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125-405: It is significant as it was the first 'transmarine' Roman colony. The colony was located at the site of the destroyed city of Carthage , a reason for its widespread unpopularity with Romans. Those superstitious about the site spread reports of ill omens, including a claim that wolves had carried off the boundary stakes. The colony would only last 30 years. Julius Caesar later rebuilt Carthage on

250-459: A cardinal . He "saw himself as the reviver of the ancient Christian Church of Africa, the Church of Cyprian of Carthage", and, on 10 November 1884, was successful in his great ambition of having the metropolitan see of Carthage restored, with himself as its first archbishop. In line with the declaration of Pope Leo IX in 1053, Pope Leo XIII acknowledged the revived Archdiocese of Carthage as

375-495: A base by a hostile power again. It also continued to function as an episcopal see . The regional power shifted to Kairouan and the Medina of Tunis in the medieval period , until the early 20th century, when it began to develop into a coastal suburb of Tunis , incorporated as Carthage municipality in 1919. The archaeological site was first surveyed in 1830, by Danish consul Christian Tuxen Falbe . Excavations were performed in

500-475: A bronze image of Kronos, extending its hands, palms up and sloping towards the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire. Elsewhere in the Bibliotheca Diodorus claims that wealthy Carthaginians would purchase infant slaves to offer in lieu of their own children. The writer Plutarch (c. 46–120 CE) also mentions

625-498: A citizen", and mlk bšr "sacrifice in place of flesh". Lawrence Stager and Samuel Wolff argue that the term "refers to a live sacrifice of a child or animal". The god to whom these sacrifices was directed is disputed in modern scholarship, with a dispute arising over whether the sacrifices were part of the cult of Yahweh . Traditionally, the god to whom the sacrifices were offered has been said to be Molech , supposedly an underworld god whose name means king. The Bible connects

750-460: A custom of sacrificing a boy during Alexander the Great 's Siege of Tyre in 332 BCE, recorded by first century CE Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus . The church historian Eusebius (3rd century CE) quotes from Philo of Byblos 's Phoenician history that: It was a custom of the ancients in great crises of danger for the rulers of a city or nation, in order to avert the common ruin, to give up

875-441: A form of sacrifice. The degree and existence of Carthaginian child sacrifice is controversial. Some archaeologists and historians argue that the literary and archaeological evidence indicates that all remains in the tophets were sacrificed. Sabatino Moscati and other scholars have argued that the tophets were cemeteries for premature or short-lived infants who died naturally and then were ritually offered. The account given by

1000-506: A limited area: the north coastal tell , the lower Bagradas river valley (inland from Utica), Cape Bon , and the adjacent sahel on the east coast. Punic culture here achieved the introduction of agricultural sciences first developed for lands of the eastern Mediterranean, and their adaptation to local African conditions. The urban landscape of Carthage is known in part from ancient authors, augmented by modern digs and surveys conducted by archeologists. The "first urban nucleus" dating to

1125-587: A more serious rift among Christians was the Donatist controversy , against which Augustine of Hippo spent much time and parchment arguing. At the Council of Carthage (397) , the biblical canon for the western Church was confirmed . The Christians at Carthage conducted persecutions against the pagans , during which the pagan temples, notably the famous Temple of Juno Caelesti , were destroyed. The Vandals under Gaiseric invaded Africa in 429. They relinquished

1250-446: A retired army general ( c.  300 ), was translated into Latin and later into Greek. The original and both translations have been lost; however, some of Mago's text has survived in other Latin works. Olive trees (e.g., grafting ), fruit trees (pomegranate, almond, fig, date palm), viniculture , bees, cattle, sheep, poultry, implements, and farm management were among the ancient topics which Mago discussed. As well, Mago addresses

1375-436: A ritual involving "passing a child through the fire", most likely child sacrifice . Traditionally, the sacrifices have been ascribed to a god named Moloch . The Bible condemns and forbids these sacrifices, and the tophet is eventually destroyed by king Josiah , although mentions by the prophets Jeremiah , Ezekiel , and Isaiah suggest that the practices associated with the tophet may have persisted. Most scholars agree that

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1500-404: A roadway consisting of clay; in situ stairs compensate for the slope of the hill. Construction of this type presupposes organization and political will, and has inspired the name of the neighborhood, " Hannibal district", referring to the legendary Punic general or sufet (consul) at the beginning of the second century BC. The habitat is typical, even stereotypical. The street was often used as

1625-682: A sample of seventy infants from the tophet at Carthage, 37% were identified as male and 54% as female. The age of the children and whether they had died before they were interred is controversial (see below). The lambs are usually between one and three months old; this might indicate that offerings were made at a specific time following the lambing (February/March and October/November). The bone fragments were subjected to uneven temperatures, indicating they were burnt on an open-air pyre over several hours. The remains were then collected and placed in an urn, sometimes mixing in bones from other infants or lambs - suggesting that multiple infants/lambs were burnt on

1750-438: A storefront/shopfront; cisterns were installed in basements to collect water for domestic use, and a long corridor on the right side of each residence led to a courtyard containing a sump , around which various other elements may be found. In some places, the ground is covered with mosaics called punica pavement, sometimes using a characteristic red mortar. Punic culture and agricultural sciences, after arriving at Carthage from

1875-507: A town has no need of an estate in the country." "One who has bought land should sell his town house, so that he will have no desire to worship the household gods of the city rather than those of the country; the man who takes greater delight in his city residence will have no need of a country estate. The issues involved in rural land management also reveal underlying features of Punic society, its structure and stratification . The hired workers might be considered 'rural proletariat', drawn from

2000-401: A town under Ottoman rule in the 18th century. Le Kram was developed in the late 19th century under French administration as a settlement close to the port of La Goulette . In 1881, Tunisia became a French protectorate , and in the same year Charles Lavigerie , who was archbishop of Algiers, became apostolic administrator of the vicariate of Tunis. In the following year, Lavigerie became

2125-472: Is controversial, with some scholars arguing that the tophets may have been children's cemeteries, rejecting Hellenistic sources as anti-Carthaginian propaganda. Others argue that not all burials in the tophet were sacrifices. The tophet and its location later became associated with divine punishment in Jewish eschatology . There is no consensus on the etymology of tophet, a word which only occurs eight times in

2250-482: Is in the valley of the son of Hinnom , that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech. The text includes the destruction of the Tophet among Josiah's other removal of "deviant" religious practices from Israel as part of a far reaching religious reform. However, the continued condemnation of both the tophet and related practices by prophets such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel suggests that

2375-575: The Atlas Mountains . An imperial fleet arrived and retook Carthage, but in 698, Hasan ibn al-Nu'man returned and defeated Emperor Tiberios III at the 698 Battle of Carthage . Roman imperial forces withdrew from all of Africa except Ceuta . Fearing that the Byzantine Empire might reconquer it, they decided to destroy Roman Carthage in a scorched earth policy and establish their headquarters somewhere else. Its walls were torn down,

2500-912: The Byzantine period . The city was sacked and destroyed by Umayyad forces after the Battle of Carthage in 698 to prevent it from being reconquered by the Byzantine Empire . It remained occupied during the Muslim period and was used as a fort by the Muslims until the Hafsid period when it was taken by the Crusaders with its inhabitants massacred during the Eighth Crusade . The Hafsids decided to destroy its defenses so it could not be used as

2625-552: The Hebrew Bible . The ancient descriptions were seemingly confirmed by the discovering of the so-called "Tophet of Salambô" in Carthage in 1921, which contained the urns of cremated children. However, modern historians and archaeologists debate the reality and extent of this practice. Some scholars propose that all remains at the Tophet were sacrificed, whereas others propose that only some were. Whilst scholars generally see

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2750-621: The Masoretic Text . The word may be derived from the Aramaic word taphyā meaning "hearth", "fireplace", or "roaster", a proposal first made by William Robertson Smith in 1887. Some have suggested that the word has been altered via using the vocalization of bōsheth "shame". Others derive the word from the Hebrew root špt "to set (on fire)", cognate with Ugaritic ṯpd "to set". A new proposal has been made to interpret

2875-633: The Punic qrt-ḥdšt ( 𐤒𐤓𐤕 𐤇𐤃𐤔𐤕 ‎) "new city", implying it was a "new Tyre ". The Latin adjective pūnicus , meaning "Phoenician", is reflected in English in some borrowings from Latin – notably the Punic Wars and the Punic language . The Modern Standard Arabic form Qarṭāj ( قرطاج ) is an adoption of French Carthage , replacing an older local toponym reported as Cartagenna that directly continued

3000-579: The Punic Wars , which are better documented than the earlier periods in which mass child sacrifice is claimed. Many, but not all, Greco-Roman authors were hostile to the Carthaginians because they had been enemies in the Sicilian and Punic Wars and this may have influenced their presentation of the practice. Matthew McCarty argues that, even if the Greco-Roman testimonies are inaccurate "even

3125-544: The Tyrians were hard at work: laying courses for walls, rolling up stones to build the citadel, while others picked out building sites and plowed a boundary furrow. Laws were being enacted, magistrates and a sacred senate chosen. Here men were dredging harbors, there they laid the deep foundations of a theatre, and quarried massive pillars... ." The two inner harbors, named cothon in Punic, were located in

3250-506: The eschatology of Jewish Apocalypticism , something found in the 3rd- or 4th-century BCE Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 26:4; 27:2–3). The Talmud , discussing the passage in Isaiah, states that whoever commits evil will fall there (Eruvin 19a). Various Greek and Roman sources describe the Carthaginians as engaging in the practice of sacrificing children by burning as part of their religion . These descriptions were compared to those found in

3375-529: The primatial see of Africa and Lavigerie as primate. The Acropolium of Carthage (Saint Louis Cathedral of Carthage) was erected on Byrsa hill in 1884. The Danish consul Christian Tuxen Falbe conducted a first survey of the topography of the archaeological site (published in 1833). Antiquarian interest was intensified following the publication of Flaubert's Salammbô in 1858. Charles Ernest Beulé performed some preliminary excavations of Roman remains on Byrsa hill in 1860. In 1866, Muhammad Khaznadar

3500-468: The 4th and 3rd centuries, the sculptures of the sarcophagi became works of art. "Bronze engraving and stone-carving reached their zenith." The elevation of the land at the promontory on the seashore to the north-east (now called Sidi Bou Saïd ), was twice as high above sea level as that at the Byrsa (100 m and 50 m). In between runs a ridge, several times reaching 50 m; it continues northwestward along

3625-589: The African was born in Carthage. The Medina of Tunis , originally a Berber settlement, was established as the new regional center under the Umayyad Caliphate in the early 8th century. Under the Aghlabids , the people of Tunis revolted numerous times, but the city profited from economic improvements and quickly became the second most important in the kingdom. It was briefly the national capital, from

3750-473: The Arab period and the eleventh-century historian Al-Bakri stated that they were still in good condition at that time. They also had production centers nearby. It is difficult to determine whether the continued habitation of some other buildings belonged to Late Byzantine or Early Arab period. The Bir Ftouha church may have continued to remain in use although it is not clear when it became uninhabited. Constantine

3875-512: The Bible depicts human sacrifice as occurring at the tophet. Modern scholarship has described sacrifice at the Tophet as a mulk or mlk sacrifice. The term appears to derive from a verb meaning "presentation as an offering" from the root ylk "to offer, present" and found in Phoenician and Carthaginian inscriptions in the phrases mlk ʾdm "sacrifice a human", mlk bʿl "to sacrifice

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4000-530: The Bishop of Rome, the first archbishop and chief metropolitan of the whole of Africa is the bishop of Carthage. Later, an archbishop of Carthage named Cyriacus was imprisoned by the Arab rulers because of an accusation by some Christians. Pope Gregory VII wrote Cyriacus a letter of consolation, repeating the hopeful assurances of the primacy of the Church of Carthage, "whether the Church of Carthage should still lie desolate or rise again in glory". By 1076, Cyriacus

4125-646: The Carthaginian hinterland as Phoenician settlement expanded. In Sicily and Sardinia, tophets slowly went out of use in the third and second centuries BCE, following the establishment of Roman control in the First Punic War . In the same period in North Africa, many new tophets were established, mainly inland in Tunisia . Many of these tophets remained in use after the fall of Carthage in 146 BCE. In

4250-433: The Carthaginians abandon the practice after he defeated them in the Battle of Himera (480 BC) . The first detailed account comes from Cleitarchus , an early third-century BCE historian of Alexander the Great , who is quoted by a scholiast as saying: Phoenicians, and above all Carthaginians, worship Kronos; if they wish to achieve something big, they devote a child of theirs, and in the case of success, sacrifice it to

4375-651: The Carthaginians as faithful adherents to the mainland Phoenician religion, others believe that they were dissidents and that their sacrificial customs were unique innovations. In Phoenician sites throughout the Western Mediterranean except in the Iberian Peninsula and Ibiza , archaeology has revealed fields full of buried urns containing the burnt remains of human infants and lambs, covered by carved stone monuments. These fields are conventionally referred to as "tophets" by archaeologists, after

4500-432: The Carthaginians were besieged by Agathocles of Syracuse in 310 BCE, the Carthaginians responded by sacrificing large numbers of children according to an old custom they had abandoned: They also alleged that Kronos had turned against them inasmuch as in former times they 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

4625-515: The Empire. Among its major monuments was an amphitheater . Carthage also became a center of early Christianity (see Carthage (episcopal see) ). In the first of a string of rather poorly reported councils at Carthage a few years later, no fewer than 70 bishops attended. Tertullian later broke with the mainstream that was increasingly represented in the West by the primacy of the Bishop of Rome , but

4750-420: The Greco-Roman authors is questionable. They were not eye-witnesses, contradict each other on how the children were killed, and describe children older than infants being killed as opposed to the infants found in the tophets. The archaeological evidence is not consistent with the mechanical statue of Cronus mentioned by Cleitarchus and Diodorus. There are no references to child sacrifice in Greco-Roman accounts of

4875-507: The Hafsids. After repelling them, Muhammad I al-Mustansir decided to raze Cathage's defenses in order to prevent a repeat. Carthage is some 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) east-northeast of Tunis; the settlements nearest to Carthage were the town of Sidi Bou Said to the north and the village of Le Kram to the south. Sidi Bou Said was a village which had grown around the tomb of the eponymous sufi saint (d. 1231), which had been developed into

5000-545: The Israelites: And when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him, he took with him seven hundred men that drew sword, to break through unto the king of Edom; but they could not. Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt-offering upon the wall. And there came great wrath upon Israel; and they departed from him, and returned to their own land. This act has been compared with Greco-Roman sources discussing

5125-527: The LORD, to provoke Him. ( 2 Kings 21:6 ) Both kings perform the sacrifices when faced with the prospect of wars. The sacrifices appear to have been to Yahweh , the god of Israel, and to have been performed in the tophet. The tophet is condemned repeatedly by name in the Book of Jeremiah , and the term is especially associated with that book of the bible. An example is at Jeremiah 7:31–33 : And they have built

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5250-559: The Latin name. Carthage was built on a promontory with sea inlets to the north and the south. The city's location made it master of the Mediterranean's maritime trade. All ships crossing the sea had to pass between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia, where Carthage was built, affording it great power and influence. Two large, artificial harbors were built within the city, one for harboring the city's prodigious navy of 220 warships and

5375-642: The Phoenicians and Carthaginians engaging in the same or a similar practice in times of danger (see below). It appears to have been performed for the Moabite god Kemosh . There is no archaeological evidence for the Tophet at Jerusalem, so that we are reliant on the biblical descriptions to understand it. Archaeology has not yet securely identified any Tophets in the Levant , but there is other evidence for child sacrifice there. Ancient Egyptian inscriptions from

5500-466: The Phoenicians first settled in these areas in the ninth century BCE. The largest known tophet, the Carthage tophet, seems to have been established at this time and continued in use for at least a few decades after the city's destruction in 146 BCE. The stone markers first appeared at Salammbô, Carthage around 650 BCE and spread to Motya and Tharros around 600 BCE. Between the fifth and third centuries BCE, tophets became more common in southern Sardinia and

5625-574: The Roman Carthage. The neighborhood can be dated back to early second century BC, and with its houses, shops, and private spaces, is significant for what it reveals about daily life of the Punic Carthage. The remains have been preserved under embankments, the substructures of the later Roman forum, whose foundation piles dot the district. The housing blocks are separated by a grid of straight streets about 6 m (20 ft) wide, with

5750-552: The Tophet with Moloch in two later texts, 2 Kings 23:10 and Jeremiah 32:35. Lindsay Cooper writes in support of this connection that "The location of the Jerusalem tofet outside the city's eastern wall, at the traditional entrance to the netherworld, explicitly connects child sacrifice with the cult of death." However, while scholars recognize the existence of an underworld deity called "M-l-k" with various vocalizations (e.g. Molech, Milcom) as well as an Akkadian term maliku for

5875-484: The Tunisian mountains caused large amounts of silt to erode into the river. This silt accumulated in the harbor until it became useless, and Rome was forced to rebuild Carthage. By 122 BC, Gaius Gracchus founded a short-lived colony , called Colonia Iunonia , after the Latin name for the Punic goddess Tanit , Iuno Caelestis . The purpose was to obtain arable lands for impoverished farmers. The Senate abolished

6000-654: The Western Mediterranean culminating in the Sicilian Wars and the Pyrrhic War over Sicily , while the Romans fought three wars against Carthage, known as the Punic Wars , from the Latin "Punicus" meaning "Phoenician", as Carthage was a Phoenician colony grown into an empire. The Carthaginian republic was one of the longest-lived and largest states in the ancient Mediterranean. Reports relay several wars with Syracuse and finally, Rome, which eventually resulted in

6125-409: The ancient authors and the evidence of the Tophet indicates that all remains in the Tophet must have been sacrificed. Others argue that only some infants were sacrificed. Paolo Xella argues that "the principle of Occam's Razor" indicates that the weight of classical and biblical sources indicate that the sacrifices occurred. He further argues that the number of children in the tophet is far smaller than

6250-558: The ancient city under the name of Cartagenna (i.e. reflecting the Latin n -stem Carthāgine ). Tophet#Carthage and the western Mediterranean In the Hebrew Bible , Tophet or Topheth ( Biblical Hebrew : תֹּפֶת , romanized:  Tōp̄eṯ ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Ταφέθ , translit.   taphéth ; Latin : Topheth ) is a location in Jerusalem in the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna) , where worshipers engaged in

6375-490: The bloody rite was the extrema ratio in critic [sic] situations (e.g. see the biblical cases). Moreover, it is assured that a lot of different ceremonies were performed in the tophet , included substitution rites (animal / human). The legendary death of Carthage's first queen Elissa (Dido) by immolation, as well as the deaths of Hamilcar and the wife of Hasdrubal the Boetharch in the same manner, has been connected to

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6500-495: The city of Carthage c. 310 BC: It was divided into market gardens and orchards of all sorts of fruit trees, with many streams of water flowing in channels irrigating every part. There were country homes everywhere, lavishly built and covered with stucco. ... Part of the land was planted with vines, part with olives and other productive trees. Beyond these, cattle and sheep were pastured on the plains, and there were meadows with grazing horses. Greek cities contested with Carthage for

6625-478: The colony some time later, to undermine Gracchus' power. After this ill-fated effort, a new city of Carthage was built on the same land by Julius Caesar in the period from 49 to 44 BC, and by the first century, it had grown to be the second-largest city in the western half of the Roman Empire , with a peak population of 500,000. It was the center of the province of Africa , which was a major breadbasket of

6750-560: The defeat and destruction of Carthage in the Third Punic War. The Carthaginians were Phoenician settlers of primarily Southern Mediterranean and Southern European ancestry. Phoenicians had originated in the Mediterranean coast of the Levant . They spoke Canaanite , a Semitic language , and followed a local variety of the ancient Canaanite religion , the Punic religion . The Carthaginians travelled widely across

6875-412: The deity "Molek", but rather to the sacrifice of children as "mlk" offerings to another deity". On the basis of the stories of Abraham and Jephthah offering their children to Yahweh, as well as Micah 6:6-7 and other passages, Francesca Stavrakopoulou argues that the offerings were in fact for Yahweh rather than for a foreign deity. The topheth's description as a place of punishment derives in part by

7000-678: The east. The figural decoration on the stone monuments takes different forms in different regions. In Carthage, geometric patterns were preferred. In Sardinia, human figures are more common. Inscriptions are most common in the Carthage tophet , where there are thousands of examples. There are some from other tophets as well. Matthew McCarty cites CIS I.2.511 as a typical inscription: To Lady Tanit , face of Baal, and to Lord Baal Hammon : [that] which Arisham son of Bodashtart, son of Bodeshmun vowed ( ndr ); because he (the god) heard his (Arisham's) voice, he blessed him. Thus, these texts present

7125-457: The eastern Mediterranean, gradually adapted to the local conditions. The merchant harbor at Carthage was developed after settlement of the nearby Punic town of Utica , and eventually the surrounding African countryside was brought into the orbit of the Punic urban centers, first commercially, then politically. Direct management over cultivation of neighbouring lands by Punic owners followed. A 28-volume work on agriculture written in Punic by Mago ,

7250-551: The end of the reign of Ibrahim II in 902, until 909, when the Shi'ite Berbers took over Ifriqiya and founded the Fatimid Caliphate . Carthage remained a residential see until the high medieval period , and is mentioned in two letters of Pope Leo IX dated 1053, written in reply to consultations regarding a conflict between the bishops of Carthage and Gummi . In each of the two letters, Pope Leo declares that, after

7375-514: The facade of their allied status to Rome and defeated the Roman general Bonifacius to seize Carthage, the once most treasured province of Rome. The 5th-century Roman bishop Victor Vitensis mentions in his Historia Persecutionis Africanae Provincia that the Vandals destroyed parts of Carthage, including various buildings and churches. Once in power, the ecclesiastical authorities were persecuted,

7500-400: The founder of the city, though her historicity has been questioned. In the myth, Dido asked for land from a local tribe, which told her that she could get as much land as an oxhide could cover. She cut the oxhide into strips and laid out the perimeter of the new city. As Carthage prospered at home, the polity sent colonists abroad as well as magistrates to rule the colonies. The ancient city

7625-465: The god. There is a bronze statue of Kronos among them, which stands upright with open arms and palms of its hands facing upwards above a bronze brazier on which the child is burnt. When the flames reach the body, the victim's limbs stiffen and the tense mouth almost seems like it is laughing until, with a final spasm, the child falls in the brazier. Cleitarchus FGrH no. 137, F 9 The first century BCE Greek historian Diodorus Siculus writes that, when

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7750-462: The high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded not, neither came it into My mind. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the L ORD , that it shall no more be called Topheth, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter; for they shall bury in Topheth, for lack of room. Jeremiah associates

7875-568: The history of Herodian , Carthage rivaled Alexandria for second place in the Roman empire. The Punic Carthage was divided into four equally sized residential areas with the same layout. The Punic had religious areas, market places, council house, towers, a theater, and a huge necropolis ; roughly in the middle of the city stood a high citadel called the Byrsa . Surrounding Carthage were walls "of great strength" said in places to rise above 13 m, being nearly 10 m thick, according to ancient authors. To

8000-518: The late first and second centuries CE, migration resulting from military deployment patterns led to establishing new tophets in Tunisia and eastern Algeria . In the Roman period, inscriptions named the god to which the monuments were dedicated as Saturn . In addition to infants, some of these tophets contain offerings only of goats, sheep, birds, or plants; many of the worshipers have Libyan rather than Punic names. Their use appears to have declined in

8125-417: The local Berbers. Whether there remained Berber landowners next to Punic-run farms is unclear. Some Berbers became sharecroppers. Slaves acquired for farm work were often prisoners of war. In lands outside Punic political control, independent Berbers cultivated grain and raised horses on their lands. Yet within the Punic domain that surrounded the city-state of Carthage, there were ethnic divisions in addition to

8250-536: The locals were aggressively taxed, and naval raids were routinely launched on Romans in the Mediterranean. After a failed attempt to recapture the city in the fifth century, the Eastern Roman Empire finally subdued the Vandals in the Vandalic War in 533–534 and made Carthage capital of Byzantine North Africa . Thereafter, the city became the seat of the praetorian prefecture of Africa , which

8375-515: The location in the Bible. When Carthaginian inscriptions refer to these locations, they use the terms bt (house, temple or sanctuary) or qdš (shrine), not "tophet". Archaeology reveals two "generations" of Punic tophets: those founded by Phoenician colonists between 800 and 400 BCE; and those established under Carthaginian influence (direct or indirect) in North Africa from the 4th century BCE onward. No Carthaginian literary texts survive that would explain or describe what rituals were performed at

8500-411: The monument as a votive offering to the gods in thanks for a favour received from them. Sometimes the final clause instead reads "may he (the god) hear his voice" (i.e. in expectation of a future favour). The individual making the offering is almost always a single individual, nearly always male. The dead child is never mentioned. Tanit appears only in examples from Carthage. Other inscriptions refer to

8625-485: The most affluent cities of the classical world . It became the capital city of the civilisation of Ancient Carthage and later Roman Carthage . The city developed from a Phoenician colony into the capital of a Punic empire which dominated large parts of the Southwest Mediterranean during the first millennium BC. The legendary Queen Elissa, Alyssa or Dido , originally from Tyre , is regarded as

8750-401: The most beloved of their children for sacrifice as a ransom to the avenging daemons; and those who were thus given up were sacrificed with mystic rites. Kronos then, whom the Phoenicians call Elus, who was king of the country and subsequently, after his decease, was deified as the star Saturn, had by a nymph of the country named Anobret an only begotten son, whom they on this account called ledud,

8875-482: The most fantastical slanders rely upon a germ of fact". The archaeological evidence is ambiguous. An osteological study of the remains at Carthage by Jeffrey Schwartz et al. suggested 38% of a sample of 540 individuals had died before or during childbirth, based on the size of the bones, the development of teeth, and the absence of neonatal lines on teeth. Another osteological study of the same material challenged these findings, arguing that it had not taken account of

9000-451: The naval and commercial harbors, and another two were further up the hill toward the Byrsa citadel. Sites of pottery kilns have been identified, between the agora and the harbors, and further north. Earthenware often used Greek models. A fuller 's shop for preparing woolen cloth (shrink and thicken) was evidently situated further to the west and south, then by the edge of the city. Carthage also produced objects of rare refinement. During

9125-428: The north east. Houses usually were whitewashed and blank to the street, but within were courtyards open to the sky. In these neighborhoods multistory construction later became common, some up to six stories tall according to an ancient Greek author. Several architectural floorplans of homes have been revealed by recent excavations , as well as the general layout of several city blocks . Stone stairs were set in

9250-401: The occurrence of child sacrifice, as claimed in the Bible and Greco-Roman sources, although there has been considerable doubt among archeologists as to this interpretation and many consider it simply a cemetery devoted to infants. Probably the tophet burial fields were "dedicated at an early date, perhaps by the first settlers." Recent studies, on the other hand, indicate that child sacrifice

9375-400: The only begotten being still so called among the Phoenicians; and when very great dangers from war had beset the country, he arrayed his son in royal apparel, and prepared an altar, and sacrificed him. Although a minority of scholars has argued that the tophet ritual described in the Bible was a harmless activity that did not involve sacrificing any children, the majority of scholars agree that

9500-400: The other for mercantile trade. A walled tower overlooked both harbors. The city had massive walls, 37 km (23 mi) long, which was longer than the walls of comparable cities. Most of the walls were on the shore and so could be less impressive, as Carthaginian control of the sea made attack from that direction difficult. The 4.0 to 4.8 km (2.5 to 3 mi) of wall on the isthmus to

9625-515: The practice may have continued after Josiah's reform, with a mention of the tophet by Isaiah suggesting it may have even continued after the Babylonian exile . Prior to Josiah's reform, the ritual of passing a child through the fire is mentioned, without specifying that it took place at the tophet, as having been performed by the Israelite kings Ahaz and Manasseh : But [Ahaz] walked in

9750-401: The practice: ... with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, and her child

9875-399: The rate of natural infant mortality. In Xella's estimation, prenatal remains at the tophet are probably those of children who were promised to be sacrificed but died before birth, but who were nevertheless offered as a sacrifice in fulfillment of a vow. He concludes that the tophet was not theatre of numberless massacres , but only of a certain number of sacred ceremonies felt as pious, and

10000-506: The ritual as mlk or molk . The meaning of this term is uncertain, but it appears to be the same word as the Biblical term "Molech" discussed above. The inscriptions distinguish between mlk b'l / mlk ʿdm ( molk of a citizen/person) and mlk ʿmr ( molk of a lamb). Over a hundred tophets have been identified. The earliest examples were established at Carthage, Malta , Motya in western Sicily, and Tharros in southern Sardinia, when

10125-539: The ritual performed at the tophet was child sacrifice, and they connect it to similar episodes throughout the Bible and recorded in Phoenicia (whose inhabitants were referred to as Canaanites in the Bible) and Carthage by Hellenistic sources. There is disagreement about whether the sacrifices were offered to a god named "Moloch". Based on Phoenician and Carthaginian inscriptions, a growing number of scholars believe that

10250-520: The sacrifice to Moloch, deriving his ideas from Plutarch 's description of Carthaginian sacrifice. This derivation is, however, morphologically impossible. The tophet is attested 8 times in the Hebrew Bible, mostly to designate a place of ritual fire or burning, but sometimes as a place name. The connection to ritual fire is made explicit in 2 Kings 23:10 , Isaiah 30:33 ; and Jeremiah 7:31–32 . In 2 Kings, King Josiah defiled Topheth, which

10375-404: The sacrifice; and when an investigation was made, some of those who had been sacrificed were discovered to have been substituted by stealth. ... In their zeal to make amends for the omission, they selected two hundred of the noblest children and sacrificed them publicly; and others who were under suspicion sacrificed themselves voluntarily, in number not less than three hundred. There was in the city

10500-434: The sake of their own 'utilitarian' interests, to treat carefully and well their managers and farm workers, or their overseers and slaves. Yet elsewhere these writers suggest that rural land ownership provided also a new power base among the city's nobility, for those resident in their country villas. By many, farming was viewed as an alternative endeavour to an urban business. Another modern historian opines that more often it

10625-416: The same pyre. Sometimes jewellery or amulets were added to the urn. The urn was placed in the ground, in holes cut into the bedrock or within boxes made from stone slabs. In some cases a stone monument was set up above the urn. This could take the form of a stele , cippus , or throne, often with figural decoration and an inscription. In a few occasions, a chapel was built as well. Steles are oriented toward

10750-455: The seas and set up numerous colonies. Unlike Greek, Phoenician, and Tyrian colonizers who "only required colonies to pay due respect for their home-cities", Carthage is said to have "sent its own magistrates to govern overseas settlements". The fall of Carthage came at the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC at the Battle of Carthage . Despite initial devastating Roman naval losses and Hannibal 's 15-year occupation of much of Roman Italy, who

10875-451: The seashore, and forms the edge of a plateau-like area between the Byrsa and the sea. Newer urban developments lay here in these northern districts. Due to the Roman's leveling of the city, the original Punic urban landscape of Carthage was largely lost. Since 1982, French archaeologist Serge Lancel excavated a residential area of the Punic Carthage on top of Byrsa hill near the Forum of

11000-581: The second and third centuries CE. Greco-Roman sources frequently criticize the Carthaginians for engaging in child sacrifice. The earliest references to the practice are bare references in Sophocles and the Pseudo-Platonic dialogue, Minos , probably of the fourth century BCE. The late fourth century BCE philosopher Theophrastus claimed that the Syracusan tyrant Gelon had demanded that

11125-444: The second half of the 19th century by Charles Ernest Beulé and by Alfred Louis Delattre . The Carthage National Museum was founded in 1875 by Cardinal Charles Lavigerie . Excavations performed by French archaeologists in the 1920s first attracted an extraordinary amount of attention because of the evidence they produced for child sacrifice . There has been considerable disagreement among scholars concerning whether child sacrifice

11250-566: The second millennium BCE attest the practice in the Levant. A late 8th-century BCE Phoenician inscription from İncirli in Turkey may indicate that first born sons were sacrificed there along with sheep and horses. The sacrifice of first-born sons in times of crisis appears to be dealt with at length in the inscription, although the precise context is unclear. Greco-Roman sources also reference child sacrifice, such as an attempt at Tyre to revive

11375-586: The seventh century, in area about 10 hectares (25 acres), was apparently located on low-lying lands along the coast (north of the later harbors). As confirmed by archaeological excavations, Carthage was a "creation ex nihilo ", built on 'virgin' land, and situated at what was then the end of a peninsula. Here among "mud brick walls and beaten clay floors" (recently uncovered) were also found extensive cemeteries, which yielded evocative grave goods like clay masks. "Thanks to this burial archaeology we know more about archaic Carthage than about any other contemporary city in

11500-513: The several growing regions that surrounded the city wrote admiringly of the lush green gardens, orchards, fields, irrigation channels, hedgerows (as boundaries), as well as the many prosperous farming towns located across the rural landscape. Accordingly, the Greek author and compiler Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC), who enjoyed access to ancient writings later lost, and on which he based most of his writings, described agricultural land near

11625-440: The shades of the dead, there is no evidence to connect these deities or shades to human sacrifice. Later Phoenician and Punic sacrifices of children called mlk in inscriptions or described by Greco-Roman sources are not associated with these gods. On the basis of the word mlk meaning "to sacrifice" "an increasing number of scholars now take the biblical traditions to attest not to the offering of children in fiery sacrifices to

11750-439: The shrinkage of the bones caused by the burning process. The form of the deposits in tophets is different from Carthaginian graves for non-infants, which usually took the form of burials, not cremations. Phoenician grave goods are also different from the objects found with the human remains in tophets. However, cross-culturally, funerary practices for infants often differ from those for non-infants. Many archaeologists argue that

11875-608: The site between 49 and 44 BC, the city became the second largest city in the republic. This Ancient Rome –related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Carthage Carthage was an ancient city in Northern Africa, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia . Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of

12000-466: The son of the Prime Minister of Tunisia , carried out the first locally led excavations. A more systematic survey of both Punic and Roman-era remains is due to Alfred Louis Delattre , who was sent to Tunis by cardinal Charles Lavigerie in 1875 on both an apostolic and an archaeological mission. Audollent cites Delattre and Lavigerie to the effect that in the 1880s, locals still knew the area of

12125-459: The south of the city. Considering the importance of the Byrsa , the citadel area to the north, our knowledge of it is patchy. Its prominent heights were the scene of fierce combat during the fiery destruction of the city in 146 BC. The Byrsa was the reported site of the Temple of Eshmun (the healing god), at the top of a stairway of sixty steps. A temple of Tanit (the city's queen goddess)

12250-465: The southeast; one being commercial, and the other for war. Their definite functions are not entirely known, probably for the construction, outfitting, or repair of ships, perhaps also loading and unloading cargo. Larger anchorages existed to the north and south of the city. North and west of the cothon were located several industrial areas, e.g., metalworking and pottery (e.g., for amphora ), which could serve both inner harbors, and ships anchored to

12375-485: The streets, and drainage was planned, e.g., in the form of soakaways leaching into the sandy soil. Along the Byrsa's southern slope were located not only fine old homes, but also many of the earliest grave-sites, juxtaposed in small areas, interspersed with daily life. Artisan workshops were located in the city at sites north and west of the harbors. The location of three metal workshops (implied from iron slag and other vestiges of such activity) were found adjacent to

12500-404: The term as "place of vow" by Robert M. Kerr. The Talmud ( Eruvin 19a) and Jerome derive the name from a Hebrew verb meaning "to seduce". The historically most significant etymology, followed by both Jewish and Christian exegetes until the modern period, was made by the 11th-century CE rabbi Rashi , who derived the term from Hebrew toph "drum", claiming that the drums were beaten during

12625-604: The tophet with Baal ; however, other sources all associate it with Moloch. P. Xella argues that no fewer than twenty-five passages in the Hebrew Bible show the Israelites and Canaanites sacrificing their children, including passages in Deuteronomy , (Dt. 12:13, 18:10), Leviticus (Lev. 18:21, 20:2-5), 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles , Isaiah, Ezra, Psalm 106 , and the Book of Job . In 2 Kings 3:26–27 , king Mesha of Moab burns his first-born son as an offering while besieged by

12750-405: The tophet. Archaeological evidence shows that the remains could consist of human infants or lambs, often mixed with small portions of other animals, including cows, pigs, fish, birds, and deer. The proportion of lamb to human remains differs by site. At Carthage, 31% of the urns contained lambs; at Tharros it was 47%. Analysis of the bone fragments provides some information about the remains. In

12875-512: The use of the word in Isaiah 30:33 , in which Yahweh ignites a large tophet to punish the Assyrians : For a hearth [tophet] is ordered of old; yea, for the king it is prepared, deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it. The location of the tophet, the valley of Gehenna , subsequently became a place of punishment in

13000-468: The usual quasi feudal distinctions between lord and peasant, or master and serf. This inherent instability in the countryside drew the unwanted attention of potential invaders. Yet for long periods Carthage was able to manage these social difficulties. The many amphorae with Punic markings subsequently found about ancient Mediterranean coastal settlements testify to Carthaginian trade in locally made olive oil and wine. Carthage's agricultural production

13125-473: The water supply from its aqueducts cut off, the agricultural land was ravaged and its harbors made unusable. The destruction of the Exarchate of Africa marked a permanent end to the Byzantine Empire's influence in the region. It is clear from archaeological evidence that the town of Carthage continued to be occupied, as did the neighborhood of Bjordi Djedid. The Baths of Antoninus continued to function in

13250-408: The way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel. ( 2 Kings 16:3 ) And [Manasseh] made his son to pass through the fire, and practised soothsaying, and used enchantments, and appointed them that divined by a ghost or a familiar spirit: he wrought much evil in the sight of

13375-462: The west were truly massive and were never penetrated. Carthage was one of the largest cities of the Hellenistic period and was among the largest cities in preindustrial history. Whereas by AD 14, Rome had at least 750,000 inhabitants and in the following century may have reached 1 million, the cities of Alexandria and Antioch numbered only a few hundred thousand or less. According to

13500-550: The west, three parallel walls were built. The walls altogether ran for about 33 kilometres (21 miles) to encircle the city. The heights of the Byrsa were additionally fortified ; this area being the last to succumb to the Romans in 146 BC . Originally the Romans had landed their army on the strip of land extending southward from the city. Outside the city walls of Carthage is the Chora or farm lands of Carthage. Chora encompassed

13625-600: The western Mediterranean." Already in the eighth century, fabric dyeing operations had been established, evident from crushed shells of murex (from which the 'Phoenician purple' was derived). Nonetheless, only a "meager picture" of the cultural life of the earliest pioneers in the city can be conjectured, and not much about housing, monuments or defenses. The Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BC) imagined early Carthage, when his legendary character Aeneas had arrived there: "Aeneas found, where lately huts had been, marvelous buildings, gateways, cobbled ways, and din of wagons. There

13750-404: The wine-maker's art (here a type of sherry ). In Punic farming society, according to Mago, the small estate owners were the chief producers. They were, two modern historians write, not absent landlords. Rather, the likely reader of Mago was "the master of a relatively modest estate, from which, by great personal exertion, he extracted the maximum yield." Mago counselled the rural landowner, for

13875-438: The word moloch refers to the type of sacrifice rather than a deity. There is currently a dispute as to whether these sacrifices were dedicated to Yahweh rather than a foreign deity. Archaeologists have applied the term "tophet" to large cemeteries of children found at Carthaginian sites that have traditionally been believed to house sacrificed human children, as described by Hellenistic and biblical sources. This interpretation

14000-475: Was sown with salt after being razed, but there is no evidence for this. When Carthage fell, its nearby rival Utica , a Roman ally, was made capital of the region and replaced Carthage as the leading center of Punic trade and leadership. It had the advantageous position of being situated on the outlet of the Medjerda River , Tunisia's only river that flowed all year long. However, grain cultivation in

14125-658: Was destroyed in the nearly three year siege of Carthage by the Roman Republic during the Third Punic War in 146 BC. It was re-developed a century later as Roman Carthage , which became the major city of the Roman Empire in the province of Africa . The question of Carthaginian decline and demise has remained a subject of literary, political, artistic, and philosophical debates in both ancient and modern histories. Late antique and medieval Carthage continued to play an important cultural and economic role in

14250-468: Was held in high regard by the ancients, and rivaled that of Rome – they were once competitors, e.g., over their olive harvests. Under Roman rule, however, grain production (wheat and barley) for export increased dramatically in 'Africa'; yet these later fell with the rise in Roman Egypt 's grain exports. Thereafter olive groves and vineyards were re-established around Carthage. Visitors to

14375-658: Was likely situated on the slope of the 'lesser Byrsa' immediately to the east, which runs down toward the sea. Also situated on the Byrsa were luxury homes. South of the citadel, near the cothon was the tophet , a special and very old cemetery , which when begun lay outside the city's boundaries. Here the Salammbô was located, the Sanctuary of Tanit , not a temple but an enclosure for placing stone stelae . These were mostly short and upright, carved for funeral purposes. The presence of infant skeletons from here may indicate

14500-617: Was made into an exarchate during the emperor Maurice's reign, as was Ravenna on the Italian Peninsula. These two exarchates were the western bulwarks of the Byzantine Empire, all that remained of its power in the West. In the early seventh century Heraclius the Elder , the exarch of Carthage, overthrew the Byzantine emperor Phocas , whereupon his son Heraclius succeeded to the imperial throne. The Roman Exarchate of Africa

14625-514: Was not able to withstand the seventh-century Muslim conquest of the Maghreb . The Umayyad Caliphate under Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan in 686 sent a force led by Zuhayr ibn Qays , who won a battle over the Romans and Berbers led by King Kusaila of the Kingdom of Altava on the plain of Kairouan , but he could not follow that up. In 695, Hassan ibn al-Nu'man captured Carthage and advanced into

14750-411: Was on the brink of defeat but managed to recover, the end of the series of wars resulted in the end of Carthaginian power and the complete destruction of the city by Scipio Aemilianus . The Romans pulled the Phoenician warships out into the harbor and burned them before the city, and went from house to house, capturing and enslaving the people. About 50,000 Carthaginians were sold into slavery . The city

14875-669: Was practiced by ancient Carthage. The open-air Carthage Paleo-Christian Museum has exhibits excavated under the auspices of UNESCO from 1975 to 1984. The site of the ruins is a UNESCO World Heritage Site . The name Carthage ( / ˈ k ɑːr θ ɪ dʒ / KAR -thij ) is the Early Modern anglicisation of Middle French Carthage /kartaʒə/ , from Latin Carthāgō and Karthāgō (cf. Greek Karkhēdōn ( Καρχηδών ) and Etruscan [*Carθaza] Error: {{Lang}}: Non-latn text/Latn script subtag mismatch ( help ) ) from

15000-443: Was practiced by the Carthaginians. According to K.L. Noll, the majority of scholars in believe that child sacrifice took place in Carthage. Between the sea-filled cothon for shipping and the Byrsa heights lay the agora [Greek: "market"], the city-state's central marketplace for business and commerce. The agora was also an area of public squares and plazas, where the people might formally assemble, or gather for festivals. It

15125-552: Was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums so that the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people." Several Christian authors allude to the practice in the early centuries CE. The Christian apologist Tertullian , about 200 CE, states that although the priests who sacrificed children had been crucified by a Roman procurator , "that holy crime persists in secret". Another Christian writer, Minucius Felix , claims that Punic women aborted their children as

15250-410: Was set ablaze and razed to the ground, leaving only ruins and rubble. After the fall of Carthage, Rome annexed the majority of the Carthaginian colonies, including other North African locations such as Volubilis , Lixus , Chellah . Today a "Carthaginian peace" can refer to any brutal peace treaty demanding total subjugation of the defeated side. Since at least 1863, it has been claimed that Carthage

15375-474: Was set free, but there was only one other bishop in the province. These are the last of whom there is mention in that period of the history of the see. The fortress of Carthage was used by the Muslims until Hafsid era and was captured by the Crusaders during the Eighth Crusade . The inhabitants of Carthage were slaughtered by the Crusaders after they took it, and it was used as a base of operations against

15500-411: Was the site of religious shrines, and the location of whatever were the major municipal buildings of Carthage. Here beat the heart of civic life. In this district of Carthage, more probably, the ruling suffets presided, the council of elders convened, the tribunal of the 104 met, and justice was dispensed at trials in the open air. Early residential districts wrapped around the Byrsa from the south to

15625-413: Was the urban merchant of Carthage who owned rural farming land to some profit, and also to retire there during the heat of summer. It may seem that Mago anticipated such an opinion, and instead issued this contrary advice (as quoted by the Roman writer Columella): The man who acquires an estate must sell his house, lest he prefer to live in the town rather than in the country. Anyone who prefers to live in

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