Conclusion

This chapter has considered the two instances of institutionalised human sacrifice in the history of ancient Mesopotamia and has attempted to understand them in the context of elite concepts of kingship and religious thought.

There remains much mystery surrounding the interred victims of the royal tombs at Ur. However, the latest scientific investigations suggest there is commonality between the royal funerary cults at Early Dynastic Ur and First Dynasty Egypt. Such findings indicate that the emergence of the state in Mesopotamia and Egypt saw extreme control over the subject population, which was most brutally expressed in times of royal succession. The substitute king ritual is far better understood and was a part of a wider doctrine of substitution that was present in Mesopotamian religion and medical practices. The ritual was triggered in response to concerns for a ruler's life at the time of an eclipse and reveals that rulers of the second and first millennia bce were subject to the will of the gods as much as any human. In all, there are different contexts for these two institutionalised practices of human sacrifice in ancient Mesopotamia, yet in both instances it is clear that the office of kingship held absolute power over subjects who could be disposed of for the sake of the ruler.

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Source: Fagan Garrett G., Fibiger Linda, Hudson Mark, Trundle Matthew (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 1: The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 756 p.. 2020

Conclusion

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