Thursday, February 18, 2010

On Punic Child Sacrifice

A study has been released claiming to debunk the millennia-old belief that the citizens of ancient Carthage regularly sacrificed their children to their god Baal (a version of the Canaanite deity mentioned in the Bible). This has biblical significance because the Old Testament is one of the ancient sources used to connect the discovery of burial urns with cremated infant remains with the Canaanite practice of child sacrifice. [Aside: Carthage is in North Africa. What does that have to do with the biblical world? Carthage was a Phoenician colony. The Phoenicians were nearby Canaanite neighbors of the Israelites based mainly in the Tyre and Sidon area.]

The article is, in my opinion, scientifically objective and their conclusions make sense. For those of you concerned about the integrity of the Bible as a historical document, their study leaves open the possibility that some of the burial urns were from live child sacrifice. This is the practice chronicled by the Bible and other ancient sources. If you read closely, you'll notice their evidence accounts for 20-50% of the cremated infants being stillborn, miscarriages, or deaths within the first two weeks after birth A high rate of infant mortality was not uncommon in the ancient world.
Researchers examined 348 burial urns to learn that about a fifth of the children were prenatal at death, indicating that young Carthaginian children were cremated and interred in ceremonial urns regardless of cause of death. [...] "The idea of regular infant sacrifice in Carthage is not based on a study of the cremated remains, but on instances of human sacrifice reported by a few ancient chroniclers, inferred from ambiguous Carthaginian inscriptions, and referenced in the Old Testament. Our results show that some children were sacrificed, but they contradict the conclusion that Carthaginians were a brutal bunch who regularly sacrificed their own children." [Jeffrey Schwartz] 

 Via Agade
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5 comments:

  1. JoshFebruary 18, 2010 at 11:15 AM

    Douglas Mangum: "...claiming to debunk the millennia-old belief that the citizens of ancient Carthage regularly sacrificed their children..."

    Study: "Our results show that some children were sacrificed, but they contradict the conclusion that Carthaginians were a brutal bunch..."

    Do you mean debunking regular sacrifice, as opposed to frequent sacrifice, or something like that? Because from that paragraph it doesn't sound like the study is debunking Carthaginian child sacrifice.

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  2. Douglas MangumFebruary 18, 2010 at 1:50 PM

    Josh, the article is claiming more than the study proves. I don't think it's debunked anything.

    Headline: Pitt-led study debunks millennia-old claims of systematic infant sacrifice in ancient Carthage

    Opening paragraph: A study led by University of Pittsburgh researchers could finally lay to rest the millennia-old conjecture that the ancient empire of Carthage regularly sacrificed its youngest citizens. An examination of the remains of Carthaginian children revealed that most infants perished prenatally or very shortly after birth and were unlikely to have lived long enough to be sacrificed, according to a Feb. 17 report in PLoS ONE. [emphasis added]

    Evidence: 20% of children died prenatally. The others died before the age of 5 months. Nothing indicated in the story that they knew whether that 80% were sacrificed or not. It's possible with the high rate of infant mortality in the ancient world that some died of natural causes.

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  3. Seth SandersFebruary 19, 2010 at 6:39 AM

    As you say, claims outweigh proof here. The worst thing about the article, though not surprising, is that a similar conclusion was reached by major European scholars of Punic culture over 20 years ago (articles by Ribicini, Moscati, and Teixidor et al. all presented in 1987). Schwartz already published on this in 1993, and as Josh says, his new work doesn't disprove child sacrifice, just casts doubt on regular, systematic child sacrifice.

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  4. Douglas MangumFebruary 19, 2010 at 6:52 AM

    Thanks for the additional background, Seth.

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  5. Seth againFebruary 19, 2010 at 10:23 AM

    Oh yeah, and I just talked to someone associated with ASOR, who said that Schwartz's study is based on the ASOR Punic Project bone data, but that his interpretations are ideosyncratic.

    He apparently claims he can tell an infant's sex and viability from looking at cremated remains, which many others doubt. Other experts who've looked at the same data have read it quite differently.

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