Note 230.2 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.

The most interesting part of our present inquiry is the comparison of the ceremonies and the concept of sacrifice in East and West. At the first glance we note, as usual, a certain general similarity. In the earliest period we find various animals, both wild and domestic, offered upon the altars, but in Babylonia no special rules concerning their sex, such as were prescribed by ancient Greek and Judaic ritual. In all these countries, again, bloodless offerings of cereals and fruits were in common vogue; and in the earliest Babylonian period, these were of great variety, an inscription of Gudea mentioning butter, honey, wine, corn with milk, figs, dates, as the food of the gods, “untouched by fire.”230.2 We note here the distinction familiar in Greek ritual, between ἔμπυρα and ἄπυρα ἱερά; only in Babylonia it does not seem to have been of religious importance, nor to have been developed, as it was in Hellas, into a ceremonial law that might engender an important variation in the moral ideas and religious concepts of the worshipper; for instance, the altar of Apollo at Delos was called καθαρός, “the pure altar,” because no blood could be shed upon it, the sacrifices of Athena Lindia at Rhodes, and of Zeus in certain mystic rites of Crete, were ἄπυρα, or “fireless,” which was the technical name for the oblations of fruits and cereals; and this fact of ritual suggested to later Greek philosophy the ethical-religious view that the “pure,” that is to say, bloodless, offering was the more acceptable oblation, and was a tradition of the age of man’s innocence. This pregnant idea has not yet been discovered in Mesopotamian or in any other old Semitic religion; the Babylonian deities received both kinds, and perhaps simultaneously, though in certain special ceremonies the sacred cake, or the liquid offerings of milk, honey, wine, and oil, might suffice;231.1 while, according to the ancient Hebraic view, as the legend of Cain and Abel indicates, the deity appears to prefer blood-sacrifice, though each species is recognised in the pre-exilic sacral literature.231.2