The Spirit of Living Sacrifices in Tombs
1960; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 22; Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/4199668
ISSN2053-4744
Autores Tópico(s)Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
ResumoThe 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’.
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