Ancient Carthaginians really did sacrificetheir children23 January 2014

Sacrificed children were buried at locations known astophets. Credit: Josephine Quinn

(Phys.org) —After decades of scholarship denyingthat the Carthaginians sacrificed their children, newresearch has found 'overwhelming' evidence thatthis ancient civilisation really did carry out thepractice.

A collaborative paper by academics frominstitutions across the globe, including OxfordUniversity, suggests that Carthaginian parentsritually sacrificed young children as an offering tothe gods.

The paper argues that well-meaning attempts tointerpret the 'tophets' – ancient infant burialgrounds – simply as child cemeteries aremisguided.

And the practice of child sacrifice could even holdthe key to why the civilisation was founded in thefirst place.

The research pulls together literary, epigraphical,archaeological and historical evidence andconfirms the Greek and Roman account of eventsthat held sway until the 1970s, when scholarsbegan to argue that the theory was simply anti-Carthaginian propaganda.

The paper is published in the journal Antiquity.

Dr Josephine Quinn of Oxford University's Facultyof Classics, an author of the paper, said: 'It'sbecoming increasingly clear that the stories aboutCarthaginian child sacrifice are true. This issomething the Romans and Greeks said theCarthaginians did and it was part of the popularhistory of Carthage in the 18th and 19th centuries.

'But in the 20th century, people increasingly tookthe view that this was racist propaganda on the partof the Greeks and Romans against their politicalenemy, and that Carthage should be saved fromthis terrible slander.

'What we are saying now is that the archaeological,literary, and documentary evidence for childsacrifice is overwhelming and that instead ofdismissing it out of hand, we should try tounderstand it.'

The city-state of ancient Carthage was aPhoenician colony located in what is now Tunisia. Itoperated from around 800BC until 146BC, when itwas destroyed by the Romans.

Children – both male and female, and mostly a fewweeks old – were sacrificed by the Carthaginians atlocations known as tophets. The practice was alsocarried out by their neighbours at other Phoeniciancolonies in Sicily, Sardinia and Malta. Dedicationsfrom the children's parents to the gods areinscribed on slabs of stone above their crematedremains, ending with the explanation that the godor gods concerned had 'heard my voice andblessed me'.

Dr Quinn said: 'People have tried to argue thatthese archaeological sites are cemeteries forchildren who were stillborn or died young, but quiteapart from the fact that a weak, sick or dead childwould be a pretty poor offering to a god, and thatanimal remains are found in the same sites treated

1 / 3

in exactly the same way, it's hard to imagine howthe death of a child could count as the answer to aprayer.

'It's very difficult for us to recapture people'smotivations for carrying out this practice or whyparents would agree to it, but it's worth trying.

'Perhaps it was out of profound religious piety, or asense that the good the sacrifice could bring thefamily or community as a whole outweighed the lifeof the child.

'We have to remember the high level of mortalityamong children – it would have been sensible forparents not to get too attached to a child that mightwell not make its first birthday.'

Dr Quinn added: 'We think of it as a slanderbecause we view it in our own terms. But peoplelooked at it differently 2,500 years ago.

'Indeed, contemporary Greek and Roman writerstended to describe the practice as more of aneccentricity or historical oddity – they're not actuallyvery critical.

'We should not imagine that ancient people thoughtlike us and were horrified by the same things.'

The backlash against the notion of Carthaginianchild sacrifice began in the second half of the 20thcentury and was led by scholars from Tunisia andItaly, the very countries in which tophets have beenfound.

Dr Quinn added: 'Carthage was far bigger thanAthens and for many centuries much moreimportant than Rome, but it is something of aforgotten city today.

'If we accept that child sacrifice happened on somescale, it begins to explain why the colony wasfounded in the first place.

'Perhaps the reason the people who establishedCarthage and its neighbours left their original homeof Phoenicia – modern-day Lebanon – wasbecause others there disapproved of their unusualreligious practice.

'Child abandonment was common in the ancientworld, and human sacrifice is found in manyhistorical societies, but child sacrifice is relativelyuncommon. Perhaps the future Carthaginians werelike the Pilgrim Fathers leaving from Plymouth –they were so fervent in their devotion to the godsthat they weren't welcome at home any more.

'Dismissing the idea of child sacrifice stops usseeing the bigger picture.'

Provided by Oxford University

2 / 3

APA citation: Ancient Carthaginians really did sacrifice their children (2014, January 23) retrieved 27August 2018 from https://phys.org/news/2014-01-ancient-carthaginians-sacrifice-children.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, nopart may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

3 / 3