Bloody Animal Sacrifice Common in Cyprus during the Bronze Age

The archaeological source material that Pararas studied spanned more than 250-300 years; from about 1300/1250 to 1000 B.C. This period coincides with the time when urban centres flourished in Cyprus. The author of the dissertation has examined the types of built constructions, which can be regarded as the forerunner to what we later came to call an “altar”. The layout of floors in temples and other ritual buildings show that there was not however any standardised layout as regards the mutual relationship between “altar” and temple.

Yannis Pararas has also investigated the relation between Cypriote “altars” from 1300/1250 to 1000 B.C. and altars from the adjacent areas like the Levant and the Aegean area. The results show an obvious connection between the Levant and Cyprus through the eastward movement of Hellenic populations. These common elements must on the other hand be analysed against the background of a similar ritual in the population in the east Mediterranean area during the Late Bronze Age.

Scholars of religion have already previously maintained – on the basis of late Greek testimony that bloody sacrifice was of Cypriote origin – that a kind of fusion (syncretism) of Minoan-Mycenaean and Levantine elements of the act of sacrifice took place in Cyprus. It is de facto archaeologically obvious that what, during the previous millennium, had crystallized as the central parts of Greek ritual practice – independent temples and altars for sacrificial burning – was a clearer forerunner in Cyprus around 1200-1000 B.C. than in the Aegean area.

The dissertation’s title: Immovable Offertory Installations in Late Bronze Age Cyprus.
The dissertation takes place on Friday 5 September 2008 at 13.00
Place: Room T 307, Arkeologen, Olof Wijksagatan 6, Göteborg