Cult Worshippers Offered Birds as Sacrifice in Pompeii to Please a Magician Goddess

The ancient city of Pompeii in Italy was almost wiped off the map after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Despite the widespread destruction, certain structures and cultural history of Pompeii remained intact for experts to study in modern times. A team of international researchers unearthed the remains of 10 birds from the partially ruined Temple of Isis in Pompeii. Chiara Assunta Corbino, an archaeologist at Italy's Institute of Heritage Science, and Beatrice Demarchi, from the University of Turin, co-authored the study published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology along with archaeologist Beatrice Demarchi, who is currently a tenure-track researcher from the University of Turin.

The study indicated that the birds were important offerings during rituals while worshipping the goddess Isis. The experts also theorized that the birds were used in important sacrificial practices to please the goddess after renovation works downsized her temple in ancient times. It is believed that the renovation works were carried out after an earthquake in 62 A.D. and before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Corbino and Demarchi analyzed the excavated materials that contained 143 skeletal fragments of 10 birds which belonged to eight chickens, a goose, and a turtle dove. Seventy-four of those birds were charred with a pig and two clams.

Chicken eggshells excavated from the region were identified using protein analysis and taphonomic evidence indicated that the bones of the birds were still covered with meat when they were exposed to the flame. The study also mentioned that the birds were intended to be cooked and eaten by the priests while the rest of the meat would have been offered to the goddess Isis. "The ritual was likely performed by three priests of Isis in a single day, possibly to atone for renovations that had made the temple slightly smaller," Corbino told Live Science over an email. 

"The mobility of soldiers, administrators, and traders in the Roman Empire promoted the spread of Eastern religions such as the Isis cult. The cult rituals were secret and not allowed to be written down, so archaeology is the only way of finding out about them, she said. Until now, in the case of the Isis cult, sacrificial remains had been found only in Greece, Spain, and Germany. The study of Pompeii is the first archaeozoological investigation of an Isis sanctuary in Italy," Sabine Deschler-Erb, a historian and archaeologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland who was not involved in the study, told Live Science.

The presence of goose among the birds included in the ritual seems specifically related to the cult of Isis since Isis was known as "the Egg of the Goose" according to the study. Subsequent excavation of this ancient city over more than 300 years has revealed important insights into ancient culture as well as daily life in the early Roman Empire. "The selection of the specific animals used for ritual offerings was a codified and non-casual process, which required a great deal of thought and care," the study pointed out. "The evidence from Pompeii thus adds new insights into our knowledge of the animals involved in the cultic activities related to Isis, not only in this town in the 1st century CE but likely also in the whole of the Roman Empire at that time."