At Carthage, Child Sacrifice?
Tell-tale remains from Carthage Tophet point to child sacrifice
At Carthage, child sacrifice is believed to have been practiced. Teeth and skeletal analysis of the remains at the Carthage Tophet demonstrates that infants of a specific age-range—under three months old—were most commonly cremated. Photo: ASOR, Punic Project/James Whitred.
The Bible speaks of Judahites who sacrificed their children to Molech in Jerusalem’s Ben Hinnom Valley; the practice was forbidden and considered abominable (Jeremiah 32:35; Leviticus 18:21; 2 Chronicles 28:3). While no evidence of child sacrifice has been uncovered in the Hinnom Valley, scholars today debate whether child sacrifice was practiced at Phoenician sites in the western Mediterranean. The debate is centered on the Carthage Tophet, or open-air enclosure containing the burials of infants, in modern-day Tunisia.
Was child sacrifice really practiced at ancient Carthage? In “Infants Sacrificed? The Tale Teeth Tell” in the July/August 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Patricia Smith discusses the research she and her team conducted on the cremated remains from the Carthage Tophet.
Several sources attest to the practice of child sacrifice at Carthage. Lawrence E. Stager and Joseph A. Greene describe the evidence in the November/December 2000 issue of Archaeology Odyssey:
Classical authors and Biblical prophets charge the Phoenicians with the practice. Stelae associated with burial urns found at Carthage bear decorations alluding to sacrifice and inscriptions expressing vows to Phoenician deities. Urns buried beneath these stelae contain remains of children (and sometimes of animals) who were cremated as described in the sources or implied by the inscriptions.
Despite the evidence suggesting that the Carthaginians really did practice child sacrifice, some researchers have contended that such rituals did not occur at Carthage—or at any other Phoenician site. The Carthage Tophet, according to one study, was merely an infant cemetery.
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BAR author Patricia Smith and her research team studied the incinerated remains in 342 urns from the Carthage Tophet. The majority of the remains belonged to infants, though some contained young animals, mostly sheep and goats. An analysis of the teeth and skeletal remains from these urns revealed that most of the infants were one to two months old, a result that does not correspond to the expected pattern of mortality rates in antiquity. The findings demonstrate that a specific age range—under three months old—of infant death was over-represented at Carthage, suggesting that children under the age of three months did not die from natural causes but from something else. That something else, as the literary and epigraphic evidence indicate, is likely the practice of child sacrifice at Carthage.
To learn more about the scientific analysis conducted by Patricia Smith and her research team, read the full article “Infants Sacrificed? The Tale Teeth Tell” by Patricia Smith in the July/August 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
Subscribers: Read “Infants Sacrificed? The Tale Teeth Tell” by Patricia Smith as it appeared in the July/August 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
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Related reading in Bible History Daily:
What Does the Bible Say About Children—and What Does Archaeology Say?
Related reading in the BAS Library:
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This Bible History Daily article was originally published on July 25, 2014.
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The evidence is indisputable and screaming. The Bible sources should be taken more seriously. Nothing that was written there could not be a common knowledge at the time that it was written.
Not disputing that child sacrifice was practised, but an alternative take on WHY it was practised:
Before modern methods of contraception, virtually every society had a method for “disposing” of unwanted children. Even today “baby hatches” exist in some countries as a place where mothers can dump unwanted infants to be raised in an orphanage or adopted, with no questions asked. In certain EU countries, women have a legal right to give birth anonymously such that the infant is automatically taken into the care of the state and the mother is never identified. And new, grisly evidence has recently been emerging of the casual cruelty and high mortality rates in Irish orphanages of the 20th century.
It’s widely known that in Sparta and other parts of ancient Greece, unwanted or malformed infants were routinely “exposed” – deserted and left to die. The polite fiction that someone might, just might, come along and save an exposed infant enabled people to pretend this wasn’t really murder, even though the means of dying was particularly prolonged and distressing.
It seems to me quite plausible that in phoenician society ritual sacrifice, or “passing through the fire to Molech” [as the Hebrew bible describes it] may have been viewed as the most dignified means of disposing of unwanted infants. Or to put it another, if you’re going to kill your child anyway, dedicating his/her life to your god at least shows a degree of respect.
This is not to defend an utterly abominable custom, but to set it in context.
@Hilary: Yes, I was wondering this too. Once a custom like that is part of a society though, I wonder if some wanted—as well as unwanted—children may have been sacrificed: the more the sacrificial offering means to the supplicant, the greater the chance of being blessed tends to be a pretty universal part of sacrifice ritual, as I understand it. Philo apparently “specified that the sacrificed child was best-loved”.
Though I suppose we’re all glad it’s not part of our culture, I don’t think we can necessarily judge them, or claim we would never had done that had we been conditioned in the same way, any more than that we would have been one of the few who passed the Milgram experiment. That said, the biblical prophets’ declaration of the horror and folly of this man-made institution in Judah (inspired perhaps by Phoenicia, though there’s no indication in the text of this) of course seems justified.
It’s also good to have some scholars presenting the case against, regardless of how damning the evidence may seem, though I do wonder how emotionally invested some experts become. It must have been frustrating for the perception of Phoenicians as child-sacrificers to have persisted before the discovery of these cemeteries, while there was no solid unbiased evidence. A good (if macabre) example that absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.
Looking more closely, 2 Chr. 28.3 claims it was a Canaanite custom, though Chronicles was drawn together later than Kings and the prophets, which don’t mention this tradition.
You make me cry.
The fires of Moleck is a complete misinterpretation and translation of the Hebrew text that started with the Greek Bible or LXX. LMLK is what’s translated as ” of Molech”, and there are hundreds if not thousands of LMLK artifacts all over modern Israel. It just means “of the king”.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LMLK_seal
The ancient Greeks always had the practice, it was called “exposure”. They would leave their unwanted babies out in a field for birds or strangers.
Now you can cry as well
Shalom
Rose
This is an old debate. It usually means certain people refuse to accept the fact a pagan or idol worshiping society committed acts that Jews and Christians abhorred. To them, anything that Jews or Christians did was wrong or inaccurate. Facts, writings by others all must wrong.
Where did the assertion come from that Phoenecians and Carthaginians didn’t perform in child sacrifice? This is a commonly known practice that Baal/Molech were worshipped by Carthage. The Roman historians (Livy, Plurarch) mentioned their child sacrifices as a justification for Roman provocation in the First Punic War (whether it was a real justification is up for debate). Prior to the First Punic War Rome had maintained an “Italy only” policy. Carthage had a very difficult time maintaining large armies to combat Roman due to their child sacrifice, to the extent that they had to call in mercenaries and foreign generals (Xanthippus for example). This appears to be shallow research, Carthage was well known to offer their children to Molech.
good article 2 things all same age and animals also there you go
One of the practices that the prophet Mohammed forbade when Islam came to power in Arabia was ending the common practice of female infant murder (usually burial or simply left open in the desert sand) by pagan Arabs of the 6th century and before. It may have been a common practice across a number nations and tribes of North Africa, including Carthage. The article doesn’t state whether the infant were male or female – this may be an important consideration.
I’m surprised that there is no reference to a BAR discussion some years ago on the then, latest, translation of ‘Molech’. It was determined at the time, that Molech was not a ‘god’, but, a practice, so, ” Offering to Molech ” would be an incorrect phrasing. Experts in the field had just released a number of more complete, & contemporary translations. I’m not a good article saver & I apologize. I can’t save everything, but perhaps someone at BAR, or elsewhere may more completely recall the issue. As far as I can recollect, it was in ’92-95.