Kispu or kispum was an ancient Mesopotamian ritual in which the ancestors were venerated, nourished and cared. The ritual included regular offering of food and drinks to the deads. Textual evidence for the kispu were found from as early as the 3rd millennium BC; these evidence indicate the ceremony included sacrifices and offerings. The textual evidence allow identification of archaeological findings, such as masses of dining vessels near secondary burial skeletons the royal hypogeum at Qatna, with the kispu.
Further reading
- Tsukimoto, Akio (2010). "Peace for the Dead, or kispu(m) Again". Orient. 45: 101–109. doi:10.5356/orient.45.101.
- Bayliss, Miranda (1973). "The Cult of Dead Kin in Assyria and Babylonia". Iraq. 35 (2): 115–125. doi:10.2307/4199959. ISSN 0021-0889.
References
- With Akkadian mimation
- ^ Laneri, Nicola (2021). "Sensing the ancestors". In Neumann, Kiersten; Thomason, Allison (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East. Routledge. p. 400. doi:10.4324/9780429280207.
- Pfälzner, Peter (2012). "How Did They Bury the Kings of Qatna?". In Pfälzner, Peter; Niehr, Herbert; Pernicka, Ernst; Wissing, Anne (eds.). Qaṭna Studien Supplementa. Vol. 1: (Re-)Constructing Funerary Ritualsin the Ancient Near East. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 216.
- Pitard, Wayne T. (1978). "The Ugaritic Funerary Text RS 34.126". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (232): 67. doi:10.2307/1356702. ISSN 0003-097X.
- For more details see Qatna#Royal ancestors cult
- Pfälzner, Peter (2012). "How Did They Bury the Kings of Qatna?". In Pfälzner, Peter; Niehr, Herbert; Pernicka, Ernst; Wissing, Anne (eds.). Qaṭna Studien Supplementa. Vol. 1: (Re-)Constructing Funerary Ritualsin the Ancient Near East. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. pp. 213–216.
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