human sacrifice
There is no certain evidence of the practice of human sacrifice in Egypt
from the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BC) onwards, although the practice is known
from Kerma in Nubia at a time roughly contemporary with the Second Intermediate
Period (1650-1550 BC).
In the Protodynastic and early Dynastic period (c. 3200-2685 BC),
there may be archaeological indications of the funerary sacrifice of servants.
It has been argued that the apparent shared roof covering many ‘subsidiary
burials’ surrounding the tombs of certain 1st-Dynasry rulers at Abydos and
Saqqara (3100-2890 BC) is an indication that large numbers of royal retainers
were killed simultaneously in order to accompany the pharaoh into the
afterlife. The practice would no doubt later have been superseded by the more widespread
use of representation of servants at work (in the form of wall decoration and
three-dimensional models) and the eventual provision of Sharti figures, whose
role appears to have been to undertake agricultural work on behalf of the
deceased.
From the late Predynastic period onwards, votive objects and temple
walls were frequently decorated with scenes of the king smiting his enemies
while gripping them by their hair, but these acts of ritual execution are
usually depicted in the context of warfare. The actual sacrifice of prisoners
at temples—as opposed to the depiction of foreigners as bound captives—is attested
by textual evidence from the reign of Amenhotep II (1427-1400 BC). He claims to
have executed seven Syrian princes in the temple of Amun at Karnak, displaying
the bodies of six of them on its walls, and hanging the body of the seventh on
the walls of Napata.
The tale of the 4th-Dynasty ruler Khufu (2589-2566 BC) and the magician
Djedi, composed in the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 BC) and preserved on Papyrus
Westcar (Berlin) provides a good illustration of the Egyptians’ apparent
abhorrence of human sacrifice. Khufu is portrayed as a stereotypical tyrant who
asks for a prisoner to be decapitated so that Djedi can demonstrate his magical
ability to restore severed heads, but, according to the story, the magician
insists that the demonstration be made on a goose rather than a human.
It is also worth noting that the Pyramid Texts include possible
references to cannibalism in the form of the so-called ‘cannibal hymn’
(Utterances 273-4), which describes the king ‘eating the magic’ and ‘swallowing
the spirits’ of the gods. However, it is difficult to know in this instance
whether the concept of the king eating the gods was purely metaphorical or
based on some early sacrificial act. (Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson, The
Dictionary of Ancient Egypt [New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995], 134)
