Once they are dead...

"[it is] clear in all the materials relating to death and the afterlife here, that the dead have continued roles to play long after their demise. The dead establish the position of the living in time and space and their consequent interactions with others, human and otherwise. The dead have otherworldly status, even if they are not quite divine. Certain of them, often ancestors, act as intermediaries between all forms of being. In this framework, it may be the body, therefore, that is of central concern, and so how the body is treated and then disposed of after death is as important as, if not more so than, the moment of death itself.")—Ann M. Porter in Sacred Killing , page 194

<idle musing>
Interesting thought. I have always thought of the moment of killing as being the most important moment in sacrificial systems—and in many it is—but here (Ur) is a case where the way the bodies are handled after death is more important...food for thought. Now I'll have to look at the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament with different eyes and see if it is true there as well at times. I suspect it might be...
</idle musing>