The evidence that the Carthaginians practiced child sacrifice is in fact quite strong, and has only been made stronger by recent archaeological discoveries. See Amadassi, M. G. and J. A. Zamora, “The Epigraphy of the Tophet,” Studi Epigrafici e Linguistici 20-30 (2012-13): 159-92. Xella et al. “Phoenician Bones of Contention,” Antiquity 87 (2013): 1-9. Brien Garnand. 2022. “Phoenician synthesis: patterns of human sacrifice and problems with ritual killing.” In The Value of a Human Life: Ritual Killing and Human Sacrifice in Antiquity, ed. Karel C. Innemée. Leiden, pp. 69-93.
In particular, the inscriptions on the tophet urns are dedicatory and not funerary, the tophets contatin a mix of child and animal remains, and the age of the children is across the board older than we would expect from the average for natural infant mortality at the time. Besides, the Bible also clearly remarks on Canaanite practices of child sacrifice. This doesn't means the Carthaginians were particularly evil: infanticide, for ritual purposes or otherwise, was a common practice in the ancient world, and the Greeks and Romans engaged it in mass scale.
You can read Josephine Quinn or Dexter Hoyos as well. Suggest Serge Lancel to, as one of the most important archeologists that worked on the site of Carthage. As I say in the article, it has never been possible to determine by studying the skeletal remains of children found in the Tophet that they were sacrificed there. Many of the bones, on the contrary, indicate that the infants had already died before being deposited in the Tophet. What you say about the inscriptions is interesting, but it does not allow to affirm what you say. Most probably the Carthaginians never sacrificed children. Adding the Bible as a source is at least probematic. You cannot treat it like a history book or a skeletal remain. It’s not a history book.
Of course the Bible has its own polemical aims against the (non-Israelite) Canaanites; but it is an independent source from the Greco-Roman tradition, and it's not like this is a common-place said about every people the Israelites (or Greeks for that matter) don't like. So the fact that two independent traditions attest to this is quite strong evidence. I'm not an expert on the archaeology, but from what I know about religious customs in the ancient world, there are quite strict requirements on what can be allowed as sacrifice; I think that to offer up an-already dead child as a sacrifice to the gods (and this is how it is described in many of the accompanying inscriptions) would have been seen as deeply sacrilegious. But of course I can't ask them and I might be wrong
Indeed, and the authors of the biblical texts, as well as those of the greco-roman tradition had their own issues with the phoenicians and plenty of reasons to try to show them to the world as barbaric, to say the least. On the other hand, the transition froom canaanites to phoenician and then punic, makes really hard to argue seeing a supposed canaanite tradition (sayd by others) as a punic one. There was a huge temporary, geographic and cultural leap from caanites, to the carthaginians. Still, until skeletal remains in the Tophet of Carthage shows otherwise, we shoud stick to the evidence. So far, carthaginians did not kill their infants to offer them to Baal Hamon.
Appreciate your time to explain your views and read mine. Always happy to argue about these subjects.
I have no position on Carthaginian child sacrifice. Ruling out the Bible as a source...that I have a problem with. It has issues, *just like every other source from that era*. It cannot be ignored.
I'd point out that the Romans themselves believed in human sacrifice in extremis, despite all their moralizing on the topic. After outlawing it in the late Republic, they still practiced it on occasion, particularly in the case of the Vestals. So trying to somehow prove that Punic culture didn't practice this...you'll never prove a negative.
Indeed, the Romans also practiced human sacrifice in extreme situations. In the Second Punic War, not knowing what to do with Hannibal in Italy, the Romans buried alive a couple of slaves to appease the gods.
I think there's been a relatively recent tendency to be skeptical of ancient texts that portray the "enemy" as particularly inhuman, immoral, or otherwise unacceptable by modern standards. While it’s fair to question the credibility of ancient sources, I think there’s also a deeper motivation behind this skepticism—one that’s more tied to modern concerns than to a sober evaluation of ancient history itself.
The demonization of foreign peoples is an eternally relevant issue, but it’s especially important to modern liberals who seek to dismantle unfair biases of this kind. I think that desire—to correct for unfair demonization in the modern day—has influenced how we approach ancient cases that resemble these patterns.
In the case of Carthage, there’s actually a lot of circumstantial evidence that would be difficult to explain if child sacrifice wasn’t practiced. This includes the bones of infants and children found at sites in numbers and conditions that don’t match what we’d expect from typical child mortality rates in pre-industrial societies. While this evidence isn’t conclusive by itself, when combined with multiple independent sources mentioning this practice among both Canaanites and Canaanite-descended peoples, I think the overall weight of evidence lands closer to “probably” than “probably not.”
"it is most likely that the Carthaginians never sacrificed children in honor of Baal Hamon, and this is an issue that should be closed in the academic community for years to come."
Why would this issue be closed when you can't prove a negative? Especially one that has archeological evidence indicating it is possible that the Carthaginians did sacrifice their children.
In any case, this is far from settled, regardless of your feelings on the matter.
There is no archaeological evidence that the Carthaginians sacrificed children. Why should the academic community continue to inquire into an issue that has no basis? The consensus has changed in recent decades, and among archaeologists and historians the prevailing opinion is that the Carthaginians did not sacrifice children. If new evidence were to appear that could suggest this, it would be understood that the issue remains open, but this is not the case.
Why are we framing this as the Carthaginians sacrificing *their* children? Couldn't they have sacrificed children broadly speaking? Perhaps slave children, for example? The Aztecs performed human sacrifices, we know that for certain, but we also know that deciding who was going to be sacrificed was not very straightforward. It's not as if the Aztec elite were putting up their kids, just like maybe it wasn't the Carthaginian elite may not have been offering their kids.
The evidence that the Carthaginians practiced child sacrifice is in fact quite strong, and has only been made stronger by recent archaeological discoveries. See Amadassi, M. G. and J. A. Zamora, “The Epigraphy of the Tophet,” Studi Epigrafici e Linguistici 20-30 (2012-13): 159-92. Xella et al. “Phoenician Bones of Contention,” Antiquity 87 (2013): 1-9. Brien Garnand. 2022. “Phoenician synthesis: patterns of human sacrifice and problems with ritual killing.” In The Value of a Human Life: Ritual Killing and Human Sacrifice in Antiquity, ed. Karel C. Innemée. Leiden, pp. 69-93.
In particular, the inscriptions on the tophet urns are dedicatory and not funerary, the tophets contatin a mix of child and animal remains, and the age of the children is across the board older than we would expect from the average for natural infant mortality at the time. Besides, the Bible also clearly remarks on Canaanite practices of child sacrifice. This doesn't means the Carthaginians were particularly evil: infanticide, for ritual purposes or otherwise, was a common practice in the ancient world, and the Greeks and Romans engaged it in mass scale.
You can read Josephine Quinn or Dexter Hoyos as well. Suggest Serge Lancel to, as one of the most important archeologists that worked on the site of Carthage. As I say in the article, it has never been possible to determine by studying the skeletal remains of children found in the Tophet that they were sacrificed there. Many of the bones, on the contrary, indicate that the infants had already died before being deposited in the Tophet. What you say about the inscriptions is interesting, but it does not allow to affirm what you say. Most probably the Carthaginians never sacrificed children. Adding the Bible as a source is at least probematic. You cannot treat it like a history book or a skeletal remain. It’s not a history book.
Of course the Bible has its own polemical aims against the (non-Israelite) Canaanites; but it is an independent source from the Greco-Roman tradition, and it's not like this is a common-place said about every people the Israelites (or Greeks for that matter) don't like. So the fact that two independent traditions attest to this is quite strong evidence. I'm not an expert on the archaeology, but from what I know about religious customs in the ancient world, there are quite strict requirements on what can be allowed as sacrifice; I think that to offer up an-already dead child as a sacrifice to the gods (and this is how it is described in many of the accompanying inscriptions) would have been seen as deeply sacrilegious. But of course I can't ask them and I might be wrong
Indeed, and the authors of the biblical texts, as well as those of the greco-roman tradition had their own issues with the phoenicians and plenty of reasons to try to show them to the world as barbaric, to say the least. On the other hand, the transition froom canaanites to phoenician and then punic, makes really hard to argue seeing a supposed canaanite tradition (sayd by others) as a punic one. There was a huge temporary, geographic and cultural leap from caanites, to the carthaginians. Still, until skeletal remains in the Tophet of Carthage shows otherwise, we shoud stick to the evidence. So far, carthaginians did not kill their infants to offer them to Baal Hamon.
Appreciate your time to explain your views and read mine. Always happy to argue about these subjects.
I have no position on Carthaginian child sacrifice. Ruling out the Bible as a source...that I have a problem with. It has issues, *just like every other source from that era*. It cannot be ignored.
I'd point out that the Romans themselves believed in human sacrifice in extremis, despite all their moralizing on the topic. After outlawing it in the late Republic, they still practiced it on occasion, particularly in the case of the Vestals. So trying to somehow prove that Punic culture didn't practice this...you'll never prove a negative.
For that matter, Abraham and Isaac...
Indeed, the Romans also practiced human sacrifice in extreme situations. In the Second Punic War, not knowing what to do with Hannibal in Italy, the Romans buried alive a couple of slaves to appease the gods.
I think there's been a relatively recent tendency to be skeptical of ancient texts that portray the "enemy" as particularly inhuman, immoral, or otherwise unacceptable by modern standards. While it’s fair to question the credibility of ancient sources, I think there’s also a deeper motivation behind this skepticism—one that’s more tied to modern concerns than to a sober evaluation of ancient history itself.
The demonization of foreign peoples is an eternally relevant issue, but it’s especially important to modern liberals who seek to dismantle unfair biases of this kind. I think that desire—to correct for unfair demonization in the modern day—has influenced how we approach ancient cases that resemble these patterns.
In the case of Carthage, there’s actually a lot of circumstantial evidence that would be difficult to explain if child sacrifice wasn’t practiced. This includes the bones of infants and children found at sites in numbers and conditions that don’t match what we’d expect from typical child mortality rates in pre-industrial societies. While this evidence isn’t conclusive by itself, when combined with multiple independent sources mentioning this practice among both Canaanites and Canaanite-descended peoples, I think the overall weight of evidence lands closer to “probably” than “probably not.”
"it is most likely that the Carthaginians never sacrificed children in honor of Baal Hamon, and this is an issue that should be closed in the academic community for years to come."
Why would this issue be closed when you can't prove a negative? Especially one that has archeological evidence indicating it is possible that the Carthaginians did sacrifice their children.
In any case, this is far from settled, regardless of your feelings on the matter.
There is no archaeological evidence that the Carthaginians sacrificed children. Why should the academic community continue to inquire into an issue that has no basis? The consensus has changed in recent decades, and among archaeologists and historians the prevailing opinion is that the Carthaginians did not sacrifice children. If new evidence were to appear that could suggest this, it would be understood that the issue remains open, but this is not the case.
Why are we framing this as the Carthaginians sacrificing *their* children? Couldn't they have sacrificed children broadly speaking? Perhaps slave children, for example? The Aztecs performed human sacrifices, we know that for certain, but we also know that deciding who was going to be sacrificed was not very straightforward. It's not as if the Aztec elite were putting up their kids, just like maybe it wasn't the Carthaginian elite may not have been offering their kids.