One of the things I love most about ancient history is when it suddenly stops being about kings, wars and dates and becomes about somebody wanting something very badly.

A safe journey.

A healthy child.

A good harvest.

A victory.

Or perhaps simply the feeling that the gods had been kind and deserved a thank-you.

And so people left things behind.

Ancient Greek religion was built partly around this relationship between humans and the divine: you prayed, sacrificed, poured a libation or dedicated a gift. Sometimes you were asking for help. Sometimes you were thanking a god for help already received.

The result is one of my favourite categories of archaeological object: the votive offering.

Because suddenly the object in the museum case is not merely an object. Someone chose it. Someone carried it to a sanctuary. Someone believed that leaving it there mattered.

You could give the gods almost anything

The grandest religious offerings could be spectacular. Cities and wealthy individuals dedicated statues, precious vessels, weapons and expensive works of art. Sanctuaries accumulated enormous quantities of valuable objects over time.

But worship was not reserved for rich people with spare bronze statues.

Smaller votives could be terracotta figurines, miniature animals, small vessels or representations of the thing a worshipper was asking a deity to protect or heal.

And I think I find those smaller objects even more interesting.

A monumental statue tells you that somebody had money. A tiny handmade offering can tell you that somebody had hope.

Then there was sacrifice

Animal sacrifice was one of the central rituals of ancient Greek religion. Oxen, sheep and goats were among the animals sacrificed at sanctuaries, usually at an outdoor altar rather than inside the temple itself.

And contrary to the slightly gruesome image the word sacrifice immediately produces, the entire animal was not simply burned for the gods.

Much of the meat could become part of a communal meal. Religion, festival and dinner were not necessarily separate activities.

And something to drink

Then there were libations: liquid offerings poured for the gods or sometimes for the dead. Wine is probably the one we imagine first, although other liquids could be offered as well.

Special vessels were used for the ritual. A phiale — a shallow bowl — could be used to pour the offering, and extremely elaborate examples survive.

I love the simplicity of the act.

You have a drink. The god gets a drink. Everybody understands the arrangement.

At the foot of Olympus: Dion

This is where northern Greece becomes particularly interesting.

At Dion, beneath Mount Olympus, the Macedonians created one of their most important religious centres. The place was especially associated with Zeus Olympios, and the Sanctuary of Olympian Zeus became a major setting for royal ceremonies.

Philip II celebrated victories there. Alexander the Great performed ceremonies there before beginning his campaign into Asia.

The setting almost seems unfairly appropriate: the great mountain associated with the gods rising behind an actual sacred landscape used by Macedonian kings.

It is very difficult for archaeology to compete with scenery like that.

Pella was considerably more complicated than “Alexander lived here”

Pella usually enters the popular imagination because it became the Macedonian capital and is associated with Philip II and Alexander the Great.

But people also worshipped there.

Archaeologists have identified sanctuaries connected with Demeter Thesmophoros, the Mother of the Gods and Aphrodite, and the local healing god Darron.

The sanctuary of Demeter is particularly wonderful because archaeology gives us a glimpse of actual ritual. Pits in the sanctuary contained animal remains, including piglets, sheep and goats.

And there it is again: history becoming strangely human.

Not simply “Pella was the capital of Macedon,” but people gathering, making offerings and asking divine powers to intervene in the same basic human problems that worried people everywhere else.

Aigai: kings, tombs and gods

Before Pella, there was Aigai — the first capital of the Macedonian kingdom, today associated with Vergina.

We tend to think immediately of the extraordinary royal tombs, especially the tomb traditionally identified with Philip II.

But Aigai was not simply a royal cemetery.

It remained a sacred centre of the Macedonian kingdom even after political power shifted to Pella, and archaeological remains include sanctuaries as well as the palace, theatre and enormous necropolis.

That combination fascinates me: politics, religion, family memory and royal power all occupying the same landscape.

The things that survive

Obviously we can never reconstruct every thought behind every offering.

A little bronze animal does not come with a note saying: Hello Zeus, I would really appreciate some assistance with Thursday.

But that is precisely what makes votives so compelling.

They sit somewhere between archaeology and emotion.

The person is gone. The prayer is gone. Whatever happened after the prayer is usually gone too.

But the gift survived.

And thousands of years later, we can still recognise the impulse behind it:

Please help me.
Thank you.
Remember me.
Let everything be all right.

Apparently there really are some things about humans that require absolutely no translation.