PhD Thesis: À chacun le sien : associations entre animaux sacrificiels et destinataires divins dans les normes rituelles grecques.
Supervisors: Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge and Jan-Mathieu Carbon
Research Interests: Ancient Greek religion, animal sacrifice, Greek ritual norms, ritual uses of pigs
Supervisors: Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge and Jan-Mathieu Carbon
Research Interests: Ancient Greek religion, animal sacrifice, Greek ritual norms, ritual uses of pigs
less
Uploads
Book Reviews by Zoé Pitz
Papers by Zoé Pitz
For the ancient Greeks, sacrifice was the primary mode of communication with the gods. Among the different types of animals and vegetal substances which could be offered, domestic animals are the most abundantly attested in literary, epigraphical, archeological and iconographic sources. The question of which criteria were employed in choosing a given animal for sacrifice—species, age, gender, colour—remains a neglected subject in current research. Aside from cases where private individuals sacrificed animals according to their own means, several inscriptions officially published by Greek cities catalogue a multitude of different animals alongside their various divine recipients. Though partly useful, economic factors cannot explain the sum total of this diversity.
The principal research undertaken is a study of the correlations between domestic animals and the gods to whom they were offered. Using above all the Greek ritual norms, the resulting study seeks to clarify the use of domestic animals in Greek sacrifice. More importantly, it provides the grounds for an analysis of what the choice of a specific sacrificial animal can tell us about the representation of a Greek deity.