page_title: Animal sacrifice
section_title: Ancient Greece
hierarchical_section_title: Animal sacrifice / Ancient Greece
caption_attribution_description: English: 6th c. BC representation of an animal sacrifice scene in Pitsa panels. Translation from French: "One of the four painted wood slabs of Pitsa, found in 1934 near Sicyon, Corinthia, in a cave above the village of Pitsa. Inscriptions reveal that they were dedicated to the Nymphs, venerated in this cave. The painted wooden plates were the most popular and most economic items dedicated to sanctuaries. These examples from Pitsa are of great value because they are the only example of Corinthian paint on a large scale. They are made with the technique of "xerography", using mineral pigments. Inside the red or black outlines of figures, colors (white, red, blue, yellow, purple, brown, green and black) without gradation were applied. Dedications are written in Corinthian alphabet. The plaque represents a procession to an altar to sacrifice a lamb to the sound of the flute and the lyre. Dedication to Thanksgiving (Charity) is shown with the names of Euthydika, Eukolis, Etheloncha and, on the side, the name of the painter, of which only the origin, Corinthian, still remains. c. 540-530 BC. National Archaeological Museum of Athens, No. 16,464." Français&#160;: Une des quatre plaques de bois peintes de Pitsa, trouvées en 1934, près de Sicyone, dans une grotte au-dessus du village de Pitsa, en Corinthie. Les inscriptions révèlent qu'elles étaient dédiées aux Nymphes, vénérées dans cette grotte. Les plaques de bois peintes étaient les formes les plus populaires et les plus économiques de dédicaces aux sanctuaires. Celles de Pitsa sont d'une grande valeur, car elles constituent le seul exemple de peinture corinthienne à grande échelle. Elles sont réalisées avec la technique de la "xérographie", utilisant des pigments minéraux. À l'intérieur des contours rouges ou noirs des figures, les couleurs (blanc, rouge, bleu, jaune, violet, brun, vert et noir) étaient appliquées sans gradation. Les inscriptions des dédicaces sont écrites en alphabet corinthien. La plaque représente une procession à un autel pour sacrifier un agneau, au son de la flûte et de la lyre. La dédicace aux Grâces (Charites) est indiquée, avec les noms d'Euthydika, Eukolis, Etheloncha, et sur le côté, le nom du peintre dont ne subsiste que l'origine, Corinthien. Vers 540-530 av. J.-C. Musée national archéologique d'Athènes, n° 16464.
context_page_description: Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing and offering of an animal usually as part of a religious ritual or to appease or maintain favour with a deity. Animal sacrifices were common throughout Europe and the Ancient Near East until the spread of Christianity in Late Antiquity, and continue in some cultures or religions today. Human sacrifice, where it existed, was always much more rare.
  All or only part of a sacrificial animal may be offered; some cultures, like the ancient and modern Greeks, eat most of the edible parts of the sacrifice in a feast, and burnt the rest as an offering. Others burnt the whole animal offering, called a holocaust.
  Animal sacrifice should generally be distinguished from the religiously-prescribed methods of ritual slaughter of animals for normal consumption as food.
  During the Neolithic Revolution, early humans began to move from hunter-gatherer cultures toward agriculture, leading to the spread of animal domestication. In a theory presented in Homo Necans, mythologist Walter Burkert suggests that the ritual sacrifice of livestock may have developed as a continuation of ancient hunting rituals, as livestock replaced wild game in the food supply.
context_section_description: Worship in ancient Greek religion typically consisted of sacrificing domestic animals at the altar with hymn and prayer. The altar was outside any temple building, and might not be associated with a temple at all. The animal, which should be perfect of its kind, is decorated with garlands and the like, and led in procession to the altar, a girl with a basket on her head containing the concealed knife leading the way.  After various rituals the animal is slaughtered over the altar, as it falls all the women present "must cry out in high, shrill tones".  Its blood is collected and poured over the altar. It is butchered on the spot and various internal organs, bones and other inedible parts burnt as the deity's portion of the offering, while the meat is removed to be prepared for the participants to eat; the leading figures tasting it on the spot. The temple usually kept the skin, to sell to tanners. That the humans got more use from the sacrifice than the deity had not escaped the Greeks, and is often the subject of humour in Greek comedy.
  The animals used are, in order of preference, bull or ox, cow, sheep (the most common), goat, pig (with piglet the cheapest mammal), and poultry (but rarely other birds or fish).  Horses and asses are seen on some vases in the Geometric style (900-750 BC), but are very rarely mentioned in literature; they were relatively late introductions to Greece, and it has been suggested that Greek preferences in this matter go very far back.  The Greeks liked to believe that the animal was glad to be sacrificed, and interpreted various behaviours as showing this. Divination by examining parts of the sacrificed animal was much less important than in Roman or Etruscan religion, or Near Eastern religions, but was practiced, especially of the liver, and as part of the cult of Apollo. Generally, the Greeks put more faith in observing the behaviour of birds.  For a smaller and simpler offering, a grain of incense could be thrown on the sacred fire, and outside the cities farmers made simple sacrificial gifts of plant produce as the "first fruits" were harvested.  Although the grand form of sacrifice called the hecatomb (meaning 100 bulls) might in practice only involve a dozen or so, at large festivals the number of cattle sacrificed could run into the hundreds, and the numbers feasting on them well into the thousands.  The enormous Hellenistic structures of the Altar of Hieron and Pergamon Altar were built for such occasions.
  The evidence of the existence of such practices is clear in some ancient Greek literature, especially in Homer's epics. Throughout the poems, the use of the ritual is apparent at banquets where meat is served, in times of danger or before some important endeavor to gain the favor of the gods. For example, in Homer's Odyssey Eumaeus sacrifices a pig with prayer for his unrecognizable master Odysseus. However, in Homer's Iliad, which partly reflects very early Greek civilization, not every banquet of the princes begins with a sacrifice.
  These sacrificial practices, described in these pre-Homeric eras, share commonalities to the 8th century forms of sacrificial rituals. Furthermore, throughout the poem, special banquets are held whenever gods indicated their presence by some sign or success in war. Before setting out for Troy, this type of animal sacrifice is offered. Odysseus offers Zeus a sacrificial ram in vain. The occasions of sacrifice in Homer's epic poems may shed some light onto the view of the gods as members of society, rather than as external entities, indicating social ties. Sacrificial rituals played a major role in forming the relationship between humans and the divine.
  It has been suggested that the Chthonic deities, distinguished from Olympic deities by typically being offered the holocaust mode of sacrifice, where the offering is wholly burnt, may be remnants of the native Pre-Hellenic religion and that many of the Olympian deities may come from the Proto-Greeks who overran the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula in the late third millennium BC.
  In the Hellenistic 
caption: Sacrifice of a lamb on a Pitsa Panel, Corinth, 540–530 BC
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