Did the Carthaginians sacrfice their own children?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ย. 2024
- Today's question in our first week of the Q&A -
Did the Carthaginians perform the moloch sacrifice, offering newborn or infant boys to their gods as claimed by Greek and Roman sources?
Well... Enemies or not, we have two peoples saying they did it. And we have a lot of children's bones with bones of animals that were sacrificed. That would be historic depiction (from two sources) AND possible archaeological findings that corroborate it. Personally I'm convinced that they did.
Not only that but the carthagneans were a semitic people, more accurately phoenicians. Who the bible and history tells us sacrificed people to their god baal. Which im pretty sure is the same god carthage had as their main god.
Afaik in later times they mostly adopted children just for this purpose.
But don't ask me for the source, I've read about it some 20 years ago.
Not to mention other Levantine peoples have been accused of the same
@@cognitivedisability9864 Hence, the "bal" in Hannibal which may translate to something like "Baʿal is gracious".
I find the explanation that they were consecrated after death a lot more plausible; this behaviour would easily be misunderstood and/or misconstrued by hostile outsiders.
I am glad to see the volume with which you post videos. It is nice to see actual experts on a subject, making information on it publicly available.
first rate scholar. in 50 years, they will still be listening to goldsworthy content. informed, based views. bravo lad!
Loving this format!
It does seem a stretch to believe they were "sacrificing" the already dead.. thus negating the "sacrifice" aspect.
Given that the Greeks ate a lot of their sacrifices (the gods had their spiritual share, so why let the physical parts go to waste?), I'm not sure modern notions of sacrifice and consecration are all that relevant
First of all thank you for everything you are doing and contributing by sharing your knowledge and insights. As far as I am aware sacrifices in the name of the deity Moloch (or other versions of it) by casting living infants into the fire has a fair bit of written sources. Also the last real work that had been carried out around 2014 on the site of Carthage revealed an astounding number of topheths have been found (which you mention) and the consensus in the scientific community seems to corroborate the literary sources. If there are any newer updates or conclusions I would love to hear them.
Wish you all the best in all your future endeavours.
The deity Moloch probably doesn't exist. The method of sacrifice itself is what's called a Molech. It may have been done for almost all national deities in Canaan and Israel (as the Gehenna passages in the Bible itself seem to attest).
@@andrewsuryali8540 Yes thank you I am not in any ways an expert on these matters but find them very intriguing
Might the animals have been sacrificed for the sake of the dead children?
Interesting thought!
Sort of like how Egyptian pharaohs and other elites would inter their mummified cats along side their own remains.
Probably important to keep in mind: just because a claim is very useful as propaganda, doesn't mean it therefore isn't true.
Love your video, Mr. Goldsworthy!
Enjoyed your books a lot and also these online pieces. Much appreciation and respect from Aotearoa New Zealand.
I think IT did Happen but mainly more in very Desperate Situations the ultimate sacrifice for salvation
Could you imagine seeing your neighbour sacrifice their own child and then all of a sudden their field starts growing more food?
How long do you have to starve before you do the same thing?
Think about how people got to the stage of sacrificing young kids, messed up their lives must have been, multiple famines probably destroyed their brains. Physically and psychologically.
So I believe child sacrifice did occur because of Roman, Greek, and Hebrew sources. Also as you mention the way they were buried along side animal sacrifices.
However, I could see people sacrificing children that were not healthy as a way to get out of offering a healthy child, getting slaves for that purpose, giving up some dead/dying infants, and the practice waxing or waning in popularity.
Thank you for this. So Flaubert wasn't too off the mark...
Sometime archaeology gives better evidence, like in the case of Minoans. They've found bones of children bearing marks of butchering in the manner they butchered sheeps. As for the Carthaginian case, the burial custom isn't conclusive, to my mind.
Timely video. I was just doing some research on this topic. Thank you.
I had heard some evidence that children 10 and under had a 50% mortality rate in Roman Judea and 60% in Egypt. Therefore, people had a to think of children (and indeed adults) differently for their own psychological survival reasons than modern humans think about them.
didn't they find lots of urns with the burned bones of young children when they excavated the Tophet at Carthage?
The sad truth is, every ancient civilization had legal methods to dispose of the unwanted, even Rome. Roman fathers were legally obligated to dispose of weak and disfigured males and could legally abandon any female child to die of exposure.
I'm inclined to agree. What other kind of civilization would reserve a single cemetery for animals and children?
Side note: The Romans and Carthaginians weren't always enemies. They may have even been allies for a brief period during the Pyrrhic War.
Nearly all surviving Roman sources about Carthage date to much later than the Pyrrhic Wars, and nearly all of them are hostile towards Carthage, so Goldsworthy's larger point (about Carthage being regarded as an enemy) still stands.
@@Unknown-jt1joi believe the evidence outweights that. Two sources of the sacrifice of children, mass grave of children found, not to mention this. Carthage was a phoenician culture, a semitic people whom worshipped the god Baal, whol the bible tells us also took human sacrifice. This seems to go back to near sumerian times. (Abraham was a sumerian, old testament is a sumerian religion)
@@Unknown-jt1jo Yes, very true. It's interesting that neither Herodotus or Aristotle mention this aspect of Carthaginian culture assuming they were aware of it.
Agreed, Goldsworthy's point is not undermined. My side note was more of a "fun fact."
I'm confident that every example you provided happened at different times. This discussion spanned hundreds of years in good times and bad.
Thanks for giving such a thoughtful, research-based answer!
And it is still common in many societies like the country I live in Iraq where we sacrifice animal in celebration to the god then we share the meat to the less fortunate and our relatives
It is interesting to me that academics constantly feel the need to insert this sort of ambiguity in to history in the first place , almost as if they feel defensive of o'l Moloch the god of occulted knowledge and earthly gifts...Moloch is in essence the god of what we call "science" so to find doctoral academics defending his cult from well deserved criticisms raises an eyebrow to say the least.
Next thing they'll say is that the Carthaginians are eating their pets too. Pretext for attack.
thank you for the lesson professor
I suppose the key question, which Adrian raised, is whether these children were murdered during the sacrifice or whether they were victims of natural infant mortality which was very common back then. I personally would take Roman and Greek sources with a pinch of salt seeing that they were rivals and enemies of the Carthaginians. This would be something akin to British propaganda in World War One stating the Germans were bayonetting babies when they entered Belgium.
I'm not stating that this form of sacrifice never happened as we cannot say with any certainty either way. However, I do find it hard to believe that a civilization as advanced as the Carthaginians would be condoning or having as a tradition such a barbaric practice. It is unfortunate that no written records survive from the Carthaginians perspective. The Romans almost did an excellent job in trying to wipe them from the pages of history. Unfortunately for them it was the actions of their greatest foe Hannibal which saw to it that Carthage will not be forgotten. His ghost still haunts them 2200 years later.🙂
I think there’s a good chance they did at one point sacrifice children but it became less common with time and that with time they’d try to find loopholes ie buying foreigners for it
The Bible clearly makes the accusation that the Carthaginians' Canaanite ancestors engaged in infant sacrifice. Given that the Carthaginians' contemporaries made this claim about them as well, it's difficult to dismiss the claim. Modern scholars raise the possibility that the early Hebrews may have also conducted infant sacrifice. This apoears to have been a regional practice over a long period of time.
were they healthy infants to start with though? we know many ancient people "exposed" babies born with defects, the Greeks, Romans, Jews and Etruscans included. In other words, those very people who were pointing the finger at the Carthaginians.
Bible is irrelevant
Also human sacrifice wasn't completely unknown in early Mediterranean antiquity in times of crisis.
We know this from archeological findings as well as from Greek mythology (like with the daughter of Agamemnon, Iphigenia).
@@wolfgangkranek376 the Greeks were not totally innocent. Records indicate that on Mt Lykaion children were sacrificed and consumed by the worshippers. Human sacrifice wasn't outlawed in Roman society until 97 BCE, although there is little evidence to suggest they sacrificed children.
The Christian baptism making the child "properly one of us" did the Romans have anythng like this earlier or did that come from Jewish religion?
If it was a thing among the Caanite peoples (Phoenicians but also the Jews) it seems more likely to me not yet "introduced" children could have been sacrificed or.. "only allowed" in a special burial place. It is one (1) big burial site is it? No findings in Phoenicia or in Iberia?
There was a Roman religious ceremony similar to baptism which formally inducted the infant into the family. This is presumably the point after which it was unaceptable to abandon the child. I expect that if you were to sacrifice a child it would only occur after the Phoenician induction ceremony (if they had one) otherwise you are not really sacrificing a child of your family. I believe there is also (inconclusive) evidence of child sacrifice in Sardinia and Spain but not in Phoenicia itself, but digs are understandably harder in that region.
Doesnt the tradition of baptism date back to John the Baptist (even in the gospels he is a precurser of Christ).
Answering the question without watching the video: Yup.
There are a number of findings around Carthage.
I wonder if the mindset was that of some today, that children are not "ours" but lent to us for a period of time. In which case, it's not unreasonable for there to have been an associated belief that a child death was one where the child was simply recalled back to their God. In which case, the cremation could be seen as the final act of handing back the Earthly body of the child to the Gods, once the child's spirit had departed this Earth. in a period where infant mortality was so high, it seems a bit odd that people would sacrifice a healthy child, when healthy children were needed to help provide for the family when they were old enough. Unless of course they were girls, who have always been seen as a drain, rather than an asset, to families. Has any testing been possible, to see what the gender was of the remains?
That's what makes it a sacrifice. You don't throw the scraps to your gods. Remember in ancient times women would have many children. Out of six or more children, sacrificing your first-born to the gods is far from incomprehensible.
Remember too: it's a bit rich for the Greeks and Romans to be shocked by child sacrifice just because it's a "sacrifice," when exposure of unhealthy or simply unwanted infants (leaving them somewhere to die to the elements or wild animals) was universally and regularly practiced in almost all cultures.
@@ShyguyMM Actually, the Greeks would eat most of the edible parts of a sacrificed animal, while burning the rest as an offering (i.e. the scraps). This was part of the ritual.
@@rc8937 Point taken.
@@ShyguyMM It's interesting how practical the ancients were about such things.
@@ShyguyMM not necessarily. Some cultures for whom human sacrifice was a way of life sacrificed prisoners. Clearly some believed that it didn't matter what the worth of the person was, as long as it was human. If you read further, you'll see that I already made the same point about the hypocrisy of the Greeks, Romans and others who exposed their own children yet pointed the fingers at others and claimed they sacrificed children.
Do not underestimate what lengths "true-believers" will go to within and without the confines of their religious practices and what society will allow. If sacrificing children is acceptable then they will do it. However, one has to consider the trustworthiness of the sources. The Romans, no shrinking violets themselves when it came to discarding infants had every reason to paint their Carthaginian foes as darkly as possible to justify their annihilation
I'm sure us Americans sacrifice children on a far grander scale than the poor Carthaginians 🤣
?
Not just in the US do some people sacrifice their children for virtue signalling.
At the altar of wokeness and fake liberalism.
@@tomberg5564 I assume he's talking about abortion but not realizing that is a practice more ancient and widespread throughout history than child sacrifice.
@@smiter4458 This just makes me curious how you define "abortion", because I don't think that's true according to any normal definition of the word.
Not really sacrificed but discarded as inconvenient. The Romans had a similar unpleasant practice at the site of the Tarpeian Rock.