The Greeks sacrificed when they needed help from the gods. Sacrifice was like praying to the Greeks. The bigger thing that they were praying to meant that they would sacrifice a bigger animal, and that also meant that more people would participate in the sacrifice. First they would clean and dress the animal in ribbons. Then the Greeks put water and barley seeds on the animal. To make sure that everyone was helping in the sacrifice everyone would throw barley seeds. The reason that they would pour water on the animals head was to make it say yes by "nodding" (The water would make the animal put it’s head down.). Then the person doing the sacrifice would pull out a knife and kill the animal. They would take certain parts of the animal out for the gods. The Greeks cooked everything and ate the parts not for the gods.
The definition of sacrifice is "killing a tame animal and offering a certain part of it it to the gods or one specific God and eating the rest for yourself." (This definition is from Historyforkids.com). The Greeks began to sacrifice once the kept tame/domestic animals like cows sheep pigs and goats. During the year there was a special time of sacrifice. People had stone alters outside of their houses for killing chickens and other small animals. Not just one person participated in sacrifices because they would want to share the guilt since they were killing their "pets". The only time that the Greeks would sacrifice un-tamed animals when they were sacrificing to Artemis who is the hunting god.
Dear Bloggers,
This is my Greece blog! My topic is on Greek Sacrifice. It may seem kind of disgusting and gory but it is actually more interesting than you may have thought! For example did you know that the Greeks would only kill non-tame animals if they were sacrificing to Artemis (This was because she is the God of hunting)? Also, many people would participate in sacrifices and afterwards they would celebrate, and when they sacrificed they would put ribbons on the animals and they would put barley seeds on them. If you want to find some more information about Greek sacrifice some cool and reliable sites are www.historyforkids.org and www.metmuseum.org. I chose this because I thought it would be unique and I wanted to do my blog on the Greek gods but that was too general, so I realized that the Greeks sacrificed to the Gods! So I ended up getting to research on my number 1 topics! I hope all of you find my blog as interesting as I do! From, Anders Liu |
AuthorMy name is Anders and I am really into Ancient Greece. I am very excited to write about it in my blog! ArchivesCategories |