“Identifying sacrifice in Bronze Age Near Eastern iconography,”
in Nicola Laneri (ed.) 2015, Defining the Sacred,
Oxford and Philadelphia: Oxbow Books, pp. 24-37.
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This paper deals with the identification and reconstruction of ancient sacrificial practices in the ancient Near East and at specifically at Urkesh, using as main sources the archaeological and glyptic evidence from Tell Mozan.
The very incipit indeed clarifies the topic: “Written sources and archaeological contexts provide us with ample examples of events that involve sacrificial practices: sacrifice took place in connection with treaties, with divination, with religious festivals, with funerals, with processions, and were offered to deities in temples or other sacred structures, as well as to deceased ancestors” (p. 24) [see e.g the ābi, at Urkesh].
The author firstly better defines the concept of ‘sacrifice’, taking into account E. Burnett Tylor’s, W. Robertson Smith’s, H. Hubert’s-M. Mauss‘, and W. Burkert’s theories which involved concepts like ‘gift/homage/abnegation’, ‘communication’, ‘mediation’ and ‘hunting/guilt’, respectively.
Afterwards, she moves to discussing the two main elements allowing to identify a sacrifice: 1) “the deliberate death of an animal” 2) “reference to religious or sacred element or indications of a supernatural presence, and that the animal is being given to this element or presence” (p. 25). These criteria are then enquired through the analysis of Urkesh’s glyptic material.
In conclusion: “Careful criteria sensitive to the wide array of religious practices in the ancient Near East can be set up to identify sacrifice in the iconography, and combined with other ancient material such as written sources and archaeological contexts, and theories proposed by modern scholars, these can be used to suggest further depictions and references to sacrificial rituals and their individual elements. Once carefully identified, we can begin to make inferences about the content of the practices of sacrifice in the ancient Near East – occasion, manner of killing, equipment used, participants (both animal and human), functions and locations” (p. 34).