Homicide or Deicide? The Function of Deity Impersonation in Mesoamerican Sacrificial Rituals

Summary

In Mesoamerican belief systems, deity impersonation rituals temporarily transformed human agents into divine beings. While donning the accoutrements of specific deities during ritual activity, they merged with and became literal embodiments of those gods, essentially becoming both functionally and ontologically divine for the duration of the ritual. In rituals of human sacrifice, both victim and executioner were typically bedecked in the costuming of specific gods, indicating that these were also deity impersonation rituals. As such, the participants would not have been viewed as mere human actors but rather as literal embodiments of the gods (despite the compulsory nature of the impersonation ritual on the part of the victim). The recognition that these were impersonation events dramatically elevates their cosmological import; ritual human sacrifices were not mere “re-enactments” in the sense that they commemorated or even emulated mythological events, but conceptually and functionally they enabled the sacrifice a living, breathing god.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Human Sacrifice in Ancient Mesoamerica: New Evidences and Theoretical Perspectives

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