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166-574: Most scholars agree that 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,

332-516: A Eurasian steppe population). One 2018 study of mitochondrial lineages in Sardinia concluded that the Phoenicians were "inclusive, multicultural and featured significant female mobility", with evidence of indigenous Sardinians integrating "peacefully and permanently" with Semitic Phoenician settlers. The study also found evidence suggesting that south Europeans may have likewise settled in

498-436: A Hellenization policy, whereby Hellenic culture, religion, and sometimes language were spread or imposed across conquered peoples. However, Hellenisation was not enforced most of the time and was just a language of administration until his death. This was typically implemented through the founding of new cities, the settlement of a Macedonian or Greek urban elite, and the alteration of native place names to Greek. However, there

664-468: A Punic term for 'Phoenicians', which may be reconstructed as * Pōnnīm . Since little has survived of Phoenician records or literature , most of what is known about their origins and history comes from the accounts of other civilizations and inferences from their material culture excavated throughout the Mediterranean. The scholarly consensus is that the Phoenicians' period of greatest prominence

830-597: A "land of fnḫw ", fnḫw being the plural form of fnḫ , the Ancient Egyptian word for 'carpenter'. This "land of carpenters" is generally identified as Phoenicia, given that Phoenicia played a central role in the lumber trade of the Levant. As an exonym , fnḫw was evidently borrowed into Greek as φοῖνιξ , phoînix , which meant variably 'Phoenician person', ' Tyrian purple , crimson ' or ' date palm '. Homer used it with each of these meanings. The word

996-496: A Greek historian from Sicily c.  300 BC, places the foundation of Carthage in 814 BC, which is the date generally accepted by modern historians. Legend, including Virgil 's Aeneid , assigns the founding of the city to Queen Dido . Carthage would grow into a multi-ethnic empire spanning North Africa, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, the Balearic Islands, and southern Iberia, but would ultimately be destroyed by Rome in

1162-570: A Messiah of David (i.e. a descendant). From these ideas, Second Temple Judaism would later emerge, whence Christianity , Rabbinic Judaism , and Islam . Although the specific process by which the Israelites adopted monotheism is unknown, the transition was a gradual one and was not totally accomplished during the First Temple period. It is unclear when the worship of Yahweh alone began. The earliest known portrayals of Yahweh as

1328-471: 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

1494-492: 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

1660-522: A claim that they came from Tylos and Arad ( Bahrain and Muharraq ). Some archaeologists working on the Persian Gulf have accepted these traditions and suggest a migration connected with the collapse of the Dilmun civilization c.  1750 BC. However, most scholars reject the idea of a migration; archaeological and historical evidence alike indicate millennia of population continuity in

1826-650: A complex and influential civilization. Their best known legacy is the world's oldest verified alphabet , whose origin was connected to the Proto-Sinaitic script , and which was transmitted across the Mediterranean and used to develop the Arabic script and Greek alphabet and in turn the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets . The Phoenicians are also credited with innovations in shipbuilding, navigation, industry, agriculture, and government. Their international trade network

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1992-458: 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

2158-581: A failed rebellion against Artaxerxes III , enlisting the help of the Egyptians, who were subsequently drawn into a war with the Persians. The resulting destruction of Sidon led to the resurgence of Tyre, which remained the dominant Phoenician city for two decades until the arrival of Alexander the Great. Phoenicia was one of the first areas to be conquered by Alexander the Great during his military campaigns across western Asia . Alexander's main target in

2324-437: 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

2490-480: A growing number of scholars believe that 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

2656-607: A hundred sites remain to be excavated, while others that have been are yet to be fully analysed. The Middle Bronze Age was a generally peaceful time of increasing population, trade, and prosperity, though there was competition for natural resources. In the Late Bronze Age , rivalry between Egypt, the Mittani, the Hittites, and Assyria had a significant impact on Phoenician cities. The Canaanite culture that gave rise to

2822-553: A major part of Phoenician wealth. The violet-purple dye derived from the hypobranchial gland of the Murex marine snail, once profusely available in coastal waters of the eastern Mediterranean Sea but exploited to local extinction. Phoenicians may have discovered the dye as early as 1750 BC. The Phoenicians established a second production center for the dye in Mogador , in present-day Morocco . The Phoenicians' exclusive command over

2988-661: A population coming from the North, related to ancient Anatolians or ancient South-Eastern Europeans (12–37%). The results show that a Steppe-like ancestry , typically found in Europeans, appears in the region starting from the Iron Age. The Phoenicians served as intermediaries between the disparate civilizations that spanned the Mediterranean and Near East, facilitating the exchange of goods and knowledge, culture, and religious traditions. Their expansive and enduring trade network

3154-680: 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

3320-462: A series of campaigns against neighboring states. The Phoenician city-states fell under his rule, forced to pay heavy tribute in money, goods, and natural resources. Initially, they were not annexed outright—they remained in a state of vassalage, subordinate to the Assyrians but allowed a certain degree of freedom. This changed in 744 BC with the ascension of Tiglath-Pileser III . By 738 BC, most of

3486-777: A shared connection. Doeg the Edomite , for example, is depicted as having no problem in worshiping Yahweh and is shown to be at home in Jewish sanctuaries. Unlike the chief god of the Ammonites ( Milcom ) and the Moabites ( Chemosh ), the Tanakh refrains from explicitly naming the Edomite Qōs. Some scholars have explained this notable omission by assuming that the level of similarity between Yahweh and Qōs would have made rejection of

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3652-476: A similarity Plutarch used to argue that Jews worshipped a hypostasized form of Bacchus–Dionysus. In his Quaestiones Convivales , Plutarch further notes that the Jews hail their god with cries of " Euoi " and " Sabi ", phrases associated with the worship of Dionysus. According to Sean M. McDonough , Greek speakers may have confused Aramaic words such as Sabbath , Alleluia , or even possibly some variant of

3818-450: A variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses , such as El , Asherah , and Baal . In later centuries, El and Yahweh became conflated, and El-linked epithets, such as ʾĒl Šadday ( אֵל שַׁדַּי ‎), came to be applied to Yahweh alone. Some scholars believe that El and Yahweh were always conflated. Characteristics of other deities, such as Asherah and Baal, were also selectively "absorbed" in conceptions of Yahweh. Over time,

3984-543: Is already attested in Mycenaean Greek Linear B from the 2nd millennium BC, as po-ni-ki-jo . In those records, it means 'crimson' or 'palm tree' and does not denote a group of people. The name Phoenicians , like Latin Poenī (adj. poenicus , later pūnicus ), comes from Greek Φοινίκη , Phoiníkē . Poenulus , a Latin comedic play written in the early 2nd century BC, appears to preserve

4150-405: Is believed to have fostered the economic, political, and cultural foundations of Classical Western civilization . Being a society of independent city states, the Phoenicians apparently did not have a term to denote the land of Phoenicia as a whole; instead, demonyms were often derived from the name of the city an individual hailed from (e.g., Sidonian for Sidon , Tyrian for Tyre , etc.) If

4316-472: 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

4482-613: Is credited with laying the foundations of an economically and culturally cohesive Mediterranean, which would be continued by the Greeks and especially the Romans. Phoenician ties with the Greeks ran deep. The earliest verified relationship appears to have begun with the Minoan civilization on Crete (1950–1450 BC), which together with the Mycenaean civilization (1600–1100 BC) is considered

4648-481: 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

4814-556: Is in the Egyptian demonym tꜣ šꜣsw Yhwꜣ , " YHWA (in) the Land of the Shasu " ( Egyptian : 𓇌𓉔𓍯𓄿 Yhwꜣ ) in an inscription from the time of Amenhotep III (1390–1352 BCE), the Shasu being nomads from Midian and Edom in northern Arabia. Although it is still uncertain whether a relationship exists between the toponym yhwꜣ and theonym YHWH , the dominant view is that Yahweh

4980-634: Is mentioned as the ruler of Jerusalem and probably also of Judah. In 587/6 BCE Jerusalem fell to the Neo-Babylonians , Solomon's Temple was destroyed, and the leadership of the community were deported. The next 50 years, the Babylonian exile , were of pivotal importance to the history of Israelite religion. As the traditional sacrifices to Yahweh (see below) could not be performed outside Israel, other practices including sabbath observance and circumcision gained new significance. In

5146-534: Is no record of Persian administrators governing the Phoenician city-states. Local Phoenician kings were allowed to remain in power and given the same rights as Persian satraps (governors), such as hereditary offices and minting their coins. The Phoenicians remained a core asset to the Achaemenid Empire, particularly for their prowess in maritime technology and navigation; they furnished the bulk of

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5312-437: Is regarded as a modern and artificial division. The Phoenicians, known for their prowess in trade, seafaring and navigation, dominated commerce across classical antiquity and developed an expansive maritime trade network lasting over a millennium. This network facilitated cultural exchanges among major cradles of civilization , such as Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. The Phoenicians established colonies and trading posts across

5478-507: Is sometimes described as a "Phoenician renaissance". The Phoenician city-states filled the power vacuum caused by the Late Bronze Age collapse and created a vast mercantile network. The city-states during this time were Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, Aradus, Beirut, and Tripoli. The recovery of the Mediterranean economy can be credited to Phoenician mariners and merchants, who re-established long-distance trade between Egypt and Mesopotamia in

5644-517: Is unknown if the Phoenicians as a whole did so. Yahweh Yahweh was an ancient Levantine deity who was venerated in Israel and Judah . Though no consensus exists regarding his origins, scholars generally contend that he is associated with Seir , Edom , Paran and Teman , and later with Canaan . His worship reaches back to at least the Early Iron Age , and likely to

5810-408: The 9th century BCE , there are indications of rejection of Baal worship associated with the prophets Elijah and Elisha . The Yahweh-religion thus began to separate itself from its Canaanite heritage; this process continued over the period from 800 to 500 BCE with legal and prophetic condemnations of the asherim , sun worship and worship on the high places , along with practices pertaining to

5976-568: The Greek Magical Papyri , under the names Iao , Adonai , Sabaoth , and Eloai . In these texts, he is often mentioned alongside traditional Graeco-Roman deities and Egyptian deities . The archangels Michael , Gabriel , Raphael , and Ouriel and Jewish cultural heroes such as Abraham , Jacob , and Moses are also invoked frequently. The frequent occurrence of Yahweh's name was likely due to Greek and Roman folk magicians seeking to make their spells more powerful through

6142-547: 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

6308-486: The Iron Age without interruption. It is believed that they self-identified as Canaanites and referred to their land as Canaan, indicating a continuous cultural and geographical association. The name Phoenicia is an ancient Greek exonym that did not correspond precisely to a cohesive culture or society as it would have been understood natively. Therefore, the division between Canaanites and Phoenicians around 1200 BC

6474-636: The Late Bronze Age , if not somewhat earlier. While the Israelites held him as their national god , their religion—known as Yahwism , involving the worship of Yahweh among a broader Semitic pantheon —was still essentially polytheistic or, according to some accounts, monolatristic . However, during and after the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BCE, the Israelite religion gradually evolved into Judaism and Samaritanism , which are both strictly monotheistic and thus regard Yahweh as God in

6640-616: 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

6806-564: The Negev and Beersheba , both in the territory of Judah. Shiloh , Bethel , Gilgal , Mizpah , Ramah and Dan were also major sites for festivals, sacrifices, the making of vows , private rituals, and the adjudication of legal disputes. Yahweh-worship was thought to be aniconic , meaning that the god was not depicted by a statue or other image. This is not to say that he was not represented in some symbolic form, and early Israelite worship probably focused on standing stones , but according to

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6972-718: The Neolithic Revolution in the Levant . The Late Bronze Age state of Ugarit is considered quintessentially Canaanite archaeologically, even though the Ugaritic language does not belong to the Canaanite languages proper. The fourth-century BC Greek historian Herodotus claimed that the Phoenicians had migrated from the Erythraean Sea around 2750 BC and the first-century AD geographer Strabo reports

7138-557: The Punic Wars (264–146 BC) before being rebuilt as a Roman city. As mercantile city-states concentrated along a narrow coastal strip of land, the Phoenicians lacked the size and population to support a large military. Thus, as neighboring empires began to rise, the Phoenicians increasingly fell under the sway of foreign rulers, who to varying degrees circumscribed their autonomy. The Assyrian conquest of Phoenicia began with King Shalmaneser III . He rose to power in 858 BC and began

7304-577: 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

7470-684: The Rhone valley and coastal Massalia ". Strabo states that there was a highly lucrative Phoenician trade with Britain for tin via the Cassiterides , whose location is unknown but may have been off the northwest coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Phoenicia lacked considerable natural resources other than its cedar wood. Timber was probably the earliest and most lucrative source of wealth; neither Egypt nor Mesopotamia had adequate wood sources. Unable to rely solely on this limited resource,

7636-647: The creator-god of all the earth is first elaborated by the Second Isaiah , a 6th-century BCE exilic work whose case for the theological doctrine rests on Yahweh's power over other gods, and his incomparability and singleness relative to the gods of the Babylonian religion. Benjamin D. Sommer argues that the distinction between polytheism and monotheism has been greatly exaggerated. The centre of Yahweh's worship lay in three great annual festivals coinciding with major events in rural life: Passover with

7802-504: 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

7968-533: The 10th century BC. Early into the Iron Age , the Phoenicians established ports, warehouses, markets, and settlement all across the Mediterranean and up to the southern Black Sea. Colonies were established on Cyprus , Sardinia , the Balearic Islands , Sicily , and Malta , as well as the coasts of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. Phoenician hacksilver dated to this period bears lead isotope ratios matching ores in Sardinia and Spain, indicating

8134-400: 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

8300-638: The Biblical texts the temple in Jerusalem featured Yahweh's throne in the form of two cherubim , their inner wings forming the seat and a box (the Ark of the Covenant ) as a footstool, while the throne itself was empty. There is no universally accepted explanation for such aniconism , and a number of scholars have argued that Yahweh was in fact represented prior to the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah late in

8466-646: 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

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8632-484: 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

8798-649: 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

8964-432: 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

9130-418: 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

9296-676: The Israelites, and there is no consensus on its etymology, with ehyeh ašer ehyeh (" I Am that I Am "), the explanation presented in Exodus 3:14, appearing to be a late theological gloss invented at a time when the original meaning had been forgotten, although some scholars dispute this. Lewis connects the name to the Amorite element yahwi- ( ia-wi ), found in personal names in Mari texts, meaning "brings to life/causes to exist" (e.g. yahwi-dagan = " Dagon causes to exist"), commonly denoted as

9462-545: 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

9628-426: The Jerusalem temple was always meant to be the central or even sole temple of Yahweh, but this was not the case. The earliest known Israelite place of worship is a 12th-century BCE open-air altar in the hills of Samaria featuring a bronze bull reminiscent of Canaanite Bull-El (El in the form of a bull) and the archaeological remains of further temples have been found at Dan on Israel's northern border, at Arad in

9794-523: 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

9960-695: The Levant since at least the Bronze Age . More specifically, the research of geneticist Chris Tyler-Smith and his team at the Sanger Institute in Britain, who compared "sampled ancient DNA from five Canaanite people who lived 3,750 and 3,650 years ago" to modern people, revealed that 93 percent of the genetic ancestry of people in Lebanon came from the Canaanites (the other 7 percent was of

10126-424: The Levant, including northern Phoenicia, were annexed; only Tyre and Byblos, the most powerful city-states, remained tributary states outside of direct Assyrian control. Tyre, Byblos, and Sidon all rebelled against Assyrian rule. In 721 BC, Sargon II besieged Tyre and crushed the rebellion. His successor Sennacherib suppressed further rebellions across the region. During the seventh century BC, Sidon rebelled and

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10292-571: The Mediterranean. Excavations of colonies in Spain suggest they also used the potter's wheel . Their exposure to a wide variety of cultures allowed them to manufacture goods for specific markets. The Iliad suggests Phoenician clothing and metal goods were highly prized by the Greeks. Specialized goods were designed specifically for wealthier clientele, including ivory reliefs and plaques, carved clam shells, sculpted amber, and finely detailed and painted ostrich eggs. The most prized Phoenician goods were fabrics dyed with Tyrian purple , which formed

10458-584: The Mediterranean; Carthage , a settlement in northwest Africa, became a major civilization in its own right in the seventh century BC. The Phoenicians were organized in city-states , similar to those of ancient Greece , of which the most notable were Tyre , Sidon , and Byblos . Each city-state was politically independent, and there is no evidence the Phoenicians viewed themselves as a single nationality. While most city-states were governed by some form of kingship , merchant families probably exercised influence through oligarchies . After reaching its zenith in

10624-405: The Midianites/Kenites) inside Israel and through their association with the earliest political leaders of Israel. Christian Frevel argues that inscriptions allegedly suggesting Yahweh's southern origins (e.g. "YHWH of Teman") may simply denote his presence there at later times, and that Teman can refer to any southern territory, including Judah. Alternatively, some scholars argue that YHWH worship

10790-499: The Near East, the Phoenicians apparently made the pragmatic calculation of "[yielding] themselves to the Persians". Most of the Levant was consolidated by Cyrus into a single satrapy (province) and forced to pay a yearly tribute of 350 talents , which was roughly half the tribute that was required of Egypt and Libya. The Phoenician area was later divided into four vassal kingdoms—Sidon, Tyre, Arwad, and Byblos—which were allowed considerable autonomy. Unlike in other empire areas, there

10956-516: The Persian Levant was Tyre, now the region's largest and most important city. It capitulated after a roughly seven month siege , during which many of its citizens fled to Carthage. Tyre's refusal to allow Alexander to visit its temple to Melqart , culminating in the killing of his envoys, led to a brutal reprisal: 2,000 of its leading citizens were crucified and a puppet ruler was installed. The rest of Phoenicia easily came under his control, with Sidon surrendering peacefully. Alexander's empire had

11122-442: The Persian fleet during the Greco-Persian Wars of the late fifth century BC. Phoenicians under Xerxes I built the Xerxes Canal and the pontoon bridges that allowed his forces to cross into mainland Greece. Nevertheless, they were harshly punished by the Persian King following his defeat at the Battle of Salamis , which he blamed on Phoenician cowardice and incompetence. In the mid-fourth century BC, King Tennes of Sidon led

11288-411: The Phoenician cities were mainly self-governed. Many of them were fought for or over by the warring factions of the Seleucid royal family. Some Phoenician regions were under Jewish influence, after the Jews revolted and succeeded in defeating the Seleucids in 164 BC. A significant portion of the Phoenician diaspora in North Africa thus converted to Judaism in the late millennium BC. The Seleucid Kingdom

11454-472: 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

11620-416: The Phoenicians apparently developed in situ from the earlier Ghassulian chalcolithic culture. Ghassulian itself developed from the Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex , which in turn developed from a fusion of their ancestral Natufian and Harifian cultures with Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) farming cultures, practicing the domestication of animals during the 8.2 kiloyear event , which led to

11786-504: The Phoenicians developed an industrial base manufacturing a variety of goods for both everyday and luxury use. The Phoenicians developed or mastered techniques such as glass-making , engraved and chased metalwork (including bronze, iron, and gold), ivory carving, and woodwork. The Phoenicians were early pioneers in mass production, and sold a variety of items in bulk. They became the leading source of glassware in antiquity, shipping thousands of flasks, beads, and other glass objects across

11952-463: 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

12118-475: The Phoenicians had an endonym to denote the land overall, some scholars believe that they would have used " Canaan " and therefore referred to themselves as "Canaanites". Krahmalkov reconstructs the Honeyman inscription (dated to c.  900 BC by William F. Albright ) as containing a reference to the Phoenician homeland, calling it Pūt ( Phoenician : 𐤐𐤕). Obelisks at Karnak contain references to

12284-637: The Second Temple period, speaking the name of Yahweh in public became regarded as taboo . When reading from the scriptures, Jews began to substitute the divine name with the word adonai (אֲדֹנָי‬), meaning " my Lord ". The High Priest of Israel was permitted to speak the name once in the Temple during the Day of Atonement , but at no other time and in no other place. During the Hellenistic period ,

12450-493: 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

12616-579: The absence of Yahweh from Canaan, his links with Edom and Midian in the biblical stories, and the Kenite or Midianite ties of Moses , but its major weaknesses are that the majority of Israelites were firmly rooted in Palestine , while the historical role of Moses is problematic. It follows that if the Kenite hypothesis is to be maintained, then it must be assumed that the Israelites encountered Yahweh (and

12782-407: 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

12948-486: The area of modern Lebanon. In a 2020 study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics , researchers have shown that there is substantial genetic continuity in Lebanon since the Bronze Age interrupted by three significant admixture events during the Iron Age , Hellenistic , and Ottoman period. In particular, the Phoenicians can be modeled as a mixture of the local Bronze Age population (63–88%) and

13114-597: The biblical narrative of an Israel vacillating between periods of "following other gods" and periods of fidelity to Yahweh. Some scholars date the start of widespread monotheism to the 8th century BC E, and view it as a response to Neo-Assyrian aggression. In an inscription discovered in Ein Gedi and dated around 700 BCE, Yahweh appears described as the lord of "the nations", while in other contemporary texts discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei (near Lachish) he

13280-528: The birthing of lambs , Shavuot with the cereal harvest , and Sukkot with the fruit harvest. These probably pre-dated the arrival of the Yahweh religion, but they became linked to events in the national mythos of Israel: Passover with the exodus from Egypt, Shavuot with the law-giving at Mount Sinai , and Sukkot with the wilderness wanderings. The festivals thus celebrated Yahweh's salvation of Israel and Israel's status as his holy people, although

13446-617: The city they hailed from (e.g., Sidonian for Sidon , Tyrian for Tyre , etc.) A 2008 study led by Pierre Zalloua found that six subclades of Haplogroup J-M172 (J2)—thought to have originated between the Caucasus Mountains , Mesopotamia and the Levant —were of a "Phoenician signature" and present amongst the male populations of coastal Lebanon as well as the wider Levant (the "Phoenician Periphery"), followed by other areas of historic Phoenician settlement, spanning Cyprus through to Morocco. This deliberate sequential sampling

13612-415: The conclusion that infant sacrifice , whether to the underworld deity Molech or to Yahweh himself, was a part of Israelite/Judahite religion until the reforms of King Josiah in the late 7th century BCE. Sacrifice was presumably complemented by the singing or recital of psalms , but again the details are scant. Prayer played little role in official worship. The Hebrew Bible gives the impression that

13778-530: The construction of the Temple in 957 BCE to its destruction in 586 BCE, exilic for the period of the Exile from 586 to 539 BCE (identical with Neo-Babylonian above), post-Exilic for later periods and Second Temple period from the reconstruction of the Temple in 515 BCE until its destruction in 70 CE. There is almost no agreement on Yahweh's origins. His name is not attested other than among

13944-505: The core of their culture stretching from Arwad in modern Syria to Mount Carmel . The Phoenicians extended their cultural influence through trade and colonization throughout the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to the Iberian Peninsula . The Phoenicians directly succeeded the Bronze Age Canaanites , continuing their cultural traditions following the decline of most major cultures in the Late Bronze Age collapse and into

14110-535: The dead and other aspects of the old religion. Features of Baal, El, and Asherah were absorbed into Yahweh, and epithets such as El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone. In this atmosphere a struggle emerged between those who believed that Yahweh alone should be worshipped, and those who worshipped him within a larger group of gods; the Yahweh-alone party, the party of the prophets and Deuteronomists , ultimately triumphed, and their victory lies behind

14276-410: 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

14442-513: The designs, ornamentation, and embroidery used in Phoenician textiles were well-regarded, the techniques and specific descriptions are unknown. Mining operations in the Phoenician homeland were limited; iron was the only metal of any worth. The first large-scale mining operations probably occurred in Cyprus, principally for copper. Sardinia may have been colonized almost exclusively for its mineral resources; Phoenician settlements were concentrated in

14608-460: The earlier agricultural meaning was not entirely lost. His worship presumably involved sacrifice, but many scholars have concluded that the rituals detailed in Leviticus 1–16, with their stress on purity and atonement , were introduced only after the Babylonian exile , and that in reality any head of a family was able to offer sacrifice as occasion demanded. A number of scholars have also drawn

14774-460: The earliest Biblical literature, Yahweh has characteristics of a storm god typical of ancient Near Eastern myths, marching out from Edom or the Sinai desert with the heavenly host of stars and planets that make up his army to do battle with the enemies of his people Israel: Yahweh, when you went out of Seir,     when you marched out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled,

14940-727: The early Persian period. They saw the messiah in Zerubbabel , a descendant of the House of David who seemed, briefly, to be about to re-establish the ancient royal line, or in Zerubbabel and the first High Priest, Joshua (Zechariah writes of two messiahs, one royal and the other priestly). These early hopes were dashed (Zerubabbel disappeared from the historical record, although the High Priests continued to be descended from Joshua), and thereafter there are merely general references to

15106-674: 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

15272-471: The existence of other deities was denied outright, and Yahweh was proclaimed the creator deity and the sole divinity to be worthy of worship. During the Second Temple period , openly speaking the name of Yahweh in public became regarded as a religious taboo, and Jews instead began to substitute other Hebrew words , primarily ăḏōnāy ( אֲדֹנָי‬ ‎, lit.   ' My Lords ' ). By

15438-452: The extent of Phoenician trade networks. By the tenth century BC, Tyre rose to become the richest and most powerful Phoenician city-state, particularly during the reign of Hiram I ( c.  969–936 BC). The expertise of Phoenician artisans sent by Hiram I of Tyre in significant construction projects during the reign of Solomon , the King of Israel, is documented in the Bible. During

15604-464: 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

15770-640: The gods of a subjected people, some have assumed the coin simply depicts the surrender of a Judean who was called "Bacchius", sometimes identified as the Hasmonean king Aristobulus II , who was overthrown by Pompey's campaign. In any event, Tacitus , John the Lydian , Cornelius Labeo , and Marcus Terentius Varro similarly identify Yahweh with Bacchus–Dionysus. Jews themselves frequently used symbols that were also associated with Dionysus such as kylixes , amphorae , leaves of ivy , and clusters of grapes ,

15936-434: The height of Phoenician shipping, mercantile, and cultural activity, particularly between 750 and 650 BC. The Phoenician influence was visible in the "orientalization" of Greek cultural and artistic conventions. Among their most popular goods were fine textiles, typically dyed with Tyrian purple . Homer's Iliad , which was composed during this period, references the quality of Phoenician clothing and metal goods. Carthage

16102-462: 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

16268-682: The interior (via the Nahr al-Kabir and the Orontes rivers ). The cities provided Egypt with access to Mesopotamian trade and abundant stocks of the region's native cedarwood . There was no equivalent in the Egyptian homeland. By the mid-14th century BC, the Phoenician city-states were considered "favored cities" to the Egyptians. Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, and Byblos were regarded as the most important. The Phoenicians had considerable autonomy, and their cities were reasonably well developed and prosperous. Byblos

16434-581: The invocation of a prestigious foreign deity. A coin issued by Pompey to celebrate his successful conquest of Judaea showed a kneeling, bearded figure grasping a branch (a common Roman symbol of submission) subtitled BACCHIVS IVDAEVS , which may be translated as either "The Jewish Bacchus " or "Bacchus the Judaean". The figure has been interpreted as depicting Yahweh as a local variety of Bacchus, that is, Dionysus . However, as coins minted with such iconography ordinarily depicted subjected persons, and not

16600-496: The large terracotta jars used for transporting wine. From Egypt, the Phoenicians bought Nubian gold. From elsewhere, they obtained other materials, perhaps the most crucial being silver , mostly from Sardinia and the Iberian Peninsula . Tin for making bronze "may have been acquired from Galicia by way of the Atlantic coast of southern Spain; alternatively, it may have come from northern Europe ( Cornwall or Brittany ) via

16766-567: 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

16932-465: The latter difficult. Other scholars hold that Yahweh and Qōs were different deities from their origins, and suggest that the tensions between Judeans and Edomites during the Second Temple period may lie behind the omission of Qōs in the Bible. It has been argued that Yahweh was originally described as one of the sons of El in Deuteronomy 32:8–9 , and that this was removed by a later emendation to

17098-481: The life of a newborn child rather than the universe. This conception of God was more popular among ancient Near Easterners but eventually, the Israelites removed the association of yahwi- to any human ancestor and combined it with other elements (e.g. Yahweh ṣəḇāʾōṯ ). Hillel Ben-Sasson states there is insufficient evidence for Amorites using yahwi- for gods, but he argues that it mirrors other theophoric names and that yahwi- , or more accurately yawi , derives from

17264-512: 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

17430-478: The monarchic period: to quote one study, "[a]n early aniconism, de facto or otherwise, is purely a projection of the post-exilic imagination". Other scholars argue that there is no certain evidence of any anthropomorphic representation of Yahweh during the pre-exilic period. Yahweh is frequently invoked in Graeco-Roman magical texts dating from the 2nd century BCE to the 5th century CE, most notably in

17596-409: 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

17762-401: 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,

17928-479: 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

18094-480: The national god. Yahweh filled the role of national god in the kingdom of Israel (Samaria) , which emerged in the 10th century BCE; and also in Judah , which may have emerged a century later (no "God of Judah" is mentioned anywhere in the Bible). During the reign of Ahab , and particularly following his marriage to Jezebel , Baal may have briefly replaced Yahweh as the national god of Israel (but not Judah). In

18260-475: The ninth century BC, the Phoenician civilization in the eastern Mediterranean gradually declined due to external influences and conquests. Yet, their presence persisted in the central and western Mediterranean until the destruction of Carthage in the mid-second century BC. The Phoenicians were long considered a lost civilization due to the lack of indigenous written records, and only since the mid-20th century have historians and archaeologists been able to reveal

18426-572: The north. Egypt subsequently lost its coastal holdings from Ugarit in northern Syria to Byblos near central Lebanon. Sometime between 1200 and 1150 BC, the Late Bronze Age collapse severely weakened or destroyed most civilizations in the region, including the Egyptians and Hittites. The Phoenicians were able to survive and navigate the challenges of the crisis, and by 1230 BC city-states such as Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos, maintained political independence, asserted their maritime interests through overseas colonization, and enjoyed economic prosperity. The period

18592-400: 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

18758-399: 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

18924-401: 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

19090-444: The principal deity to whom "one owed the powers of blessing the land" appear in the teachings of the prophet Elijah in the 9th century BCE. This form of worship was likely well established by the time of the prophet Hosea in the 8th century BCE, in reference to disputes between Yahweh and Baal. The early supporters of this faction are widely regarded as being monolatrists rather than true monotheists ; they did not believe Yahweh

19256-411: The production and trade of the dye, combined with the labor-intensive extraction process, made it very expensive. Tyrian purple subsequently became associated with the upper classes. It soon became a status symbol in several civilizations, most notably among the Romans. Assyrian tribute records from the Phoenicians include "garments of brightly colored stuff" that most likely included Tyrian purple. While

19422-562: The progenitor of classical Greece. Archaeological research suggests that the Minoans gradually imported Near Eastern goods, artistic styles, and customs from other cultures via the Phoenicians. To Egypt the Phoenicians sold logs of cedar for significant sums, and wine beginning in the eighth century. The wine trade with Egypt is vividly documented by shipwrecks discovered in 1997 in the open sea 50 kilometres (30 mi) west of Ascalon , Israel. Pottery kilns at Tyre and Sarepta produced

19588-586: The rare U5b2c1 maternal haplogroup was identified in the DNA of a 2,500-year-old male skeleton excavated from a Punic tomb in Tunisia. The lineage of this "Young Man of Byrsa" is believed to represent early gene flow from Iberia to the Maghreb . According to a 2017 study published by the American Journal of Human Genetics , present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite -related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in

19754-413: 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 the bloody rite

19920-561: The region in the 8th millennium BC". Brian R. Doak states that scholars use "Phoenicians" as a short-hand for "Canaanites living in a set of cities along the northern Levantine coast who shared a language and material culture in the Iron I–II period and who also developed an organized system of colonies in the western Mediterranean world". The Phoenician Early Bronze Age is largely unknown. The two most important sites are Byblos and Sidon-Dakerman (near Sidon), although, as of 2021, well over

20086-495: The region, and recent genetic research indicates that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population. The first known account of the Phoenicians relates to the conquests of Pharaoh Thutmose III (1479–1425 BC). The Egyptians targeted coastal cities which they wrote belonged to the Fenekhu , 'carpenters', such as Byblos, Arwad, and Ullasa for their crucial geographic and commercial links with

20252-503: The reigns of the first Babylonian King, Nabopolassar (626–605 BC), and his son Nebuchadnezzar II ( c.  605 – c.  562 BC). In 587 BC Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre, which resisted for thirteen years, but ultimately capitulated under "favorable terms". In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great , king and founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire , took Babylon. As Cyrus began consolidating territories across

20418-449: 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

20584-442: The root hwy in pa'al, which means "he will be". One scholarly theory is that "Yahweh" originated in a shortened form of ˀel ḏū yahwī ṣabaˀôt , "El who creates the hosts", which Cross considered to be one of the cultic names of El. However, this phrase is nowhere attested either inside or outside the Bible, and the two gods are in any case quite dissimilar, with El being elderly and paternal and lacking Yahweh's association with

20750-518: The rule of the priest Ithobaal (887–856 BC), Tyre expanded its territory as far north as Beirut and into part of Cyprus; this unusual act of aggression was the closest the Phoenicians ever came to forming a unitary territorial state. Once his realm reached its largest territorial extent, Ithobaal declared himself "King of the Sidonians", a title that would be used by his successors and mentioned in both Greek and Jewish accounts. The Late Iron Age saw

20916-518: 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

21082-404: 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

21248-576: The same deity in the text, based on contextual analysis. The late Iron Age saw the emergence of nation states associated with specific national gods : Chemosh was the god of the Moabites, Milcom the god of the Ammonites, Qōs the god of the Edomites, and Yahweh the god of the Israelites. In each kingdom the king was also the head of the national religion and thus the viceroy on Earth of

21414-413: 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

21580-466: The scriptures were translated into Greek by the Jews of the Egyptian diaspora . Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures render both the tetragrammaton and adonai as kyrios (κύριος), meaning "Lord". The period of Persian rule saw the development of expectation in a future human king who would rule purified Israel as Yahweh's representative at the end of time —a messiah . The first to mention this were Haggai and Zechariah , both prophets of

21746-577: 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

21912-510: 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

22078-525: The semantic equivalent of the Akkadian ibašši- DN; though Frank Moore Cross emphasized that the Amorite verbal form is of interest only in attempting to reconstruct the verbal root of the name "Yahweh", and that attempts to take yahwi- as a divine epithet should be "vigorously" argued against. In addition, J. Philip Hyatt believes it is more likely that yahwi- refers to a god creating and sustaining

22244-439: 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

22410-436: 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

22576-542: The singular sense—that is, as the supreme being of the universe and without any equals. In the oldest examples of biblical literature , Yahweh possesses attributes that were typically ascribed to deities of weather and war , fructifying the Land of Israel and leading a heavenly army against the nation's enemies. The early Israelites may have leaned towards polytheistic practices that were otherwise common across ancient Semitic religion , as their worship apparently included

22742-532: The sky also dropped.     Yes, the clouds dropped water. The mountains quaked at Yahweh's presence,     even Sinai at the presence of Yahweh, the God of Israel. ... From the sky the stars fought.     From their courses, they fought against Sisera . ( Book of Judges 5:4–5, 20, WEB World English Bible , the Song of Deborah .) Alternatively, parts of

22908-572: The southern parts of the island, close to sources of copper and lead. Piles of scoria and copper ingots, which appear to predate Roman occupation, suggest the Phoenicians mined and processed metals on the island. The Iberian Peninsula was the richest source of numerous metals in antiquity, including gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, and lead. The significant output of these metals during the Phoenician and Carthaginian occupation strongly implied large scale mining operations. The Carthaginians are documented to have relied on slave labor for mining, though it

23074-433: The storm and battles. Even if the above issues are resolved, Yahweh is generally agreed to have a non-causative etymology because otherwise, YHWH would be translated as YHYH. It also raises the question of why the Israelites would want to shorten the epithet. One possible reason includes the co-existence of religious modernism and conservatism being the norm in all religions. The oldest plausible occurrence of Yahweh's name

23240-460: The storm god imagery could derive from Baal. From the perspective of the Kenite hypothesis , it has also been suggested that the Edomite deity Qōs might have been one and the same as Yahweh, rather than a separate deity, with its name a title of the latter. Aside from their common territorial origins, various common characteristics between the Yahwist cult and the Edomite cult of Qōs hint at

23406-402: 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

23572-513: The term. Rabbinic sources suggest that, by the Second Temple period , the name of God was officially pronounced only once a year, by the High Priest , on the Day of Atonement . After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE , the original pronunciation of the name was forgotten entirely. Philip King and Lawrence Stager place the history of Yahweh into the following periods: Other academic terms often used include First Temple period, from

23738-573: The text: When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,  when he divided up humankind, he set the boundaries of the peoples,  according to the number of the heavenly assembly. For the Lord's allotment is his people,   Jacob is his special possession. ( Book of Deuteronomy 32:8-9, New English Translation , Song of Moses ) Nonetheless, some scholars argue that El Elyon ("the Most High") and Yahweh are theonyms for

23904-603: The time of the Jewish–Roman wars —namely following the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the concomitant destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE—the original pronunciation of Yahweh's name was forgotten entirely. Additionally, Yahweh is invoked in the Aramaic -language Papyrus Amherst 63 from ancient Egypt , and also in Jewish or Jewish-influenced Greco-Egyptian magical texts from the 1st to 5th centuries CE. The god's name

24070-444: The tophet ritual by some scholars. It is possible that the practice was more frequent in the earlier years of the city. Phoenicia The Phoenicians were an ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean , primarily modern Lebanon . They developed a maritime civilization which expanded and contracted throughout history, with

24236-484: 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

24402-403: 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

24568-512: 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

24734-408: 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

24900-464: The writing of second Isaiah , Yahweh was no longer seen as exclusive to Israel, but as extending his promise to all who would keep the sabbath and observe his covenant. In 539 BCE Babylon in turn fell to the Persian conqueror Cyrus the Great , the exiles were given permission to return (although only a minority did so), and by about 500 BCE the Second Temple was built. Towards the end of

25066-578: Was 1200 BC to the end of the Persian period (332 BC). It is debated whether Phoenicians were actually distinct from the broader group of Semitic-speaking peoples known as Canaanites . Historian Robert Drews believes the term "Canaanites" corresponds to the ethnic group referred to as "Phoenicians" by the ancient Greeks; archaeologist Jonathan N. Tubb argues that " Ammonites , Moabites , Israelites , and Phoenicians undoubtedly achieved their own cultural identities, and yet ethnically they were all Canaanites", "the same people who settled in farming villages in

25232-527: Was an attempt to develop a methodology to link the documented historical expansion of a population with a particular geographic genetic pattern or patterns. The researchers suggested that the proposed genetic signature stemmed from "a common source of related lineages rooted in Lebanon ". Another study in 2006 found evidence for the genetic persistence of Phoenicians in the Spanish island of Ibiza . In 2016,

25398-491: Was delivering goods to Tyre. The adaptation to Macedonian rule was probably aided by the Phoenicians' historical ties with the Greeks, with whom they shared some mythological stories and figures; the two peoples were even sometimes considered "relatives". When Alexander's empire collapsed after his death in 323 BC, the Phoenicians came under the control of the largest of its successors, the Seleucids . The Phoenician homeland

25564-589: Was destroyed by Esarhaddon , who enslaved its inhabitants and built a new city on its ruins. By the end of the century, the Assyrians had been weakened by successive revolts, which led to their destruction by the Median Empire . The Babylonians, formerly vassals of the Assyrians, took advantage of the empire's collapse and rebelled, quickly establishing the Neo-Babylonian Empire in its place. Phoenician cities revolted several times throughout

25730-468: Was founded by Phoenicians coming from Tyre, probably initially as a station in the metal trade with the southern Iberian Peninsula . The city's name in Punic , Qart-Ḥadašt ( 𐤒𐤓𐤕 𐤇𐤃𐤔𐤕 ‎) , means 'New City'. There is a tradition in some ancient sources, such as Philistos of Syracuse , for an "early" foundation date of around 1215 BC—before the fall of Troy in 1180 BC. However, Timaeus ,

25896-448: Was from the southern region associated with Seir , Edom, Paran and Teman . There is considerable although not universal support for this view, but it raises the question of how Yahweh made his way to the north. An answer many scholars consider plausible is the Kenite hypothesis , which holds that traders brought Yahweh to Israel along the caravan routes between Egypt and Canaan . This ties together various points of data, such as

26062-544: Was no distinction in language or material culture between Canaanites and Israelites. Scholars accordingly define Israelite culture as a subset of Canaanite culture. In this view, the Israelite religion consisted of Canaanite gods such as El, the ruler of the pantheon , Asherah , his consort, and Baal . However, Israel Knohl argues that there is no evidence of any anthropomorphic figurines or cultic statues in Israel during this period, suggesting monotheistic practice. In

26228-551: Was no organized Hellenization in Phoenicia, and with one or two minor exceptions, all Phoenician city-states retained their native names, while Greek settlement and administration appear to have been very limited. The Phoenicians maintained cultural and commercial links with their western counterparts. Polybius recounts how the Seleucid King Demetrius I escaped from Rome by boarding a Carthaginian ship that

26394-549: Was repeatedly contested by the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt during the forty-year Syrian Wars , coming under Ptolemaic rule in the third century BC. The Seleucids reclaimed the area the following century, holding it until the mid-first 2nd century BC. Under their rule, the Phoenicians were allowed a considerable degree of autonomy and self-governance. During the Seleucid Dynastic Wars (157–63 BC),

26560-691: Was rooted in the indigenous culture of the Kingdom of Israel and was promoted in the Kingdom of Judah by the Omrides . Frevel suggests that Hazael 's conquests in the Kingdom of Israel forced the two kingdoms to cooperate, which spread YHWH worship among Judean commoners. Previously, YHWH was viewed as the patron god of the Judean state . In the Early Iron Age, the modern consensus is that there

26726-550: 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

26892-529: Was seized by Tigranes the Great of Armenia in 82 BC, ending the Hellenistic influence on the Levant. The people now known as Phoenicians were a group of ancient Semitic-speaking peoples that emerged in the Levant in at least the third millennium BC. Phoenicians did not refer themselves as "Phoenicians" but rather are thought to have broadly referred to themselves as "Kenaʿani", meaning ' Canaanites '. Phoenicians specifically identified themselves with

27058-473: 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

27224-442: Was the leading city; it was a center for bronze-making and the primary terminus of precious goods such as tin and lapis lazuli from as far east as Afghanistan . Sidon and Tyre also commanded interest among Egyptian officials, beginning a pattern of rivalry that would span the next millennium. The Amarna letters report that from 1350 to 1300 BC, neighboring Amorites and Hittites were capturing Phoenician cities, especially in

27390-412: Was the only god in existence, but instead believed that he was the only god which the people of Israel should worship. Finally, in the national crisis of the Babylonian exile , the followers of Yahweh went a step further and outright denied that the other deities aside from Yahweh even existed, thus marking the transition from monolatrism to true monotheism. The notion that Yahweh is to be worshipped as

27556-532: Was written in paleo-Hebrew as 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 ( יהוה ‎ in block script ), transliterated as YHWH ; modern scholarship has reached consensus to transcribe this as "Yahweh". The shortened forms Yeho -, Yahu -, Yah - and Yo - appear in personal names and in phrases such as " Hallelu jah !" The sacrality of the name, as well as the Commandment against " taking the name 'in vain'  ", led to increasingly strict prohibitions on speaking or writing

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