Tophet of Carthage: Child Burials and a Long Scholarly Debate

The Tophet of Carthage is an ancient sanctuary in the Salammbô district of Carthage, in modern Tunisia, where the cremated remains of infants, young children and animals were buried in urns from about the 8th century BC until the Roman destruction of the city in 146 BC. It is the largest site of its kind in the Phoenician world. For more than a century it has been at the centre of a debate over whether the Carthaginians sacrificed their children, as ancient writers claimed.

Background: Carthage and Phoenician religion

Carthage was founded by settlers from the Phoenician city of Tyre, traditionally in 814 BC, and became the leading power of the western Mediterranean (see Founding of Carthage). Its people, known as Punic from the Latin word for Phoenicians, kept the language and religion of their homeland while developing their own customs.

The chief gods of the Tophet were Baal Hammon, an old Phoenician god, and the goddess Tanit, often called “the face of Baal” in inscriptions. Tanit’s symbol, a triangle topped by a horizontal bar and a disc, appears on many of the stelae.

Similar sanctuaries have been found at other Phoenician and Punic sites in the central Mediterranean, including Motya in Sicily, Tharros and Sulcis in Sardinia, and Hadrumetum (Sousse) in Tunisia. No comparable site has been securely identified in Phoenicia itself.

Discovery and excavation

The Tophet was identified in 1921, when carved stelae began to appear for sale. Two French officials, François Icard and Paul Gielly, traced them to a plot near the ancient harbours and began digging. Further campaigns followed, including American work in 1925 involving Francis Kelsey of the University of Michigan, and excavations by Pierre Cintas in the 1940s.

The most systematic modern excavation was carried out from 1976 to 1979 by an American team led by Lawrence Stager. His team recorded the stratigraphy, the sequence of layers, and analysed the contents of hundreds of urns.

The excavators found urns stacked in several levels, often under stone markers. Early deposits were marked by simple cippi (small stone pillars) and later ones by carved stelae with inscriptions in the Punic language. Many urns contain the burnt bones of one infant; some contain two or more children, and others contain the bones of lambs or young goats, either alone or with a child.

What the inscriptions say

Hundreds of stelae carry short dedications. A typical text names the person who made the offering, sometimes with several generations of ancestors, and states that the gift was given to Baal Hammon or to Tanit and Baal Hammon, often ending with the hope that the god would hear the donor’s voice and bless him.

Several inscriptions use the word mlk (often written molk). In 1935 the German scholar Otto Eissfeldt argued that this was a technical term for a type of sacrifice, not the name of a god called Moloch, as earlier readings of the Bible had supposed. His interpretation is widely accepted, though the exact meaning of the word is still discussed.

The ancient accounts

Greek and Roman writers repeatedly accused Carthage of sacrificing children. The most detailed account comes from the 1st-century BC historian Diodorus Siculus. He says that in 310 BC, when the Syracusan ruler Agathocles invaded Africa, the Carthaginians blamed their misfortune on having offered substitute children instead of their own, and then sacrificed 200 children of noble families. He also describes a bronze statue of the god whose hands let the child roll into a fire.

The Hebrew Bible condemns a similar practice among the people of Judah at a place called Tophet in the Valley of Hinnom near Jerusalem (Jeremiah 7:31; 2 Kings 23:10). Modern scholars borrowed this word to name the Carthaginian sanctuary.

Critics point out that these texts were written by Carthage’s enemies or rivals, and that some writers, such as Diodorus, lived long after the events they described. Supporters reply that the descriptions come from several independent traditions and match what was found in the ground.

The scholarly debate

The central question is how the children in the urns died. In a 1984 article, Stager and Samuel Wolff argued that the Tophet was a place of sacrifice. They noted that the proportion of animal substitutes fell over time, which they linked to rising population and family planning among the elite.

In 2010 a team led by Jeffrey Schwartz analysed the teeth and bones of children from the Stager excavations. They concluded that many were stillborn or died very soon after birth, an age profile they considered consistent with natural deaths. On this view the Tophet was a special cemetery for infants who died before being admitted to the community.

Other specialists, including Patricia Smith and colleagues in 2011, re-examined the material and found that most of the infants were around one to two months old, an age they argued fits deliberate sacrifice better than natural mortality. A 2013 review by Paolo Xella and others also concluded that the combined evidence of texts, inscriptions and bones points to sacrifice.

Most historians now accept that at least some of the burials were sacrifices, while recognising that the bones alone cannot prove how every child died. Scholars also stress that the practice, if it happened as described, was probably a rare and solemn vow to the gods rather than a routine event.

The wider context

Any interpretation of the Tophet has to take into account how common infant death was in the ancient world. In most pre-modern societies a large share of children died in their first year, so a city the size of Carthage would have produced many infant burials whether or not sacrifice took place. This is one reason the age profile of the bones has become so important to the debate.

Another key point is that the Tophet was not an ordinary cemetery. Older children and adults at Carthage were buried in separate necropolises, usually without cremation. The special location, the dedications to gods and the language of vows all mark the Tophet as a sacred space where offerings were made, rather than simply a place where the dead were laid to rest.

Some historians also note that the Carthaginians were not unique in the ancient Mediterranean in practising rituals that would be shocking today. Greek and Roman writers condemned Punic customs partly to portray Carthage as cruel and foreign, and Roman propaganda shaped the city’s image long after its fall. Modern scholarship tries to separate the evidence from this hostile framing while still taking the ancient accounts seriously.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 814 BC (traditional date): Foundation of Carthage by settlers from Tyre.
• c. 8th century BC: Earliest burials in the Tophet.
• 310 BC: Agathocles of Syracuse invades Africa; Diodorus later records a mass sacrifice at Carthage.
• 146 BC: Rome destroys Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War, ending the use of the sanctuary.
• 1921: François Icard and Paul Gielly identify and begin excavating the site.
• 1976-1979: Lawrence Stager’s team excavates and analyses the urns.
• 2010-2013: New studies of the bones renew the debate over sacrifice.

Why it matters

The Tophet of Carthage is a rare case where archaeology can be tested directly against hostile ancient texts. It shows how difficult it is to read religious practice from bones and inscriptions, and how modern views of Carthage, long shaped by its Roman enemies, depend on careful and open-minded study of the evidence.