Dog Sacrifices Found in Medieval Hungarian Village

National Geographic News ^ | April 6, 2009 | Charles Q. Choi

[SunkenCiv]

Ten dogs, including the one above, buried in pits and four puppy skeletons in pots buried upside down are among the dozens of ritually sacrificed dogs recently found in a medieval Hungarian village, researchers announced in April 2009. [Photograph courtesy Gyorgy Terei]

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	Thanks JoeProBono. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
·Dogpile · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

[WayneS]

Has PETA made a statement?

;^)

[rdax]

[areukiddingme1]

Really!?! This is a revelation or something? What the hell, it's "the other white meat" in Korea...

[SunkenCiv]

The sprinkles are a nice touch.

[stormer]

[stormer]

[SunkenCiv]

Lycanthropes International probably will have a few choice words, after they get done devouring the members of PETA who show up to investigate.

[WayneS]

A while back, the Myth Busters TV show “busted” an old “saying” that goes something like: “You Can’t Polish a Turd”. They located some guy who molds and carves animal feces into various shapes, and finishes his “art work” by polishing it to a high gloss.

For some reason, the photo you posted reminded me that. I wonder why.

[WayneS]

Is that a Weimeraner (sp)?

I heard those things KILL people!

No wait, that’s them pit bulls... never mind.

;^)

[Verginius Rufus]

Similar practices have been found in many places--for example, Asia Minor in the second millennium BC (Hittite period) (see Billie Jean Collins, "The Puppy in Hittite Ritual" [199] at http://oi.chicago.edu/research/pubs/nn/win92_collins.html (she cites the funeral of Patroclus in Iliad 23 where it is said that Patroclus had nine "dogs of the table," two of which Achilles kills and puts on Patroclus' funeral pyre).

Puppy burials have been found in Sardis, Lydia, from the fifth century BC (said to figure in a ritual banquet in honor of Hermes Kandaulas--"Kandaulas" means "dog throttler"--but the puppies themselves were not eaten).

There is also evidence for dog burials on Crete in the Early Iron Age and for dog burials in Ashkelon (a Philistine city now in Israel near the Gaza Strip) from the Persian period (538-322 BC) (see Paula Wapnish and Brian Hesse, "Pampered Pooches or Plain Pariahs? The Ashkelon Dog Burials," The Biblical Archaeologist vol. 56, no. 2 (June 1993) 55-80.

Plutarch in his essay Roman Questions, #52 refers to Greeks sacrificing a bitch to the goddess Hecate, and cites Socrates as saying that the Argives sacrifice a bitch to Eilioneia.

[GrannyAnn]

Why does everything ancient have to be part of a “ritual.” How do they know that?

[SunkenCiv]

yeah, I know what ya mean. And in this case, it’s obvious that these dogs were killed by another dog, which thought it was following orders of some guy named Sam.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks VR.

[Verginius Rufus]

The figure in brackets in the Billie Jean Collins article should have been the date 1992.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks.