4/20/2018 Bouphonia Festival

Bouphonia Festival in Classical Greece

Site Menu The Bouphonia Festival, or the “Murder of the Ox” is an elaborate
• Home ceremony celebrated in Athens and elsewhere in ancient Greece. It has the
peculiar element that the sacrifice was described as a “murder” and the
• SiteMap actual sacrifice was followed by an elaborate judicial proceeding in which
• Proto-Indo- the sacrificer was accused of “murdering” the ox; he blamed it on the other
attendants present who passed the responsibility on to other humans. Finally
European Religion
the ax used in the slaughter was found guilty and sentenced to death at
• Indo-European which point it was pitched off a cliff into the sea. Oxen were often sacrificed
Languages at the larger community festivals in Greece (and cooked!--the Indo-
• Proto-Indo- Europeans almost never killed anything they weren’t going to eat), but only
this sacrifice was treated as a murder. This version of the ritual is
European Goddesses
reconstructed from a number of sources, outlined in both Frazer, see
• Proto-Indo- especially Vol. 8, pages 4-8, and also in Parke. [fuggle26]
European Myths
This sacrifice was said to be
• Proto-Indo- an offering to Zeus,
European Rituals however, every offering
• Festivals, Food and was considered to be at least
Farming partly for Zeus as an
important God. The more
• Bouphonia likely recipients were the
honored dead. No explicit
Resources
statement is known for the
• Early English Text liturgy for the Bouphonia
Society Publications festival but the proper
• Book References Greek prayer for the souls
of the dead is known from Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris. The Greeks
normally poured a libation of wine into the ground as part of any ritual; here
they offer milk, wine and honey as an offering to the dead:

Milk of the mountain kine,

Hallowed gleam of wine,
Toil of murmuring bees,
By these shall the dead have rest.

There is also a detailed explanation of the proper way to offer wine at a

Daps to the Agathos Daimon (the spirits of the dead who created our world),
given in the Deipnosophists.

The Bouphonia festival was set for the 14th of Skirophorion, a month that
began in June and continued into July, however the early calendar of the
Greeks was set to the lunar schedule, so the exact date (according to the
solar year) would have been different each year. The 14th day of the lunar
month would have coincided with the full moon so it was a major festival.
There is no exact myth in Greek sources that links the festival of the
Bouphonia with the myths of the Indo-European God *Yama (the Primal
Cow Creation Myth), but the date (in Mediterranean countries, at the
beginning of the dry season), and the peculiar elements of the ritual provide

http://piereligion.org/bouphonia.html 1/2
4/20/2018 Bouphonia Festival

the link, according to Jaan Puhvel. This is the Greek development of the
Proto-Indo-European God Yama into various Gods and saints.

The festival is retained in many Christian countries as the feast day of St.
James or St. Iacobi, set to July 25 and October 25, depending on the
calendar. The two St. James have many features in common with the Indo-
European God Yama, but the exact path of transmission is not clear.

Conclusion
Although there are Greek Pagan reconstructionist groups centered in
Greece, it seems unlikely that they will be celebrating a festival with the
killing of an ox. On the other hand, people still celebrate major festivals in
many countries by roasting a whole ox, when they can afford it. The fact
that this offering is characterized as a murder is a distinctive feature of this
ritual that connects it to the myth of *Yama.

References
• Encyclopedia Britannica, Complete Home Library, Newsweek Edition,
2004.
• Frazer, James, Golden Bough, MacMillan & Co. Ltd., London, 1919-1920
(12 vol. edition)
• Parke, H. W., Festivals of the Athenians, Cornell University Press, NY,
1977.
• Puhvel, Jaan, Analecta Indoeuropaea, (a collection of articles), published
by Innsbrucker Beitrage zur Sprachwissenschaft, Innsbruck, 1981.

"Offerings to the dead" Art and Picture Collection, The New York Public
Library Digital Collections, 1879.
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e4-5f78-a3d9-e040-
e00a18064a99

This article was published on pierce.yolasite.com/bouphonia, but Yola was

hacked presumably by a disgruntled employee on Nov. 22, 2011. The article
is now published here.

© 2007, last updated 8/13/2015, at piereligion.org/bouphonia.html

http://piereligion.org/bouphonia.html 2/2