168 Abstract This paper examines the evidence for human sacrifice in the ancient Near East, through archaeological, iconographic and textual records, with some of the most compelling material coming from the so-called ‘Royal Cemetery’ of the ancient site of Ur. This is discussed in the light of scholarly bias in a topic that causes great con- troversy and is often seen as horrific and barbaric in the modern western world. Such views are too easily and too often applied to ancient cultures without proper justifi- cation and resulting in interpretations based on unfounded assumptions. Evidence for human sacrifice is almost always disputed, it may be difficult to detect in all three kinds of material, and it tends to require a firmer base and conviction than other inter- pretations, with scholars either being reluctant to consider sacrifice an option or indeed too eager to do so. If complete contexts are studied, however, it is possible in some instances to suggest human sacrifice, whereas in other instances a different interpretation may seem more appropriate, and in some cases it must simply be admitted that we do not have enough material for an adequate interpretation. The royal body with its attendants, many or few, was laid in the tomb, and the door was sealed and sacrifice was made in the little court before the entrance … Round it fires were lit and a funeral feast was held, and libations to the dead were poured. 1 Such were the words of Sir Leonard Woolley, the excavator of the famous ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur. There, among hundreds of tombs, he found 16 elaborate ‘royal’ tombs, all containing evidence of human sacrificial victims, with numbers as high as over 70 human skeletons. Discoveries like this peak the imagination of schol- ars and the general public alike, and in this paper I will examine the evidence specif- ically for human sacrifice in the ancient Near East, that is, roughly modern-day Iraq and Syria. It comes from the period spanning the Early Dynastic to the early Old Babylonian period (that is c. 2900-1700 BCE). This article serves as a short review of the scholarship on human sacrifice in the ancient Near East to date, discussing problems, especially of modern assumptions concerning human sacrifice, and sug- gesting possible solutions or approaches to the evidence. The ancient Near East con- tains a rich source of material, and I here make use of three different types of evi- dence to gain as full a picture as possible: archaeological, iconographic and textual. Sacrifice, 2 in particular human sacrifice, is often seen as a ‘barbaric’, horrible and serious act in the modern Western world, and any interpretation that involves HUMAN SACRIFICE IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST LAERKE RECHT JPR2009Body.Laerke.images_JPRfinal 22/06/2010 11:51 Page 1