Human sacrifice in Carthage

[+Marius+]

I don't know what cultural practice from the Aztecs can disgust you any more than their contemporaries and predecessors from the old world though. I guess its a cultural taboo thing.

Human sacrifice is seen with special fascination/disdain/fear by most people, which is understandable to the degree, I believe it has to do with it being a civilian thing with the creepiness of locals participating and cheering on.

It is the same reason why witch burnings and burnings of heretics are so ingrained in the history of Europe/North America regardless of the fact that a very, very few number of people were actually burned(compared to other killings ofc).

It is so apparent that even alleged(to my knowledge unproven) accusations of Carthaginians sacrificing children is still embedded into historiography even after more than 2000 years have passed.

[Roma_Victrix]

It is so apparent that even alleged(to my knowledge unproven) accusations of Carthaginians sacrificing children is still embedded into historiography even after more than 2000 years have passed.

Haven't we found the archaeological proof for that, though? I remember reading about that, although it could have possibly just been children who died naturally and were cremated, with their remains placed into ceramic funerary jars.

[Copperknickers II]

Human sacrifice is seen with special fascination/disdain/fear by most people, which is understandable to the degree, I believe it has to do with it being a civilian thing with the creepiness of locals participating and cheering on.

It's no worse than the ancient Roman 'games', which were to all intents and purposes human sacrifice since they had many intense religious elements. At least the Aztec sacrifice was mainly done on enemies and in the interests of saving the land from the anger of the gods. Unlike the Roman events which mainly involved the lowest classes of society, usually against their will, and not always captured slaves but sometimes just ordinary Romans from the slums - and if you believe the sources on some of Nero's and Commodus' games, members of the audience and crippled beggars and children were not exempt.

[Ludicus]

Haven't we found the archaeological proof for that, though? I remember reading about that, although it could have possibly just been children who died naturally and were cremated, with their remains placed into ceramic funerary jars.

According to Richard Miles, in the book "Carthage Must Be Destroyed", Chapter "Child Sacrifice and the Tophet", (pages 68-73)- it's a relatively long chapter, but summarizing- during periods of great crisis, the Carthaginians and other western Phoenicians did sacrifice their own children; and the possession of a tophet was no dark secret but a symbol of western Phoenician prestige, limited to the largest/wealthiest settlements.
He adds that in inscriptions incised on the steles, Carthaginians fathers would routinely use the reflexive possessive pronoun BNT or BT to underline the fact that their sacrificial offering was not some mere substitute, but a child of their own flesh. He cites one example. "It was the Lady Tanit Face of Baal and Baal Hammon the Bomilcar son of Hanno, grandson of Milkathon, vowed this son of his own flesh.Bless him you!"

[sumskilz]

He adds that in inscriptions incised on the steles, Carthaginians fathers would routinely use the reflexive possessive pronoun BNT or BT to underline the fact that their sacrificial offering was not some mere substitute, but a child of their own flesh. He cites one example. "It was the Lady Tanit Face of Baal and Baal Hammon the Bomilcar son of Hanno, grandson of Milkathon, vowed this son of his own flesh.Bless him you!"

There are a lot of problems with this. First it relies on the assumption that mlk means "sacrifice", when in every other context it means "king" or "he ruled" pronounced differently but from the same root meaning "to rule". This was Otto Eissfeldt's idea based on his belief that Molech, spelled mlk, in the Bible is actually a type of sacrifice rather than a theonym, but that doesn't make any sense because there are places it occurs in which it can't be a sacrifice. It is obviously a divine title like Baal which was distorted with the vowels from the word for "shame" like other Canaanite deities' names in the Bible. Eissfeldt wanted to use the Bible to explain the Punic inscriptions so he unnecessarily reinterpreted the Bible based on what he thought the Punic inscriptions meant. This is completely circular reasoning, so I don't really know why so many have bought into it. It gets more complicated, bšrm can mean "of his flesh" in some contexts, but it can also be read as "was informed". Although in Punic inscriptions using the same formula, it's sometimes written as bšᵓrm which can mean "in the rest" or "in the others". Regarding the reflexive possessive pronoun sometimes we see bntm which is probably "his own" but could mean "was built". When it's spelled btm, it could also mean "his daughter". Because different spellings seem to appear interchangeably in the same formula bšᵓrm btm, bšrm bntm, etc., I think it's safe to assume "of his own flesh" to be the meaning for all, but I just wanted to demonstrate the number of assumptions that go into that. The problem is really mlk ᵓdm as "human sacrifice" since normally the obvious reading would either be "a man ruled" or "a human king". Since mlk was usually a deity, there may be a reason for that, but then we get inscriptions like "a human king of his own flesh" which isn't exactly satisfying.

EDIT:

"It was the Lady Tanit Face of Baal and Baal Hammon the Bomilcar son of Hanno, grandson of Milkathon, vowed this son of his own flesh.Bless him you!"

I took a look at the original Punic of this one. I would translate it as "To Great Tanit-PanBaal and to Lord Baal-Hamun I [have made] an oath, Bomilcar son of Hanno son of Milkiaton son of my own flesh, you will be blessed." The possessive pronouns are first person - bšry bnty.

[Ludicus]

He cites one example. "It was the Lady Tanit Face of Baal and Baal Hammon the Bomilcar son of Hanno, grandson of Milkathon, vowed this son of his own flesh.Bless him you!"

More precisely, quoting: (I'm not a linguistics expert, so I can't comment on your answer, obviously).
"One of many such examples from the Carthaginian tophet makes the nature of the sacrifice explicit: "It was to the Lady Tanit Face of Baal and to Baal Hammon that Bomilcar son of Hanno, grandson of Milkiathon, vowed this son of his own flesh. Bless him you!"
--
He also says, quoting, page 72,
"The rites that took place in the tophet were, however, considered central to the continued well-being of the whole community, and were officially sanctioned by public authorities" ( ref. 58)
Ref 58: Several of the inscriptions from the Carthage tophet contain the formula "by the decree of the people of Carthage"( Aubet,2001,254)

[Cyclops]

Great analysis of the texts, thx guys.

Sadly we have very few Carthaginian texts on the subject, just the somewhat cryptic funerary inscriptions. There are Tophets in various Canaanite contexts including Carthage, we have hostile Roman and Hebrew sources making accusations about their use, and we have wee burnt bones in the pots which seem unutterably sad to me. Are they all just infant mortality? Did they dedicate already dead children as a sacrifice? Or were they toasting firstborns in a crisis reverting to some ancient tradition in the same way the Romans did with their Sibylline-approved slaughter of tourists?

We have the historical sources from Rome making the usual accusations, which proves precisely nothing. Livy in particular wrote his history "as it should have been" rather than how it was. Even then the sacrifice of two Gauls and two Hellenes in the forum at the start of the second Punic War is recorded by writers as diverse as Pliny, Plutarch and (IIRC) Polybios, so ,many non Punic sources record human sacrifice in Rome too, and in Gaul and possibly other places.

I imagine Roman disgust was directed at the sacrifice of the Poeni's own children, is there anywhere mentioned? The existence of human sacrifice was no secret, but on large scale it was deplored by the Romans (once again Pliny I think says something about the naughty druids and their over-the-top wicker men, and Tacitus has a crack on the subject too).

Edit found an interesting site:http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/..._at_Rome*.html

Good stuff about Plutarch and the explanation of Roman attitudes to human sacrifice: there's a point there about Roman disapproval of some human sacrifices as a prelude to war.

[sumskilz]

More precisely, quoting: (I'm not a linguistics expert, so I can't comment on your answer, obviously).
"One of many such examples from the Carthaginian tophet makes the nature of the sacrifice explicit: "It was to the Lady Tanit Face of Baal and to Baal Hammon that Bomilcar son of Hanno, grandson of Milkiathon, vowed this son of his own flesh. Bless him you!"

I think his translation isn't right, but I don't think he's necessarily wrong about what it implies. It depends on how you interpret the archaeological context. I know no one's going to really be able to assess the translation issue, but this is what I think is wrong with it:

The “vow” which is ndr can either be read as a noun or a verb. As a verb it’s past tense third person masculine singular, and that’s how he has it translated, but then it doesn’t match the first person possessive pronouns or the fact that the final verb (bless) is second person plural, so obviously addressing the two deities directly. Bless isn’t exactly the right word, but there isn’t a better word in English, it’s actually to the deities, not the other way around. It’s the same verb as in the Jewish wine blessing, which is usually translated “Blessed are you Adonai, our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth fruit of the vine”. In any case, there is no “him”. The translation he has is inferring that. So I think the vow is a noun, and I match my translation to the possessive pronouns and the other verb. The word I translated before as "I" is actually disputed, it could just be a way of indicating what the earlier "to" refers to. In which case it would be:

"To Great Tanit-PanBaal and to Lord Baal-Hamun a vow, Bomilcar son of Hanno son of Milkiaton son of my own flesh, you (plural) will be blessed."

That word ndr for vow, usually just means promise, but in Levitcus 7:16 it’s used like this:

“If, however, their offering is the result of a vow or is a freewill offering, the sacrifice shall be eaten on the day they offer it, but anything left over may be eaten on the next day.”

The word is also used in “the Nazirite vow” (Numbers 6:2)

He also says, quoting, page 72,
"The rites that took place in the tophet were, however, considered central to the continued well-being of the whole community, and were officially sanctioned by public authorities" ( ref. 58)
Ref 58: Several of the inscriptions from the Carthage tophet contain the formula "by the decree of the people of Carthage"( Aubet,2001,254)

That word "tophet" isn’t known from any Carthaginian or Phoenician text. It’s something that came from the Bible:

“And he defiled the tophet that [is] in the valley of Ben-Hinnom [so] that no man passes through his son or his daughter in the fire to Molech.” (2 Kings 23:10)

The valley of Ben-Hinnom is inside modern West Jerusalem. Nobody has ever come up with a good etymology for tophet. All the ideas proposed have a lot of problems.

So you can see how this again is sort of circular reasoning, with each mystery solved by assuming you know the answer to the other and which you’ve confirmed by what you’ve just assumed. That doesn’t make it wrong, and I’m inclined to believe Carthaginians/Canaanites did practice child sacrifice, but I want to point out why it’s disputed, because some secondary sources don’t go into how many assumptions it's based on.

Now Ben-Hinnom is far from Phoenicia, relatively speaking, but then in 2 Kings 3:27, the king of Edom sacrifices his first born. Edom was the eastern Negev and modern southwestern Jordan.

About all this using the Bible to interpret Phoenician/Punic culture, I can say the languages are mutually intelligible at least. In writing anyway, Phoenician doesn't seem much more different from Hebrew than British English is from American English. The main problem in understanding it is the lack of vowels in the writing system making it hard to differentiate nouns from verbs or knowing for certain what is an attached preposition versus part of the word.

[Kyriakos]

In the hellenistic era there are accounts by historians of ceremonial burning of children in oven-statues, in Phoenicia. Some even tie the phrase "sardonic laughter", to that practice, cause the body was placed into the oven with the feet first, so when they started to burn the victim would assume a soundless expression of great pain, but it looked as if he/she was laughing.

[sumskilz]

That makes for a more dramatic story, but I assume that human sacrifice would follow the same pattern as with animals, cutting the throat before burning. It'd be quicker and less painful at least. If the binding of Isaac is based on the practice, then that would also support it being the same as with animals.

“When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. Then Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.” (Genesis 22:9-10)

[Ludicus]

...snip..

Thanks for this amazing post
Edit, post 8.

[Cyclops]

...
“When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. Then Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.” (Genesis 22:9-10)

The echo of human sacrifice haunts most cultures. There's a British custom of jumping the fire at Beltane, associated with drawing lots that seems to recall "druidic" human sacrifice.

I am fascinated by the entire Abraham story, I have a strong feeling he's a regional hero and ancestor for many groups in Canaan. I think the Biblical rehearsal of his life shows many layers and amendments, demonstrating the importance of establishing a genealogy with him in it (a bit like Mesopotamians and Assyrians all claiming Sargon of Agade as progenitor, or Hellenes looking for Olympians, or Romans looking for Trojans etc etc). The Habiru or Israelites looking to create their tribal, magisterial and royal state would have to invoke his name to compete with the claims, in the same way as they establish their mountainy God Shaddai against the claims of Chemosh and others in the region.

The numerous sacrifices Abraham makes around the promised land appear to my dim eyes as appeasing local deities, overwritten as Yahweh. Likewise the Isaac story is the human sacrifice substitution story (it think it occurs in Hellenic myth too with numerous heroes interrupting sacrifices to monsters). Its a fairly widespread phenomenon to move from an archaic mode to a more ironic religious practice: Jesus' death appeals to the power of human sacrifice very strongly IMHO.

[sumskilz]

I am fascinated by the entire Abraham story, I have a strong feeling he's a regional hero and ancestor for many groups in Canaan. I think the Biblical rehearsal of his life shows many layers and amendments, demonstrating the importance of establishing a genealogy with him in it (a bit like Mesopotamians and Assyrians all claiming Sargon of Agade as progenitor, or Hellenes looking for Olympians, or Romans looking for Trojans etc etc). The Habiru or Israelites looking to create their tribal, magisterial and royal state would have to invoke his name to compete with the claims, in the same way as they establish their mountainy God Shaddai against the claims of Chemosh and others in the region.

The numerous sacrifices Abraham makes around the promised land appear to my dim eyes as appeasing local deities, overwritten as Yahweh. Likewise the Isaac story is the human sacrifice substitution story (it think it occurs in Hellenic myth too with numerous heroes interrupting sacrifices to monsters).

I attached a PDF of a fairly recent academic article on this by Finkelstein and Römer.

Thinking about the anachronisms, specifically the Philistines, reminded me that we do have a whole corpus of firsthand Canaanite literature, which covers a lot of religious topics including sacrifices, from Ugarit. It's probably mostly 14th to 12th Centuries BCE (definitely no later), but it describes the religious practices pretty much the same way as described in the Hebrew bible, except no mention of human sacrifice, so hmm... Interestingly, they sacrifice all the same animals as in the Judean highlands, no mention of pigs.

[Roma_Victrix]

^ Sumskilz is lending class and substance to the forum as usual. Good work.

[Cyclops]

I attached a PDF of a fairly recent academic article on this by Finkelstein and Römer.

Thinking about the anachronisms, specifically the Philistines, reminded me that we do have a whole corpus of firsthand Canaanite literature, which covers a lot of religious topics including sacrifices, from Ugarit. It's probably mostly 14th to 12th Centuries BCE (definitely no later), but it describes the religious practices pretty much the same way as described in the Hebrew bible, except no mention of human sacrifice, so hmm... Interestingly, they sacrifice all the same animals as in the Judean highlands, no mention of pigs.

That's excellent thank you. I am convinced that the Exile reinforced the importance of the Exodus stories (whoever they were originally about) and reflect back onto the patriarchs as well (whoever and whatever they were).

The stuff about pigs: I am persuaded by the rather dismal materialist argument that as the broadleaf forests receded from the fertile crescent and the deserts spread and became hotter the pig economy of breeding in spring, grazing in summer and fattening (on acorns and beechmast) in Autumn broke down, and to feed pigs it would have been necessary to cut into either the grain reserves or the caprid pastures, both outraging say an itinerant barley/wheat growing or goatherd people. Competing economies usually means competing cultures.