Ritual Slaughter - History

History

Walter Burkert in Homo Necans discusses animal sacrifice as arising from the anthropological transition to hunting. With the domestication of livestock, the hunt was gradually replaced by the slaughter of livestock, and hunting rituals were consequently transformed to the context of slaughter.

In antiquity, ritual slaughter and animal sacrifice was one and the same. Thus, as argued by Detienne et al. (1989), for the Greeks, consumption of meat not slaughtered ritually was unthinkable, so that beyond being a tribute to the gods, Greek animal sacrifice marked a cultural boundary, separating "Hellenes" from "barbarians". Greek animal sacrifice was christianized into slaughter ceremonies involving Greek Orthodox Christian ritual, known as kourbania.

Ancient Egyptian slaughter rituals are frequently depicted in tombs and temples from the Old Kingdom onwards. The standard iconography of the ritual involves a bull lying fettered on the ground with the butcher standing over it cutting its foreleg. The scene is attended by a woman and two priests.