Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
1–10 of 255 posts
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#2Turns out that Cato the Censor was right.
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#3I am surprised this is a big deal, I thought it was well accepted. (Other) Phoenicians did it, Romans practised human (not sure about child) sacrifice and I thought the Carthaginians themselves recorded doing it?
Humans are pretty crazy and we shouldn't pretend otherwise...
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#4I am surprised this is a big deal, I thought it was well accepted. (Other) Phoenicians did it, Romans practised human (not sure about child) sacrifice and I thought the Carthaginians themselves recorded doing it? Humans are pretty crazy and we shouldn't pretend otherwise...
Not much of anything the Carthaginians recorded survived. Their civilisation was destroyed as thoroughly as possible, and the only proper accounts of it are Roman and Greek. So nearly everything about Carthaginian history is naturally controversial for that reason.
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#5I am surprised this is a big deal, I thought it was well accepted. (Other) Phoenicians did it, Romans practised human (not sure about child) sacrifice and I thought the Carthaginians themselves recorded doing it? Humans are pretty crazy and we shouldn't pretend otherwise...
“Child abandonment was common in the ancient world, and human sacrifice is found in many historical societies, but child sacrifice is relatively uncommon”
The whole article is about this not being well accepted by ancient authors nor by modern historians, that’s why it’s a big deal
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#6Can anyone see a date on this post? Is it recent? This 2014 Guardian article seems to report a very similar revelation:
https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/21/carthaginian...
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#7Child sacrifice hooks into some very deep and dark aspects of human psychology that we have yet to unpack. There is a reason that this practice crops up in various civilizations seemingly independently, and it is not a pretty one - at least not by contemporary moral sensibilities.
It is impossible to understand the biblical narrative of the binding of Isaac, for example, without addressing the context in which such a narrative was popularized and eventually codified into a sacred text.
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#8I am surprised this is a big deal, I thought it was well accepted. (Other) Phoenicians did it, Romans practised human (not sure about child) sacrifice and I thought the Carthaginians themselves recorded doing it? Humans are pretty crazy and we shouldn't pretend otherwise...
Romans almost exclusively only sacrificed foreigners who were basically subhuman (and even that was exceptionally rare). Sacrificing your own citizens was something else…
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#9[deleted]
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#10Child sacrifice hooks into some very deep and dark aspects of human psychology that we have yet to unpack. There is a reason that this practice crops up in various civilizations seemingly independently, and it is not a pretty one - at least not by contemporary moral sensibilities. It is impossible to understand the biblical narrative of the binding of Isaac, for example, without addressing the context in which such a…
Abandoning/exposing infants (especially girls) was very widespread in the ancient word. It’s possible that ‘sacrifice’ was just a way to justify it through some ritual.
This didn’t really change untill the chirch started equating it with murder.