Tophet Salambo, Carthage Image: GIRAUD Patrick (Wikimedia, used under a CC BY-SA 3.0)
Posted on 01/23/2014 5:51:08 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Just as ancient Greek and Roman propagandists insisted, the Carthaginians did kill their own infant children, burying them with sacrificed animals and ritual inscriptions in special cemeteries to give thanks for favours from the gods, according to a new study. “This is something dismissed as black propaganda because in modern times people just didn’t want to believe it,” said Josephine Quinn, a lecturer in ancient history at Oxford, who is behind the study, with international colleagues, of one of the most bitterly debated questions in classical archaeology.
“But when you pull together all the evidence – archaeological, epigraphic and literary – it is overwhelming and, we believe, conclusive: they did kill their children, and on the evidence of the inscriptions, not just as an offering for future favours but fulfilling a promise that had already been made...
“The inscriptions are unequivocal: time and again we find the explanation that the gods ‘heard my voice and blessed me’. It cannot be that so many children conveniently happened to die at just the right time to become an offering – and in any case a poorly or dead child would make a pretty feeble offering if you’re already worried about the gods rejecting it.”
“Then there is the fact that the animals from the sites, which were beyond question sacrificial offerings, are buried in exactly the same way, sometimes in the same urns with the bones of the children.”
(Excerpt) Read more at pasthorizonspr.com ...
Tophet Salambo, Carthage Image: GIRAUD Patrick (Wikimedia, used under a CC BY-SA 3.0)
A lot of ancient societies were brutal, look at Sparta for crying out loud!
/johnny
The Greeks and Romans were likely as brutal.
Don’t want a kid? Just “expose it” by abandoning it to die or be picked up and purposely crippled or worse.
So do DEMOCRATS...
OK...but how do we know that they didn’t just develop a belief that when a child dies, it means that the gods have taken him in exchange for some favor or blessing? Perhaps a favor that the parent hasn’t even requested?
Then it would, or at least might, be natural for the parent to deal with the child as if he were a sacrifice. Or at least richer parents who can afford to do so.
I am....not convinced.
Carthaginians were Phoenicians but a colony.
"It was here.....The Carthaginians defending the city were attacked by three Roman legions. The Carthaginians were proud and brave but they couldn't hold. They were massacred. Arab women stripped them of their tunics and their swords and lances. The soldiers lay naked in the sun...........Two thousand years ago. I was here."
The Greeks and Romans were very clear that the Carthaginians put children into the fire. At one point, Carthage suffered a set-back. The ruling class blamed itself — it seems they had principally been sacrificing “low-born” children. This (obviously) had displeased the gods. To make amends, the “best families” immediately sacrificed 300 of their own children.
There was a miniseries on Troy where the invading King sacrificed his own young daughter on an altar in front of his troops, for good fortune in battle.
This is news? I thought this had been researched years ago, demonstrating with physical evidence what contemporaneous writers recorded.
OK...but...the Romans also believed that early Christians killed babies....and ate them...
Our society sacrifices children to rap music.
According to Homer and other writers, Agamemnon king of Mycenae sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to ensure favorable winds for the Greek armada sailing to the siege of Troy. It didn’t end well for him.
Carthago Delenda Est.
And the Greeks? Also wrong about Carthage?
And the Hebrews? Wrong about Phoenicians?
And the archaeologists? Also wrong?
I read this, very interesting.
That was an incredible scene, and true to life. Patton really believed that about himself. He was a nut, but a freak-genius-of-war nut.
There is a mentality in certain circles that if a society produces anything of artistic merit then they are a sweet gentle loving society with flowers in their hair and probably vegan.
I am not exactly sure why they believe this but they do.
So they have to have the obvious shown to them again and again because they never really believe it.
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