The Royal Indo-European Horse Sacrifice

The most important sacrificial animal in the original Indo-European religion was the horse - The very power of their kings depended on an elaborate ritual horse sacrifice. In this video we will look at the rite of horse sacrifice in various Indo-European traditions in order to get an idea of why the Proto-Indo-Europeans considered it such an important royal ritual and what it looked like. Beginning with the enormous Ashvamedha in India, and moving on to Rome's October Horse rite and ending on old Norse written sources combined with archaeological evidence from the Nordic Bronze age through to the Viking age - we get a pretty clear picture of the gruesome and often sexual rituals associated with the inauguration of kings and the necessary solar horse sacrifice. This video is mainly based on the recent book on the same subject by Kaliff & Oestigaard.

Sources:

Dumézil, G. 1970. ‘Archaic Roman Religion. Volume One.’ The John Hopkins University Press. Baltimore and London. Eliade, M. 1993. ‘Patterns in Comparative Religion.’ Sheed and Ward. New York. Eliade, M., ed., ‘Encyclopedia of Religion’ (NY: Collier Macmillan, 1987), VI:463; Kaliff, A., & Oestigaard, T., ‘The Great Indo-European Horse Sacrifice: 4000 Years of Cosmological Continuity from Sintashta and the Steppe to Scandinavian Skeid’ (2020) Outram, A., et al. ‘Horses for the dead: funerary foodways in Bronze Age Kazakhstan’ - (March 2011) Puhvel, J., ‘Comparative Mythology’ 1987 Rowsell, T., Riding To The Afterlife: The Role Of Horses In Early Medieval North-Western Europe. (2012) Sikora, M., ‘Diversity in Viking Age horse burial’ in The Journal of Irish Archaeology(Belfast: 2003-4). P.87. Solheim, S. 1956. Horse-fight and horse-race in Norse tradition. Studia Norvegica No. 8. H. Aschehoug & Co. (W. Nyaard). Oslo. Veil, Stephan & Breest, Klaus & Grootes, P. & Nadeau, Marie-Josée & Huels, Matthias. (2012). A 14 000-year-old amber elk and the origins of northern European art. Antiquity. 86. 660-673.