Knossos
The Ancients
00:00
The Blood Bucket in Knossos
This isn't actually part of the Ashmolean collection this is alone from Greece. It was excavated in 1979 in a building which had been destroyed by an earthquake and then obviously people had just left it alone they had never gone back to retrieve the contents. This is some of the best evidence we have that human sacrifice was practiced in Bronze Age Crete. There are similar images of cattle being sacrificed with vessels like this to collect the blood after their throat has been slit - perhaps this was the fate of the young man on the altar.
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