Ancient Human Sacrifice Rituals?

I agree somewhat with Flagmichael, except I think human sacrifice is rather more widely practised than he suggests. It was common among the Maya, and in other American cultures at the time of European contact; and is recorded in historical documents from many parts of the ancient Middle East - not least Canaan, including ancient Israel. It seems to have been practised by ancient Aegean cultures as well; recall that in the Iliad, King Agamemnon planned to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia on his way to the Trojan War. Human sacrifice is also well-attested in many other cultures around the world: in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Pacific.

Many of the anthropological monographs on human sacrifice focus on specific cultures and rituals; I can't recall any general survey to refer you to for a broad comparative or theoretical discussion. Off the top of my head, though .... human sacrifice is usually part of a continuum of religious practices that includes animal sacrifice and sometimes other sacrifices as well (one of the great British ethnographers once mentioned how a certain African tribe would cut the tops off bush cucumbers on the side of a track as they walked along; when asked why, they said they were 'sacrificing' the cucumbers for good luck. It seemed that 'sacrifice' was an intuitive, and obvious everyday concept for these people).

As Flagmichael rightly notes, what makes human sacrifice 'special' is not so much the sacrifice part, but that the sacrificial victim is a human: a thing of great value, in one or more aspects. In the case of child sacrifice, it is not just symbolic and emotional value but - in most tribal and pre-industrial societies - a huge economic sacrifice as well; a child is a very valuable resource for potential earnings and livelihood. In many societies, daughters are a source of bride-price or dowry; a financial opportunity or commitment like buying or selling a house is to us. In modern society, we tend to divorce our economic relations from our kinship relations; but in this we are unusual, across the wider range of human experience.

Perhaps for this reason, sacrificial victims generally tend not to be carefully cultivated and selected. They are normal human lives - this is what makes them so valuable as an oblation. If a child was born and raised to be a victim, they wouldn't have the same sacrificial value as an ordinary child (think of Abraham and Isaac).

So I don't want to discourage your novel at all (it sounds like it could be a great story!) - but I'd argue against making the girl into a born-and-raised sacrificial victim. If that's what is intended for her all along, then when she gets sacrificed, that's what's expected. Whereas if she is a regular kid - playing with other kids, learning all the arts and skills a girl learns in her world, thinking ahead to boys and marriage, and all that, and then - suddenly - disaster falls; *she* has been chosen, she alone of all her sex and all her kith and kin, to be laid upon the highest altar ...

Also the society would want to have a general pattern of ritual sacrifice in their religious thinking and practices; rather than using human sacrifice as their only type of sacrifice. Maybe they've worked their way up through sacrificing goats, cows and herds of cattle without seeming to have propitiated the gods. So now they look for a child, as the greatest oblation of all ...

This would more closely resemble occasions of human and especially child sacrifice, as recorded in history and ethnography.

Hope it helps a bit.

Except for ritual execution of prisoners (which is not sacrifice because sacrifice implies giving up something of value) human sacrifice is remarkably rare and details are scarce. Much of what you describe fits well enough. Susan Wise Bauer describes the scene from a collapsed temple in ancient Minoa, ca 1700 BC: "… a young man bound and lying on his side on a stone and clay altar, a bronze blade dropped on top of his body, and in front of the altar, a man in his 40s, wearing a ceremonial ring and seal. A woman lay on her face and the Southwest corner." Bauer continues: "Human sacrifice wasn't carried out very often. Traces of sacrifice have been uncovered in only one other location: a house in the western part of the town of Knossos, where two children had apparently been not only sacrificed, but carved up and cooked along with snails in some sort of ritual feast. The ruins don't tell us what the sacrifice meant, or what horrible dilemma drove the priests and priestesses of Knossos to such an extreme act of worship."

EDIT - I really like Batlow's answer, especially about the premeditation aspect. Preparation for human sacrifice is more likely to be spur of the moment, an extreme reaction in a desperate time. For all of this, novels are fiction and can portray anything you want as long as it is internally consistent. Batlow's answer provides a lot of useful insights into the whole matter - best answer so far.

They actually did prepare human sacrifice (or maybe we'd want to continually no longer say 'druids' did yet celtic peoples) even although i'm doubtful about the Wicker guy. Many Iron age bodies were recovered from bathrooms which prepare symptoms of formality killing-they are bare, then dispatched with the aid of a blow to the top,garroting and blood letting,probably to seems 3 best gods. At quite some hill forts there are dedication burials--frequently youthful wholesome adult men filled certain and infrequently headfirst lower than the ramparts or in storage pits around the citadel. it became probably believed that their spirits may preserve the area and their blood strengthen the rules. the legend of youthful merlin the wizard had him marked as a possible sacrifice to carry up the rules of a tower. in addition they worshipped the top, and may droop skulls from the gates of the citadel and of their properties. some heads taken from enemies may be embalmed in cedar oil and kept.Others were put in wells and lakes (at the same time as chanced on there is many times evidence of positioned up mortem trauma too.) I n a fall down Scotland over the area of about one thousand years the skulls of children were suspended close to the front marking some form of shrine.different children' bones chanced on there had marks of defleshing. so please not one of the satisfied hippy muesli munching celts please! They in no way were, tha's a clean agey cutting-aspect construct, and they are way better exciting really! Human sacrifice has been practiced in only about all cultures. It should not be appeared at in some 'hammer horror' way, with a moustache twirling robed baddie hauling the chance free virgin to the block. extremely many times the sacrifice became voluntary-they believed they were going to the gods- and infrequently the 'chosen ones' lived a extremely good existence until eventually their time got here. for instance only about all the bathroom bodies are nicely fed and characteristic proper,nicely groomed fingers that prepare no symptoms of exertions--so that they were of direction exempt from guide labour.