Martyrdom 2: Pyramids, Tophets, and a Ram in a Thicket

Posted on February 29, 2004 in Martyrdom Series Morals & Ethics Myths & Mysticism

Humankind has died before, in a great flood the ended the reign of “She Who Wears a Jade Skirt” — Chalchiuhtlcue — the fourth sun. Those who weren’t drowned in the cataclysmic rush of the waters are now fish. Two gods — “The Smoking Mirror” Tezcatlipoca and “The Feathered Serpent” Quetzacoatl — transform themselves into gigantic trees, taller than any redwood, and hoist the fallen heavens back into their place. Then Quetzacoatl and the dog-faced Xolotl enter Mictlan to retrieve the bones of those who perished in the flood. After the harrowing passage into the Underworld, the divine pair bring the bones to Tamoanchan where they grind them into a fine meal. The gods gather, open their veins, and sprinkle their blood on the bone powder. We the People of the Fifth Sun rose from the ashes. The debt is made. The debt needs to be repaid. Blood must be given for blood.

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The man or woman who lies down upon the altar is called a victim, from the Latin victima meaning an animal used for sacrifice. The word comes from an Indo-European root “weik” signifying that which is magic and blessed. Wicca, wizard, witch, wile, and guile all spring from the same vein, trickling down into our usage to represent what is magical, marvelous, and cunning. Take off your intellectual sandals when you use this word for you are treading on holy ground.

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Ignorant though they were of European etymologies, the Aztecs held that the souls of sacrifices went straight to the care of their gods. Human sacrifices dwelt in a layer of the thirteen heavens that they shared with warriors who had been killed in combat and women who died in childbirth. This may explain why so many captives from the Flower Wars that the Aztecs waged against their neighbors appoached the steps of Tenochtitlan’s Great Temple in an appalling air of calmness. Spanish conquistadors who lacked the mythological grounding, reacted quite differently. Bernal Diaz related that as the soldiers of Cortez retreated from Tenochtitlan, they looked back towards the double pyramids:

“The dismal drum of Huichilobos sounded again, accompanied by conches, horns, and trumpet-like instruments. It was a terrifying sound, and when we looked at the tall cue [temple-pyramid] from which it came we saw our comrades who had been captured in Cortés defeat being dragged up the steps to be sacrificed. When they had hauled them up to a small platform in front of the shrine where they kept their accursed idols we saw them put plumes on the heads of many of them; and then they made them dance with a sort of fan in front of Huichilobos. Then after they had danced the papas [Aztec priests] laid them down on their backs on some narrow stones of sacrifice and, cutting open their chests, drew out their palpitating hearts which they offered to the idols before them. Then they kicked the bodies down the steps, and the Indian butchers who were waiting below and cut off their arms and legs and flayed their faces, which after they prepared like glove leather, with their beards on, and kept for their drunken festivals. Then they ate their flesh with sauce of peppers and tomatoes. They sacrificed all our men in this way, eating their legs and arms, offering their hearts and blood to their idols, as I have said, and throwing their trunks and entrails to the lions and tigers, snakes and serpents that they kept in the wild-beast houses I have described.”

Diaz’s account may be exagerrated: he includes much detail that he could not have possibly seen, such as the pouring of hot salsa on the flesh. Archaeologists excavating the Great Temple have found ample evidence that human beings were sacrificed there. Native informants told anthropologically minded missionaries about the day when Montezuma’s grandfather, Ahuizotl rebuilt and rededicated the heart of the Aztec’s Vatican. Townsend retells the story:

The rededication of the looming structure was orchestrated by Ahuizotl as a reaffirmation of the imperial mission by staging a sacrifice that would forever remain the most terrifying occasion in the ritual life of Tenochtitlan. Prisoners of war were lined along the the length of the causeways into the city, and in numbers entirely unprecedented the sacrifices continued remorselessly for four days. Appalled ambassadors from foreign nations were summoned to witness the dreadful slaughter, and the population of Tenochtitlan stood in awe in the plazas facing the pyramid. Streams of blood poured down the stairway and sides of the monument, forming huge pools on the white, stucco pavement. [p. 105]

Twenty thousand captives died in the course of Ahuizotl’s demonstration of temporal and spiritual power. The seams of Heaven must have parted just a little as the souls of the dead rocketed into the company of the gods.

The horrific memory of this day may help to explain why Mexico converted so quickly from actual to symbolic sacrifice, why so many assisted in the demolition of the twin towers of stone that were the prime launching ground for the transit of the spirit into a glorious afterlife.

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Mexicans who drench salsa and molé over their tastes-like-human-flesh carnitas (pork) dishes give you a “yeah-we-used-to-do-that-but-not-any-more” smirk when you bring up the past. Fascinated by his cannibal ancestors, Diego Rivera took up a diet of womanflesh for a time while he was a young man. His paintings in the National Palace depict many manifestations of this lost cuisine including a human arm being offered to the impersonator of the Aztec love goddess. Guides point them out without correcting them. They shrug and call it nothing more than history.

Modern Mideasterners react irritably when it is suggested that the Phoenicians practiced child sacrifice. A Lebanese woman whose pages strike me as the work of a Near Eastern New Ager insists “there exists no archaeological evidence that the Phoenicians sacrificed children; on the contrary, it is becoming increasingly easier to demonstrate that child sacrifice was not practiced.” The argument’s not dissimilar to those raised by New Agers and their spiritual kinfolk who deny bog sacrifices, Druidic ritual slaughters, or pogroms against Christians carried out by the Romans. The irony is that they’ve bought into a Judeo-Christian value, that human sacrifice and extermination is bad.

Their view represents a departure from earth god and goddess traditions which required returning that which came from the earth to the earth, that see us as part of the harvest.

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Evidence that Phoenicians and their Carthaginian descendants sacrificed their children comes from four sources:

• Classical authors including church fathers.
  
• The Bible (see Jeremiah 7:30-32 for example where the prophet castigates his own people for adopting the Phoenician custom)
  
• Archaeological remains, especially the curious mix of human infants, toddlers, goats, sheep, and dogs, found in certain cemeteries around Carthage and elsewhere
  
• The inscriptions on crematory urns found in these cemeteries and temples, consecrating them to Tanit (Astarte) and Baal, “that which was vowed”.

Archaeologists who found the plots called them “tophets” after the Hebrew name meaning the “place of burning” or the “roaster”. In these places, Phoenicians sacrificed healthy children to the gods in return for fulfillment of a vow. One can only imagine what the children were told when they were brought to this place to be burned and stuffed into the earth: “Johnny, we’re taking you to see the goddess.”

Through the centuries Middle-Easterners have constructed walls over cemeteries and reused that land for other purposes. Tophets, on the other hand, have been left untouched, preserved, as otherwise empty space in a region where the scarce arable ground must be farmed. Modern Tunisians do not practice child sacrifice: someone told them, however, that these grounds were special, that they deserved reverence, and they have obeyed the vague directive all these centuries.

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Jews, Christians, and Muslims might shrink slightly at the suggestion that they practice within a religious tradition that once put living people on the altar and burned them as an offering for God. Genesis 22 speaks of Yahweh’s “temptation” of Abraham. We all know of Abraham’s remorse, his son Isaac’s cheerfulness in spite of the news, Yahweh’s seizure of the hand of Abraham just as he has raised it to drive the knife into Isaac’s heart, and the appearance of the ram with its horns caught in a nearby thicket, the substitute that God has provided for God.

Modern theologians consider this scene an aspect that is part of the Covenant between God and the People of Israel. In return for their devotion, this first of gods among gods shall not require that they kill their own. It marks the end of human sacrifice among the Peoples of the Book.

Or does it? Consider this passage, (Judges 11:29-40):

Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the LORD delivered them into his hands. And he smote them from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel. And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back. And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the LORD, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the LORD hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon. And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows. And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel, That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.

No ram rushed out to save the life of Jephthah’s daughter. Hundreds of years after the deal He struck with Abraham, Yahweh still took cash payments in blood.

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Victim? Martyr? The distinction that John Dominic Crossan believes to be so clear when he criticizes Passion is not so. Phoenicians who gave their first born to the goddess Tanit gave their best as Abraham did when he followed the will of God and placed his only son on the pyre. The victim is not just a body on the altar, a piece of meat to be strapped down, slaughtered, and then burned so that only God may eat of its flesh: the holocaust is precious to the giver, a relic of his own substance that must be turned over to what is more powerful than he is.

The Aztecs treated their captives well, feasting and allowing them a few days of sumptuous pleasure before marching them to the top of the Great Pyramid. A few were chosen to impersonate gods for a year, at the end of which time they died — swiftly by the obsidian knife — atop the artificial mountains that allowed them entry into Heaven.

To be a victim is to be a holy person, to be celebrated, cherished, given over in great solemnity. In Celtic cultures, it was the king who had to die, the very best that the tribe had to offer. To suggest that being a victim meant nothing is to misapprehend the meaning of the word which has come down to us from the Romans. It is to ignore the Bible, inscriptions on crematory urns, and the codices which have come down to us from the Aztec religion. It is to ignore the etymology of the word “victim” itself, to suck from it its divine and respected connotations. When we reidentify something else as the substitute for the human sacrifice and the holy cannibalism, we increase the mythic potency of that object. Bread at a Passover Supper becomes, for Christians, the Body and Blood of Christ. The ram in the thicket becomes Isaac for Jews and, when Christians pick up the symbol for their own, the Lamb of God.

Tomorrow: War