The sacrificial rituals of Greek hero cults in the Archaic to the early ...

256 The use and meaning of the rituals in a wider perspective
was sacrificed to great men, such as Achilles, Agamemnon and Patroklos,
but that was no longer the case in later periods. 196
Of great interest in this context is a 5th-century BC law from Ioulis on
Keos regulating burial modes. This text, which has been discussed previously
in connection with the Destruction sacrifices, stipulates that a prosphagion
should be performed according to ancestral custom. 197 The prosphagion
must have taken place before the burial and seems to have been some kind
of animal sacrifice. The meat could not be eaten, since the family was still
ritually impure, and was probably deposited in the grave or burnt with the
corpse. 198 The term prosphagion, however, indicates that the blood of the
victim was of importance at this ritual. 199 Most likely, the main purpose of
the ritual was to provide the dead with the blood of the animal.
Another possibility would be to view the prosphagion as part of the
purification of the family of the departed. A scholion on the passage in the
Minos, which mentions the slaughter of an animal before the ekphora, states
that there were particular women, enchytistriai, who purified the enageis
and poured out the blood of the hiereion. 200 If the prosphagion is to be
considered as connected with purifications, it made up only one part of
the transformation of the family from impure to pure, since the house was
purified the following day by sea- and spring-water and soil. 201
Whatever was the purpose of the prosphagion, it seems to have been
a rare ritual, which is documented only from Keos. 202 It was not practised
in Attica in the Classical period. 203 Other funerary laws regulating the burial
196 The mention of blood rituals to the dead in the tragedies could be seen as an influence
from hero-cult, but each passage cannot automatically be taken as a description of or reference
to an actual hero-cult, see Mikalson 1991, 31–45; see also below, p. 261, n. 228.
197 LS 97 A, 12–13 = IG XII:5 593:prosfagíwi[q]rêsjaik.atàt .àp[átria].
198 See discussion above, pp. 229–230. Furthermore, to share a victim with an unburied family
member would have been to share his condition as unburied, dead and impure.
199 See Casabona 1966, 170–174: prosphagion is found only in the Ioulis law, while prosphazein
and prosphagma are mainly found in tragedy, often concerning human sacrifice.
200 [Pl.] Min. 315c:°ereîáteprosfáttontevpròtævÇkforâvtoûnekroû. Schol. [Pl.] Min. 315c
(Greene 1938):Çgqutistríav;...légontaidèkaìËsaitoùvÇnageîvkajaírousin,a´maÇpiqéousai
toû°ereíou. Cf. De Schutter 1996, 335.
201 LS 97 A, 14–17. One of the main purposes of the funerary laws may have been to limit and
prevent the spread of pollution, see Heikkilä (forthcoming).
202 Louis Robert (1937, 306–308, no. 3) suggested the restoration prosf.a[g]iáz[ontev] in a
late imperial epitaph recording the institution of a funerary cult in Phrygia. The terminology
is unusual also in this context, since the other examples of similar texts use thyein or thysia
(ibid. 391).
203 Enagizein and enagismos used for funerary rituals in Athens refer to the burning of
vegetable o�ferings and cakes, as well as the pouring of libations, but cannot be taken as support
for the use of animal sacrifice and blood rituals in the cult of the dead.