Sometimes it’s just good fortune to find a headless acrobat’s skeleton sprawled on the floor near the remains of two other people, several mules and an array of valuable metal objects. That, at least, is the opinion of archaeologists who have identified just such a scene, apparently the result of a ritual sacrifice, at an ancient city in northeastern Syria.

This discovery offers a unique view of the social world nearly 4,300 years ago at Nagar, a city that belonged to Mesopotamia’s Akkadian Empire, say Joan Oates of the University of Cambridge in England and her colleagues. Nagar’s remnants lie within layers of mud-brick construction known collectively as Tell Brak (SN: 2/9/08, p. 90). The earliest layers date to more than 6,000 years ago.

Evidence suggests that this Nagar sacrifice immediately followed a brief abandonment of the site because of some sort of natural disaster. Residents appeased their gods by surrendering valued individuals, animals and objects in a building formerly used for breeding and trading mules that pulled kings’ chariots and war wagons. Following the sacrifice, the structure was closed to further activity.

Acrobats apparently ranked high enough in Nagar’s social sphere to serve as sacrificial offerings, the researchers report in the June Antiquity. Cuneiform texts from Ebla, a nearby site from the same time period, refer to individuals from Nagar known as húb. Scholars have variously defined húb as a term for acrobats, jugglers or horsemen.

Read the rest on ScienceNews.

# Posted by Michelle Moran @ | Thursday, June 19, 2008

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