Page 71 - All About History - Issue 38-16
P. 71
Celts: Cult of Death
Did druids
practise human
sacrifice?
Dr Andrew Jennings, UHI
Centre for Nordic Studies
There is no reason
to doubt Caesar’s
claim that the
druids carried out
human sacrifice.
Life was offered to
the gods in return
for life. So someone
afflicted with a
serious disease or
a warrior fighting
a battle would offer a human sacrifice in
return for their life, and the druids would
carry it out. An animal was no substitute
and criminals were pleasing to the gods, but
if they were in short supply, the innocent
would do. However, we don’t know what
the Celtic gods wanted the spirits of the
sacrificed for.
Caesar also tells us about that most
gruesome of sacrifice the Wicker Man, where
an immense statue of twigs was filled with
victims and set alight. He also remarks that
druidism originated in Britain, so it’s no
surprise to hear from Tacitus that blood-
soaked altars existed among the British Celts.
Further afield, the Galatians, a Celtic people
who settled in Turkey, reportedly sacrificed
their prisoners after a battle in 165 BCE. The
Celts were not odd for carrying out human
Roman accounts are the primary sources sacrifice. Tollund Man, a Danish bog body,
that give weight to the theory that the is mummified proof that the contemporary
Celts practiced human sacrifice
Germanic peoples did it too.
A section of the Gundestrup cauldron,
this panel shows the sacrifice and
subsequent rebirth of a warrior
A bog body found in Germany. It has been
named Windeby I and is believed to be a
16-year-old boy from between 41 BCE and 118
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