Animal sacrifice in the context of "Sacrifices"

Sacrifice is an act or offering made to a deity. A sacrifice can serve as propitiation, or a sacrifice can be an offering of praise and thanksgiving.

Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and possibly existed before that. Evidence of ritual human sacrifice can also be found back to at least pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica as well as in European civilizations. Varieties of ritual non-human sacrifices are practiced by numerous religions today.

The religious beliefs and practices of Mycenaean Greece (c. 1600–1100 BC) are difficult to discern due to limited archeological, iconographical, and material records. Existing evidence suggests that the Mycenaean religion was the mother of the Greek religion, sharing many divinities later found in classical Greece (510–323 BC), including Zeus, Poseidon, and Dionysus. Several Mycenaean religious customs, such as animal sacrifices and votive offerings, survived into the Greek period, as did terms and concepts such as theos (deity), hieros (holy man), nawos (temple), and temenos (land cut off and assigned for communal purposes).

John Chadwick noted that at least six centuries lie between the earliest presence of Proto-Greek speakers in Hellas and the earliest inscriptions in the Mycenaean script known as Linear B, during which concepts and practices will have fused with indigenous pre-Greek beliefs, and—if cultural influences in material culture reflect influences in religious beliefs—with Minoan religion. As for these texts, the few lists of offerings that give names of gods as recipients of goods reveal little about religious practices, and there is no other surviving literature.

Canaanite religion or Syro-Canaanite religions refers to the myths, cults, and ritual practices of people in the land of Canaan in the southern Levant during roughly the first three millennia BC. Canaanite religions were polytheistic and in some cases monolatristic. They were influenced by neighboring cultures, particularly ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian religious practices. The pantheon was headed by the god El and his consort Asherah, with other significant deities including Baal, Anat, Astarte, and Dagon.

Canaanite religious practices included animal sacrifice, veneration of the dead, and the worship of deities through shrines and sacred groves. The religion also featured a complex mythology, including stories of divine battles and cycles of death and rebirth. Archaeological evidence, particularly from sites like Ugarit, and literary sources, including the Ugaritic texts and the Hebrew Bible, have provided most of the current knowledge about Canaanite religion.

A holocaust is a religious animal sacrifice that is completely consumed by fire, also known as a burnt offering. The word derives from the ancient Greek holokaustos, the form of sacrifice in which the victim was reduced to ash, as distinguished from an animal sacrifice that resulted in a communal meal.

Ding (Chinese: 鼎; pinyin: dǐng) are prehistoric and ancient Chinese cauldrons standing upon legs with a lid and two fancy facing handles. They are one of the most important shapes used in Chinese ritual bronzes. They were made in two shapes: round vessels with three legs and rectangular ones with four, the latter often called fāng dǐng (Chinese: 方鼎; lit. 'square ding'). They were used for cooking, storage, and ritual offerings to the gods or to ancestors.

The earliest recovered examples are ceramic tripods from the Neolithic Peiligang culture, but they are better known from the Chinese Bronze Age, particularly after the Zhou deemphasized the ritual use of huangjiu alcohol practiced by the Shang kings. Under the Zhou, the ding and the privilege to perform the associated rituals became symbols of authority. The number of permitted ding varied according to one's rank in the Chinese nobility: the Nine Ding of the Zhou kings were a symbol of their rule over all China but were lost by the first emperor, Shi Huangdi in the late 3rd century BCE. Subsequently, imperial authority was represented by the Heirloom Seal of the Realm, carved out of the sacred Heshibi; it was lost at some point during the Five Dynasties after the collapse of the Tang.

Animal worship (also zoolatry or theriolatry) is an umbrella term designating religious or ritual practices involving animals. This includes the worship of animal deities or animal sacrifice. An animal 'cult' is formed when a species is taken to represent a religious figure. Animal cults can be classified according to their formal features or by their symbolic content.

The classical author Diodorus situated the origin of animal worship in a myth in which the gods, threatened by giants, disguised themselves as animals. The people then began to worship these animals and continued even after the gods returned to their normal state. In 1906, Weissenborn suggested that animal worship resulted from humans' fascination with the natural world. Primitive man would observe an animal that had a unique trait and the inexplicability would engender curiosity. Wonder resulted from primitive man's observations of this distinctive trait. As such, primitive man worshipped animals that had inimitable traits. Lubbock proposed that animal worship originated from family names. In societies, families would name themselves and their children after certain animals and eventually came to hold that animal above other animals. Eventually, these opinions turned into deep respect and evolved into fully developed worship of the family animal. The belief that an animal is sacred frequently results in dietary laws prohibiting their consumption. As well as holding certain animals to be sacred, religions have also adopted the opposite attitude, that certain animals are unclean.