It’s not just ancient Roman propaganda: Carthaginians really did sacrifice children
It’s not just ancient Roman propaganda: Carthaginians really did sacrifice children
By Maev Kennedy, The Guardian
Tuesday, January 21, 2014 16:03 EST
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.
“This was not a common event, and it must have been among an elite because cremation was very expensive, and so was the ritual of burial. It may even have been seen as a philanthropic act for the good of the whole community.”
More:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/21/its-not-just-ancient-roman-propaganda-carthaginians-really-did-sacrifice-children/
