Phoenicians & Carthaginians
Phoenicians hailed from modern day Lebanon and the Carthaginians had their HQ where Tunisia now sits. According to Greek and Roman sources they used to do a bit of infant sacrificing for the pleasure of their god Moloch. What kind of a god gets off on watching babies being killed? Anyway, it sort of makes sense from a weird perspective. If killing a human is the highest form of offering, what type of human is most valued? – Babies. So you can see their twisted logic that a baby will bring the gods more pleasure than the death of a weak elderly person, a dispensable wench or a dirty, sinful criminal.
In one cemetery in Tophet they found the bodies of 20,000 infants in urns, so sacrifice was being carried out on an industrial scale. This is what a bloke at the time called Diodorus Siculus said about their methods:
“There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire.”
Other sources say that babies were roasted to death on a heated bronze statue which is no more pleasant. Having said all that, modern archaeologists are still debating whether the children were dead before they were offered up, or whether the huge number of infant graves were just due to high infant mortality. The jury is still out concerning the details but it’s all rather unsavoury either way.
☛ Next: Tribes #1: The Mysterious And Violent Warrior Tribe Of North Sentinel Island
