The Ancestral Sacrifice
Author: Kaakyire Akosomo Nyantakyi
Publisher:
Published: 1998
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781886094796
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Lanterna Rally
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The Ancestral Sacrifice
Author: Kaakyire Akosomo Nyantakyi
Publisher:
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 139
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Ancestral Memory in Early China
Author: K.E. Brashier
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2020-10-26
Total Pages: 487
ISBN-13: 1684170567
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Ancestral ritual in early China was an orchestrated dance between what was present (the offerings and the living) and what was absent (the ancestors). The interconnections among the tangible elements of the sacrifice were overt and almost mechanical, but extending those connections to the invisible guests required a medium that was itself invisible. Thus in early China, ancestral sacrifice was associated with focused thinking about the ancestors, with a structured mental effort by the living to reach out to the absent forebears and to give them shape and existence. Thinking about the ancestors—about those who had become distant—required active deliberation and meditation, qualities that had to be nurtured and learned. This study is a history of the early Chinese ancestral cult, particularly its cognitive aspects. Its goals are to excavate the cult’s color and vitality and to quell assumptions that it was no more than a simplistic and uninspired exchange of food for longevity, of prayers for prosperity. Ancestor worship was not, the author contends, merely mechanical and thoughtless. Rather, it was an idea system that aroused serious debates about the nature of postmortem existence, served as the religious backbone to Confucianism, and may even have been the forerunner of Daoist and Buddhist meditation practices.
Divine Consumption
Author: Stephen A. Dueppen
Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
Published: 2022-12-31
Total Pages: 328
ISBN-13: 195044631X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Kirikongo is an archaeological site composed of thirteen remarkably well-preserved discrete mounds occupied continually from the early first to the mid second millennium AD. It spans a dynamic era that saw the growth of large settlement communities and regional socio-political formations, development of economic specializations, intensification in interregional commercial networks, and the effects of the Black Death pandemic. The extraordinary preservation of architectural units, activity areas and industrial zones provides a unique opportunity to discern the cultural practices that created stratified mounds (tells) in this part of West Africa. Building from a new detailed zooarchaeological analysis and refinements in stratigraphic precision, this book argues that repeated ritual activity was a significant factor in the accumulation of stratified archaeological deposits. The book details consistencies in form and content of discrete loci containing animal bones, food remains, and broken and unbroken objects and suggests that these are the remnants of sequential ancestor shrines created when domestic spaces were converted to tombs or dedicated mortuary monuments were constructed. Continuities and transformations in ancestral rituals at Kirikongo inform on earlier West African ritual practices from the second millennium BC as well as political and social transformations at the site. More broadly, this case study provides new insights on anthropogenic mound (tell) formation processes, social zooarchaeology, material culture theory, historical ontology, and the analysis of ritual and religion in the archaeological record.
Human Sacrifice and the Supernatural in African History
Author: Mbogoni, Lawrence E.Y.
Publisher: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers
Published: 2013-11-03
Total Pages: 270
ISBN-13: 9987082424
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Since time immemorial, human beings the world over have sought answers to the vexing questions of their origins, sickness, death and after death; the meaning of natural phenomena such as earthquakes, eclipses of the sun and moon, birth of twins etc. and how to protect themselves from such mysterious events. They invented God and gods and the occult sciences (witch craft, divination and soothsaying) in order to seek the protection of supernatural powers while individuals used them to gain power to dominate others and to accumulate wealth. Human sacrifice was one way in which they sought to expiate the gods for what they believed were punishments for their transgressions. One example, the Ghana Asante Kingdom's very origins are associated with human sacrifice. On the eve of war against Denkyira, individuals volunteered themselves to be sacrificed in order to guarantee victory. Later, human sacrifice in Asante was mainly politically motivated as kings and religious leaders offered human sacrifice in remembrance of their ancestral spirits and to seek their protection against their enemies. The Asante Kingdom is one of several examples included in this study of human sacrifice and ritual killing on the African continent. Case studies include practices in Sierra Leone, Tanzania (Mainland), Zanzibar, Uganda and Swaziland. Advertisements relating to the occult was a common feature of Drum magazine, the popular South African magazine in Southern, Eastern and Central Africa in late years of colonial and early years of postcolonial periods, indicating a wide belief in these practices among the people in these countries? Each case examined is introduced by an expose of folklore that puts in perspective beliefs in the supernatural and how folklore continues to perpetuate them. Through careful study of these select cases, this book highlights general features of human sacrifice which recur with striking uniformity in all parts of sub Saharan Africa, and why they persist until today. He draws upon extensive written sources to expose these practices in other cultures including those in Western societies.
Mortgaging the Ancestors
Author: Parker Shipton
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2009-01-06
Total Pages: 348
ISBN-13: 0300152744
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This title looks briefly at European and North American theories on private property and the mortgage, then shows how these theories have played out as attempted economic reforms in Africa.
Land of Our Fathers
Author: Francesca Stavrakopoulou
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2011-04-17
Total Pages: 208
ISBN-13: 0567551172
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The biblical motif of a land divinely-promised and given to Abraham and his descendants is argued to be an ideological reflex of post-monarchic, territorial disputes between competing socio-religious groups. The important biblical motif of a Promised Land is founded upon the ancient Near Eastern concept of ancestral land: hereditary space upon which families lived, worked, died and were buried. An essential element of concept of ancestral land was the belief in the post-mortem existence of the ancestors, who were venerated with grave offerings, mortuary feasts, bone rituals and standing stones. The Hebrew Bible is littered with stories concerning these practices and beliefs, yet the specific correlation of ancestor veneration and certain biblical land claims has gone unrecognized. The book remedies this in presenting evidence for the vital and persistent impact of ancestor veneration upon land claims. It proposes that ancestor veneration, which formed a common ground in the experiences of various socio-religious groups in ancient Israel, became in the Hebrew Bible an ideological battlefield upon which claims to the land were won and lost.
North of Ithaka
Author: Eleni N. Gage
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2005-05
Total Pages: 314
ISBN-13: 0312340281
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This is the poignant story of the author's move from New York to Lia--the remote Greek village where her grandmother was murdered, and which her father Nicholas Gage, made famous 20 years ago with his international bestseller "Eleni."
Ancestor Worship and the Elite in Late Iron Age Scandinavia
Author: Triin Laidoner
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-01-14
Total Pages: 135
ISBN-13: 0429815999
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Ancestor worship is often assumed by contemporary European audiences to be an outdated and primitive tradition with little relevance to our societies, past and present. This book questions that assumption and seeks to determine whether ancestor ideology was an integral part of religion in Viking Age and early medieval Scandinavia. The concept is examined from a broad socio-anthropological perspective, which is used to structure a set of case studies which analyse the cults of specific individuals in Old Norse literature. The situation of gods in Old Norse religion has been almost exclusively addressed in isolation from these socio-anthropological perspectives. The public gravemound cults of deceased rulers are discussed conventionally as cases of sacral kingship, and, more recently, religious ruler ideology; both are seen as having divine associations in Old Norse scholarship. Building on the anthropological framework, this study introduces the concept of ‘superior ancestors’, employed in social anthropology to denote a form of political ancestor worship used to regulate social structure deliberately. It suggests that Old Norse ruler ideology was based on conventional and widely recognised religious practices revolving around kinship and ancestors and that the gods were perceived as human ancestors belonging to elite families.
The Conservationist
Author: Nadine Gordimer
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1983-02-24
Total Pages: 273
ISBN-13: 1101571063
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"This is a novel of enormous power' New Statesman 'Gordimer is a great writer ... It is Turgenev that she most brings to mind' -- New York Review of Books The Booker Prize winning political novel by the Nobel Prize winning author Nadine Gordimer Mehring is rich. He has all the privileges and possessions that South Africa has to offer, but his possessions refuse to remain objects. His wife, son, and mistress leave him; his foreman and workers become increasingly indifferent to his stewardship; even the land rises up, as drought, then flood, destroy his farm.
