> [[lyle]]. "Concepts of Exauguration and Inauguration in Relation to the Pantheon Suggested by Ibn Fadlan's Account of a Rus' Funeral". Article in [[iacm14]]. > #nofreepdf > #donthave > #link ## Abstract > This Rus’ funeral took place on the River Volga near present-day Kazan in Tatarstan in the year 922 AD and an account of it was recorded in Arabic by Ibn Fadlan who was a traveller from Baghdad. The main context is Scandinavian and there may also be Turkic elements. I have already examined aspects of this account in an article forthcoming in *Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift* and have argued there that the funeral activities are royal ones and that they imply that the transition after the king’s death involves the erasure of a closed group of people who are replaced by an equivalent group in the reign that follows. The implication appears to be that six men and an old and a young woman have a special relationship with the king, and it is further suggested that these nine people correspond to nine gods in the pantheon. The new king being inaugurated will be attended by a fresh set of eight supporters and study of inauguration ceremonies will be introduced here. The king’s death marks the end of an era, and a link can be made with Adam of Bremen’s well-known account of a sacrifice at Uppsala of sets of nine creatures including humans at the end of each period of nine years. Adam also speaks of the drowning of a human victim in a well and this victim may correspond to the god of death in the Indo-European tenfold scheme that I have posited whose human counterpart appears to be sacrificed as part of the ceremony of inauguration, so connecting the people in the forthcoming reign with the land of the dead.