Une réflexion sur le Sacrifice de l'Ennemi et l'Émergence de l'État en Égypte Prédynastique

CAMPAGNO, MARCELO

Égypte Antérieure. Mélanges de préhistoire et d'archéologie offerts à Béatrix Midant-Reynes par ses étudiants, collègues et amis pour son 70e anniversaire, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta

Peeters

Lugar: Leuven; Año: 2021;

The question of human sacrifice in Early Egypt is undoubtedly one of the many contributions of Beatrix Midant-Reynes to Egyptology and beyond. The relationship between sacrifice and the contexts in which the state emerged has been noted by both the author and the anthropologist Alain Testart, who highlights the hierarchical dimension of the practice. Within this context, we will consider here a specific type of mis-à-mort that is known since Predynastic times: the sacrifice of the enemy, in which the king smites a prisoner with his mace. One of the central characteristics of this ritual is that the sacrificed is a stranger, someone who does not belong to the community. But regarding the sacrificer, we can also think of him as a sacred leader who could have been seen as a de-socialized being with respect to his own community. Viewed from this angle, the sacrifice of the enemy would connect two social exteriorities: that of the de-socialized leader and that of the foreign prisoner. This means a ritual performed by non-kin, to guarantee the cosmic order, but introducing the legitimate monopoly of coercion into society. In this sense, the sacrifice of the enemy appears as a practice with great potential for the creation of a hierarchical order that would escape the logic of kinship.