a seeming contradiction—a people dwelling at the head of the Persian Gulf, ἀνθρώπων ἀλλοεθνῶν indeed, but unchanged since distant ages, and already from the beginning in possession of kings (with Sumerian names, ruling over cities with ‘non-Sumerian’ names), the most essential condition of civilized life, while yet living “like the beasts” and needing to be taught all the arts by their strange visitors from the sea, who have so much the appearance of those ‘Sumerian invaders’ postulated by modern scholars.

19 Compte-rendu de la Seconde Rencontre assyriologique internationale, p. 30, ‘Les tombes royales d'Ur, avec leurs hécatombes funéraires, s'insèrent fort bien dans la période “héroïque”.’ (F. R. Kraus.)

20 Derry, D. E. in J.E.A. 42, pp. 80 ff.Google Scholar, “The Dynastie Race in Egypt.”

21 Perhaps best stated in the monograph of Scharff, A., Die Frühkulturen Ägyptens und Mesopotamiens, (Der Alte Orient, XLI, 1941)Google Scholar. Later references are E. J. Baumgärtel, The Cultures of Prehistoric Egypt; Kantor, H. J., J.N.E.S. XI (1952), pp. 239 ff.Google Scholar, Gilbert, P., Chronique d'Égypte XXVI (1951), pp. 225 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who would, however, place the Early Dynastic period of Sumer between the 3rd and 5th Dynasties of Egypt. See also Hayes, W. C., The Scepter of Egypt, I, pp. 367 fGoogle Scholar. and Vandier, J., Manuel d'Archéologie Égyptienne, I, pp. 360 f., 558 Google Scholar.

22 See Delougaz, P. in O.I.P. LVIII, pp. 125 ffGoogle Scholar.

23 These contacts have been well described by Stuart Piggott in his small book Prehistoric India, pp. 113 ff. He argues that the connexion was by sea, for there is no trace of a westward extension by land of the Kulli culture. The story of Oannes and his fellows points, of course to the same conclusion.

24 Wheeler, R. M., Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume, ‘The Indus Civilization,’ p. 87 Google Scholar.

25 See Contenau, G., Manuel d'Archéologie Orientale, I, pp. 113 ff., 120, and III, p. 1557Google Scholar.

26 For a similar custom observed at the burials of Hulagu Khan and his predecessors see Spuler, B., Die Mongolen in Iran, pp. 175 fGoogle Scholar. (This reference was kindly given me by Professor A. Falkenstein, together with another to A. Zeki Validi Togan, Ibn Faḍlans Reisebericht, a book which I have not been able to obtain).

27 Gait, E. A., A History of Assam, p. 121 Google Scholar.

28 Those unable to read the official Russian accounts of the discoverers who excavated these sites will find a good description and bibliography in the book of Mrs.Talbot-Rice, T., The Scythians (esp. pp. 108 ff.)Google Scholar; see also Mongait, A., Archaeology in the U.S.S.R. pp. 172 ff.Google Scholar, and the article of Barnett, R. D. and Watson, W. in I.L.N., 07 11th, 1953, pp. 69 ffGoogle Scholar.

29 In the Royal Tombs of Ur it seemed clear that the victims were somehow slain before the closing rites, for they all lay undisturbed in their proper places, and the excavator suggests that they may have taken poison. At Kerma it seemed equally clear that they were buried alive, the earth being thrown in directly upon them; Reisner, op. cit. p. 70. Herodotus says that the Scythians were strangled.

30 Cf. the passage of Lucian quoted above, p.51, note 4.

31 For this nation, which had migrated from the Irtysh to the Volga and the Dneiper before the I Ith century and played a prominent part in Byzantine history up to about the middle of the 13th century, it is sufficient here to quote W. Barthold in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. Ḳipčaḳ; there is also a short account and a full bibliography concerning them in Moravcsik, G., Byzantinoturcica I (2nd. ed., 1958), pp. 91 ffGoogle Scholar. Many slaves captured from among the Comans were taken to Egypt and there often rose to high stations, even to the Sultanate, under the dynasty of the Mamlūks.

32 Jean, sire de Joinville, in his Hisioire de Saint Louis (ed. de Wailly, M. Natalis), §§ 497, 498 Google Scholar. The text here quoted is de Wailly's modern French version. Other references to the Comans, found in the old French chroniclers Robert de Clari and Villehardouin, have been collected by Sinor, D. in the Silver Jubilee Volume of the Zinbun-Kagaku-Kenkyusyo, Kyoto University, pp. 370 ffGoogle Scholar.

33 Munn-Rankin, J. M. in Iraq, XVIII, p. 90 Google Scholar.

34 Wiseman, D. J. in Iraq, XX, p. 26 Google Scholar.

35 Mendenhall, G. E. in B.A.S.O.R. no. 133, pp. 26 ffGoogle Scholar.