Foundation Sacrifice

Foundation Sacrifice, a kind of human sacrifice, in which the victim was buried beneath, or his blood poured over, the foundation-stone of a building to appease the ground spirits and render them protectors of the new building. In some cases, however, the victim was walled up, in the way the Scots herd-boy described to Hugh Miller (My Schools, ch. xi.) how the man "was killed on the foundation-stone, just after it was laid, and then built into the wa' by the masons." The custom seems to have been kept up in Europe till the Middle Ages, a beast being generally substituted for a human victim. It still lingers in the East, and was possibly known to the Semites (Joshua vi. 26).