Replica of a Sacrificial Pit of the Bronze Age - Nižná Myšľa

The village of Nižná Myšľa is known in scientific circles as an important European archaeological site of the Early Bronze Age. It gained its status as early as 1892 and has been fascinating the world with its excavations ever since. The Archaeological Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences has been carrying out systematic research there for 40 years, thanks to which it was possible to discover the existence of several settlements from different time periods from prehistoric times to the early Middle Ages.

Nižná Myšľa is located in the district of Košice-Precincts. The Hornád River flows through the village and the gravel lake Geča is located on the south-western border of the village.

The latest discovery of 1993 is in a two and a half metre deep sacrificial pit containing the skeletons of four women, separated by layers of clay, along with a large part of a boiled child's skull. Interestingly, each slain woman was covered by earth along with parts of sacrificed animals and ceramic vessels, a bronze ring, a clay weight from a loom, ceramic wheels and stones. Today we can only imagine what was appropriate to replace such a bloody ritual.

Rituals were not entirely exceptional in that period and included tropophagy or, imprecisely speaking, cannibalism.

Today, a replica of the sacrificial pit with its entire contents stands right on this site. The replica of the pit is part of the exhibition of the archaeological open-air museum in Nižná Myšľa.

A few metres from the Archaeological Open-air Museum, there is the Myšla Municipal Museum, housed in a monastery building of the 13th century. In addition to another museum, there are archaeological and cultural monuments, mainly from excavations for arrivals in the village.

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