Religion in Carthage

See also: Religions of the Ancient Near East

The religion of Carthage in North Africa was a direct continuation of the polytheistic Phoenician religion of the Levant, with significant local modifications. Controversy prevails regarding the possible existence and practice of propitiatory child sacrifice in the religion of Carthage.

Pantheon

Stele from the Tophet of Salammbó showing a Tanit symbol

Phoenician origins

Carthage derived the original core of its religion from Phoenicia. The Phoenician pantheon was presided over by the father of the gods, but a goddess was the principal figure in the Phoenician pantheon. The system of gods and goddesses in Phoenician religion also influenced many other cultures.

The supreme divine couple was that of Tanit and Ba'al Hammon. The goddess Astarte seems to have been popular in early times. At the height of its cosmopolitan era Carthage seems to have hosted a large array of divinities from the neighbouring civilizations of Greece, Egypt and the Etruscan city-states.

Caste of priests and acolytes

Surviving Punic texts portray an organized caste of temple priests and acolytes performing different types of functions, for a variety of prices. Priests were clean shaven, unlike most of the population. In the first centuries of the city ritual celebrations included rhythmic dancing, derived from Phoenician traditions.

Punic stelae

Cippi and stelae of limestone are characteristic monuments of Punic art and religion, and are found throughout the western Phoenician world in unbroken continuity, both historically and geographically. The majority were set up over urns containing the ashes of sacrifices, which had been placed within open-air sanctuaries. Some Carthaginian votive steles (several in Egyptian style) display a priest carrying a child; at least one has been interpreted as a living child for sacrifice. The identification of this child as living has been questioned.

Animal sacrifice

One of the most important stelae is the "Marseilles Tariff" found in the port of Marseille and originally from the temple of Baal-Saphon in Carthage. The tariff regulated the payments to the priests for performing sacrifices, and described the nature of the victims. All victims are male animals, females are not mentioned, and Porphyry (philosopher), De Abst. 2.11, states that the Phoenicians did not sacrifice or eat females.

Child sacrifice

Most archaeologists accept that infant sacrifices did occur. Lawrence E. Stager, who directed the excavations of the Carthage Tophet in the 1970s, believes that infant sacrifice was practiced there. Paolo Xella of the National Research Council in Rome summarized the textual, epigraphical, and archaeological evidence for Carthaginian infant sacrifice. Some modern scholars argue that evidence of Carthaginian child sacrifice is sketchy at best and that these reports are more likely to have been a Roman blood libel against the Carthaginians to justify their conquest and destruction.

Literary accounts

Accounts of child sacrifice in the Old Testament have been compared with similar ones from Greek and Latin sources speaking of the offering of children by fire as sacrifices in the city of Carthage. Plutarch (ca. 46–120 AD) mentions the practice, as do Tertullian, Orosius, Diodorus Siculus and Philo. However, Livy and Polybius do not. Diodorus (c.90-60 BC) says that

In former times they (the Carthaginians) had been accustomed to sacrifice to this god the noblest of their sons, but more recently, secretly buying and nurturing children, they had sent these to the sacrifice.

Tertullian, about 200 AD, states that, although the priests who sacrificed children had been executed on crosses by a Roman procurator, "that holy crime persists in secret".

Cleitarchus, Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch all mention burning of children as an offering to Cronus or Saturn, that is to Ba`al Hammon, the chief god of Carthage. According to Justin, the Carthaginians accepted Persian instructions to stop sacrificing children (and eating dogs).

Some of these sources suggest that babies were roasted to death on a heated bronze statue. According to Diodorus Siculus, "There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire." They placed their children alive in the arms of a bronze statue of the lady Tanit:

The hands of the statue extended over a brazier into which the child fell once the flames had caused the limbs to contract and its mouth to open... . The child was alive and conscious when burned... Philo specified that the sacrificed child was best-loved.

According to Stager and Wolff there is a consensus among scholars that Carthaginian children were sacrificed by their parents, who would make a vow to kill the next child if the gods would grant them a favor: for instance that their shipment of goods were to arrive safely in a foreign port.

However, some historians have disputed that child sacrifice occurred, suggesting instead that the "Tophets" were resting places for the cremated remains of children that died naturally. Sergio Ribichini has argued that the Tophet was "a child necropolis designed to receive the remains of infants who had died prematurely of sickness or other natural causes, and who for this reason were "offered" to specific deities and buried in a place different from the one reserved for the ordinary dead". The few Carthaginian texts which have survived make no mention of child sacrifice (very few mention religion at all). Child sacrifice may also have been overemphasized for effect; after the Romans finally defeated Carthage and totally destroyed the city, they engaged in post-war propaganda to make their arch-enemies seem cruel and less civilized.

Archaeological evidence

Stelae in the Tophet of Salammbó covered by a vault built in the Roman period

"Tophet" is a term derived from the Bible, used to refer to a site near Jerusalem in which Canaanites and Israelites sacrificed children. It is now used as a general term for all such sites with cremated human and animal remains. The Hebrew Bible does not specify that the Israelite victims were buried, only burned, although the "place of burning" was probably adjacent to the place of burial. We have no idea how the Phoenicians themselves referred to the places of burning or burial, or to the practice itself.

Several apparent "Tophets" have been identified, chiefly a large one in Carthage, dubbed the "Tophet of Salammbó", after the neighbourhood where it was unearthed in 1921. Soil in the Tophet of Salammbó was found to be full of olive wood charcoal, probably from the sacrificial pyres. It was the location of the temple of the goddess Tanit and the necropolis. Animal remains, mostly sheep and goats, found inside some of the Tophet urns strongly suggest that this was not a burial ground for children who died prematurely. The animals were sacrificed to the gods, presumably in place of children (one surviving inscription refers to the animal as "a substitute"). It is conjectured that the children unlucky enough not to have substitutes were also sacrificed and then buried in the Tophet. The remains include the bodies of both very young children and small animals, and those who argue in favor of child sacrifice have argued that if the animals were sacrificed then so too were the children. The area covered by the Tophet in Carthage was probably over an acre and a half by the fourth century BC, with nine different levels of burials. About 20,000 urns were deposited between 400 BC and 200 BC, with the practice continuing until the early years of the Christian period. The urns contained the charred bones of newborns and in some cases the bones of fetuses and 2-year-olds. These double remains have been interpreted to mean that in the cases of stillborn babies, the parents would sacrifice their youngest child.

There is a clear correlation between the frequency of deposition of child remains and the well-being of the city. In bad times (war, poor harvests) sacrifices may have become more frequent, indicating an increased assiduousness in seeking divine appeasement, or possibly a population-controlling response to the reduction of available food, or perhaps increased child mortality due to famine or disease.

A detailed breakdown of the age of the buried children includes pre-natal individuals - that is still births. It is also argued that the age distribution of remains at this site is consistent with the burial of children who died of natural causes, shortly before or after birth. Sergio Ribichini has argued that the Tophet was "a child necropolis designed to receive the remains of infants who had died prematurely of sickness or other natural causes, and who for this reason were "offered" to specific deities and buried in a place different from the one reserved for the ordinary dead". He adds that this was probably part of "an effort to ensure the benevolent protection of the same deities for the survivors." However, this analysis is disputed; Patricia Smith and colleagues from the Hebrew University and Harvard University show from the teeth and skeletal analysis at the Carthage Tophet that infant ages at death (about two months) do not correlate with the expected ages of natural mortality (perinatal).

Sites within Carthage and other Phoenician centres such as Mozia near Sicily revealed the remains of male children under the age of five. There was no evidence of disease in the bones that survived cremation. This has been interpreted as evidence for frequent and prominent child sacrifice to the god Ba'al Hammon.

See also

• James B. Pritchard