While human sacrifice is a common feature of all pagan religions, the Canaanites were unique in slaughtering their own children, and by the worst of all deaths – burning alive.
“they have built the high places of Tophet…to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire.” (Jeremiah 7:30-32)
GOT once again does a fabulous job of depicting this ancient practice when a priestess convinces a claimant to a throne to burn his young daughter alive to ensure his victory in battle against a rival.
While humanism-lauding archaeologists deny the biblical record, and define “tophets” as the unusually large number and size of children’s cemeteries in the Canaanite colony of Carthage, the true meaning of this word is in its etymology, still found in the Aramaic word taphyā meaning “hearth”, “fireplace”, or “roaster”, and in the many quotations in the Bible as “pass through the fire to Molech.”
My best effort at a humane explanation for this is that many hybrid offspring are deformed or severely impaired in some way due to genetic aberrations. These would be “given back” to the gods by sacrifice. Just as in modern abortion laws, in time this practice would extend to even healthy unwanted children for economic or romantic relationship reasons.
The Canaanite colony of Carthage was founded in the 9th century BC to facilitate its trade economy, identified as Phoenicians by the Latin word Punica. In 1921, French archeologists excavating some of ancient Carthage identified many children-specific cemeteries. The largest contained the remains of approximately 20,000 infants in urns.
The Phoenician settlement of Sulci was part of the Carthaginian sphere of influence from the 8th century B.C.E until its conquest by Rome in the 1st century B.C.E., when child sacrifice was prohibited.
An exhibit in the Sant’Antioco archaeological museum reconstructs the layers of Sulci’s Punic “tophet,” with offering bowls to hold the baby’s bodies and dedicatory stelae.
Continue reading “106) The Canaanite Killing Fields”
