The Fires of Moloch
AUTHOR: Andrew Scicluna
EDITED BY: Editor: Gareth Gransaull, Rudi Smith, and Marshall Cosens
A peculiar aspect of the Judeo-
Christian mythos is the concept of a pagan
god demanding the sacrifice of one’s
progeny. The Old Testament contains many
passages that accuse the Canaanites,
Phoenicians, and other non-Israelite
civilizations of this practice. Moreover, at the
time of the Punic wars several Greco-Roman
authors condemned the people of Carthage, a
prominent Phoenician city-state, for this
barbarity.1 During the early to mid-twentieth
century, many archeologists and scholars of
religion assumed the reliability of these
literary sources and interpreted the extant
data accordingly. One salient example is the
‘Carthaginian Tophet,’ a burial site containing
many urns filled with cremated bones, which
some contemporary scholars have seen as
corroboratory evidence for child sacrifice.
However, this ‘All-Sacrifice’ hypothesis, as it
is sometimes called,2 has been the subject of
intense debate in recent decades.3 After
surveying recent literary and symbolic
evidence, such as physical inscriptions and
icons, as well as material and biological
evidence, this paper will seek to emphasize
the difficulty of interpreting the past given the
confounding influence of both modern politics
and the politics of prior centuries. Ultimately,
this paper asserts that it cannot be
determined conclusively whether the
Carthaginian Tophet was the site of ritual
child sacrifice, due to the unreliable nature of
ancient literary sources and Procrustean
approach of early modern and contemporary
scholars.
In 1921, a mass burial site containing
hundreds of urns filled with cremated bones
was excavated in Tunisia. Comparative
23
morphological analysis helped date the urns
to some time between 800 and 146 BC.4
Archaeologists followed the prevailing
interpretation of the literary evidence available
at the time and interpreted the site as a center
for ritual child sacrifice, calling it the
‘Carthaginian Tophet’ (‘Tophet’ being derived
from a Biblical term for sacrificial crematoria).5
Morphological analysis of the preserved
bones determined that the interred specimens
included both pre-adolescent humans and
various animals, which was seen as crucial
evidence in favour of a theory positing that
human civilizations transitioned from human
to non-human sacrificial victims. Various
inscriptions etched into stele surrounding the
Tophet were also interpreted as indicating
child sacrifice. For example, one such etching
has been interpreted as a priest dangling a
child by their ankle.6
During the 1970s, an increasing level
of cynicism towards the reliability of literary
sources emerged among archaeologists and
scholars of Punic civilization.7 At the same
time, improvements in osteology and physical
anthropology led to the creation of new data
which challenged the ‘All-Sacrifice’ theory.
Researchers compiled a collection of bones
that had been under study since the 1950s,
which were found through morphological
analysis to belong to prenatal infants. This
discovery enabled rivalling interpretations. For
example, the Tophet could represent a mass
grave for still-borns resulting from diseases
caused by inadequate sanitation.8
Alternatively, it could represent a site not of
habitual human sacrifice, but of very
circumstantial ritual killing, which many
archeologists consider commonly practiced
by contemporary ancient Mediterranean’s.9
Many such scholars also consider such
“cultures” to conform to initiation rituals, which
determine your position within your proximal
social structure, such as your “social age.”
Since neonates could not have undergone
these rituals, some scholars have argued they
would make poor candidates for any ritual, as
they would not even be recognized as
people.10
Regardless, many scholars considered
the existence of widespread child sacrifice to
be certain, and the debate would be
reinvigorated in 2010 by an article in PLOS
One by Schwartz et. al. which was titled
“Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage Do
Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of Infants.”11
The team’s findings were consistent with
previous analysis: the intact bone size and
morphology was consistent with neonates,
especially given the lack of neonatal lines in
the tooth enamel.12 They also identified the
presence of female victims via the presence
of intact pelvic bones, which undermined
Biblical accounts of firstborn males being the
only sacrificial victims.13
This paper created major controversy,
and Issue 338 of the journal Antiquity
included two papers opposing it. The first,
from Smith et. al., titled “Cemetery or
Sacrifice,” criticized Schwartz of insufficiently
accounting for the role of heat-based
shrinkage.14 The other, “Phoenician Bones of
Contention” by Xella et. al., criticized
Schwartz for misunderstanding most of the
symbolic and literary evidence, including his
unsubstantiated claim that only firstborn
males were sacrificed.15 Schwartz et al.
responded to both papers with their own
article in Antiquity, arguing that neonatal lines
would still be visible regardless of heat and
accusing Smith of misunderstanding the
relevant ‘hard science.’ Although they
24
remained silent about Xella et. al., they
claimed that most studies on the bones agree
the interred specimens were neonates.16
Despite such statements of great conviction,
the debate continues to rage on.
Two key literary sources on the topic of
Carthaginian child sacrifice will be analyzed in
this paper: the Old Testament, and various
writings by Greco-Roman authors around the
time of the Punic Wars. Before exploring
these sources, however, there are some
concepts which should be clarified. Firstly,
ancient civilizations often were not cleanly
demarcated; terms such as ‘Ancient Greece’
tend to group together a large number of
distinct “cultural” groups. The complexity is
exacerbated with regard to civilizations like
the Canaanites, Phoenicians, or
Carthaginians that lack an independent
history due to incidence of conquest or
collapse. The very names of these
civilizations are often relative; for instance,
the term Canaanite was a term used by
Israelites, while the term Phoenician was
employed by later Greeks to describe a loose
coalition of city-states inhabiting the same
region.17 Many religious scholars and
anthropologists of the late colonial-era also
considered the mythologies and religious
systems of proximal groups of people (e.g.
clusters of Greek city states, or two halves of
Egypt) to, in some sense, share some kind of
essence, as a result of perceived similarities.
This attitude persisted well into the twentieth
century, and was arguably enabled by the
continuing popularity of positivism from the
offspring of the natural sciences, such as the
generalized laws of physics.18 Another degree
of complexity is introduced when considering
the presentism of early-modern scholars in
the West, whose academic judgements were
filtered through their contemporary cultural
inheritance. This issue is doubly apparent in
the fact that ancient authors often exhibited
presentism themselves; during the Hellenistic
era, Herodotus engaged in the interpretatio
graeca, which is the comparative
interpretation of Egyptian mythology with
respect to Greek traditions.19 All of these
complexities should be kept in mind before
analyzing either the Old Testament or Greco-
Roman sources within the context of human
sacrifice.
Sacrifice is a large component of the
Christian interpretation of the Old Testament
as a narrative of humanity’s relationship with
God. The myth typically begins with a person
being willing to sacrifice his or her progeny to
God, and culminates with God performing a
parallel sacrifice after decrying the practice.20
In this standard reading, the Israelites and
their God YHWH have an antithetical
relationship to the evil Canaanites and their
God, Moloch. It is tempting to argue that the
Old Testament canon was compiled to fit this
moral evolution away from human sacrifice
while preserving a reference to its historical
existence. Many early anthropologists and
scholars of religion have made this
assumption, such as Frazer’s The Golden
Bough, which dedicates a section to it.21
Frazer never questions the historicity of these
sacrifices, instead factoring them into his
theory that mythology is the shared ancestral
memory of a fertility ritual initially requiring the
sacrifice of a king, but progressively
substituting the object of sacrifice until it
becomes a scapegoat. Because the
etymology of ‘Moloch’ was thought to be an
intentionally derogatory corruption of the
Hebrew root word for ‘King’,22 he proposed
that Carthaginian child sacrifice derived from
this tradition of regicide aimed at achieving a
necromantic, life-extending effect.23 As
evidence, Frazer cites passages such as 2
Kings 16:3, 23:10, 2 Chronicles 28:3, and
Jeremiah 7:31,32:35 in which Old Testament
authors accuse nearby non-Israelite
25
civilizations (including the Canaanites) of this
practice.
While contemporary scholarship
surrounding the Carthaginian Tophet has
tended to preserve this line of thinking,
several competing theories have emerged.
With the rise of multiculturalism and
postcolonialism, scholars began to notice
another recurrent theme of the Old
Testament: the ‘otherness’ of non-YHWH
worshippers and their practices,24 such as
their putative sacrifice of infant first-born
males.25 Under this reading, Moloch begins
to look more like a construct designed for a
particular political or cultural purpose. Another
theory has emerged from linguistic data;
although Moloch is commonly seen as a
distinct entity, the Old Testament contains
many similar names derived from the same
root. He is commonly associated with the
Amorites, a rival Semitic civilization within
Canaan, although the Old Testament is
ambiguous concerning the relationship of the
Amorites and Carthaginians.26 This could be
seen as evidence that Moloch is more a
linguistic phenomenon than a religious or
political one. Some philologists argue that
Moloch refers to a kind of sacrifice rather than
a particular entity.27
The Old Testament contains two other
terms commonly assumed to be proper nouns
for deities: Ba’al and Ashtoreth. Although their
status as gods appears more certain, their
relation to a Moloch is unclear. Like Moloch,
the word Ba’al has a regal title as an
etymological root from a reconstructed
Semitic language, and it occurs as an
honorific to many proper nouns which makes
it difficult to distinguish between various uses
of the term. The deity receiving sacrifices at
the Carthaginian Tophet is commonly
recognized as Ba’al Hammon, a weather and
fertility god tied to a specific locality.28 Ba’al
Hammon does not explicitly appear in the Old
Testament as the god of the city of Carthage,
but the text does reference deities with the
generic title Ba’al, such as Ba’al Hadad.
Scholars such as Mircea Eliade have
attempted to reconstruct a general Levantine
pantheon from mythological texts. In
particular, they drew on evidence excavated
from Ugarit, the well-preserved Syrian city-
state, to develop a pantheon containing a
generic Ba’al, Ashtoreth, and potentially
YHWH himself. In A History of Religions,
Eliade suggests the hypothesis that
‘Yahwehism’, the religion of the ancient
Israelites, was originally a branch of the
broader Canaanite religion, reconstructed
using the related Ugric mythology.29 Under
one hypothesis, the two eventually became
distinct due to a disagreement over which god
headed the pantheon; most Canaanites held
the War God as supreme, referring to him as
simply Ba’al, while Yahwehists worshipped El,
the father of the War God who they referred
to as YHWH. Although it is unclear how this
name change occurred, El also functions as a
generic, context-dependent Hebrew term for
any deity (similarly to Moloch and Ba’al).30
According to the Ugric mythology, El
originally headed the pantheon and was
ultimately replaced by his son. Myths which
survive depict El in humiliating situations,
portraying him as weak and feeble, which
some interpreted as Ugric polemics against
sects that still considered El to be supreme.
Eliade and other scholars attempted to use
comparative mythology to demonstrate how
the relationship of El and Ba’al mirrors the
relationship of the Greek god Zeus and his
father, the Titan Kronos.31 Proposed lines of
evidence for a relationship between these two
families of mythology are constructed around
shared mythological motifs, which include
Ba’al overthrowing his father, being
26
associated with storms and lightning, and
defeating a monster, which is commonly
argued to be the ubiquitous ‘Chaoskampf.’
Furthermore, both El and Kronos, are seen to
reign over a primordial Golden Age which fails
when their rule is challenged by their superior
progeny.32 This analogy, however, is
imperfect; while Kronos could be
characterized as unfit due to his paranoia and
dysgenic obsession, El is merely portrayed as
weak. The dynamic between the two father-
son pairs also differs; while Kronos is
banished to the seemingly furthest reaches of
the universe, Ba’al still requires some
connection to El to maintain his legitimacy.33
The “Yahweh = El = Kronos”
hypothesis also does not account for the
complex relationship between early
Yahwehism and human sacrifice, as seen in
Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac, King
Solomon’s worship of Moloch, or Jephthah’s
sacrifice of his daughter. Although it accounts
for the constant pressure faced by Israelites
to adopt the customs of their neighbours, it
fails to account for their eventual opposition of
human sacrifice. A more simple hypothesis
suggests that YHWH and Ba’al are one and
the same, positing that the divergence was
motivated purely by theological
disagreements concerning human sacrifice,
and that Yahwehism either outlawed the
practice or progressively phased it out.34
In their 2013 paper, Xella et al. cite the
following six Greco-Roman sources as
evidence for Carthaginian child sacrifice:
Kleitarchos, Diodorus, Plutarch, Tertullian,
Curtius, and Porphyry.35 Some sources,
including the latter two, are dated to periods
contemporary with Phoenician civilization,
and although none provide eye-witness
testimony, they appear to corroborate the Old
Testament accounts. They describe a ritual
that involved incineration at a specified
location, typically involving a bronze idol,
where victims are either placed within the
heated arms of the idol or placed within an
oven in its stomach.36 These sources
elaborate on the apparent motivation of the
sacrifice, which was to appease a deity in
times of strife.37
Many Punic scholars associate the
Carthaginian God with Kronos or Saturn, of
whom both are commonly associated with
child sacrifice within the popular psyche,
according to some scholars.38 It has been
argued that such associations with child
sacrifice may have served a propagandistic
role, effectively demonizing their worshippers
to justify aggression against them.39 The
figure of Saturn is difficult to understand,
especially considering his syncretisation with
the Kronos during the process of
Hellenization. Frazer offers an interesting
account of Saturnalia, the Roman holiday in
his name. The festival occurred a week
before the Winter Solstice and involved an
inversion of the social hierarchy, in which a
young man was elected as the ‘king’ of
Saturnalia and was allowed to indulge in all
manner of sensual pleasures without
consequence. By the end of the festival,
however, he would be expected to commit
ritual suicide by slitting his neck with a
sword.40
Scholar J.B. Rives draws on
inscriptions and other physical evidence to
determine that the Romans permitted the
worship of Saturn after their occupation of
Carthage.41 The Romans associated the local
Carthaginian God with Saturn (as per Greek
tradition dating back to the 5th century), and
the cult was practiced without resistance post­
occupation. According to Rives, thousands of
excavated steles bore inscriptions which
referred to the god. The most common
inscription is the acronym ‘SAS’, which
27
allegedly means ‘Sacred to Saturn
Augustus’.42 Clusters of steles are generally
considered to designate important places of
worship, and the sheer number of steles
clearly indicates that the cult of Saturn was
one of the most popular in Carthage.43 Based
on the spatial distribution of these sites, Rives
infers that Saturn worship was popular
amongst two groups: native Carthaginian
farmers, and the Roman upper class. Steles
typically included a formula stating that an
offering had been made, but the details were
seldom disclosed, forcing scholars to infer
from context. The presence of steles and
inscriptions at the Carthaginian Tophet site
has been used as evidence for human
sacrifice.44 There was also the Sacerdos
Saturni Publicus, a priest of the Saturn cult, in
the nearby city of Simitthu, as well as 18
shrines and temples scattered across Africa
Proconsularis, the Roman province created
after the Punic wars.45 Evidence from
administrative documents demonstrates that
some of these Saturn cult centers were
publicly funded and endorsed by the state.
Although the Romans considered the
local Carthaginian god to be Saturn, there is
no evidence that native Carthaginians did.46
Furthermore, although Saturn worship
continued throughout the Roman occupation,
there’s evidence it ceased to be publicly
recognized by the upper class and
subsequently shrank in some regions. Many
excavated urns from this period are smaller,
less elaborate, and contain fewer sacrificial
animal and human remains.47 Considering
what has been observed thus far, one might
conclude that the Romans constructed a
bogeyman out of some native Carthaginian
deity for use in wartime propaganda, retained
it as a tool for population control, and
subsequently abandoned it when it was no
longer useful. However, it should be noted
that Saturn worship remained prominent in
other areas of the Proconsularis. Rives states
that some of these offerings included children,
although it is unclear whether he is referring
specifically to the Carthaginian Tophet site.
Xella et. al. interpret standardized formulae
from steles and inscriptions at the
Carthaginian Tophet site to mean that an
offering was made in consequence of ‘being
heard’ by the deity; two steles bore images
which have been interpreted as a priest
holding an infant.48 With this evidence, a case
can be made for the presence of child
sacrifice at this location, and perhaps across
Carthage before Roman occupation.49 The
evidence remains controversial, however, and
the debate continues to the present day.
There are many salient parallels
between the Greco-Roman and Near East
mythologies. Although we may never fully
understand Carthaginian theology as it
existed prior to the Punic wars, we can make
some assumptions based on data available
from other literary and historical sources.
Before the Punic Wars, we can look towards
the Old Testament accounts of the
Canaanites and Phoenicians; however, the
Old Testament also served as a catalogue of
the history of the Israelites, which may have
led to exaggerations in the context of conflict
with rival Semitic civilizations, including the
Canaanites. Moreover, even if child sacrifice
occurred amongst ancient Semitic people
groups, it cannot be determined whether it
lasted into the third century. It is similarly
impossible to fully rely on Greco-Roman
sources with respect to the people of
Carthage, as they were on opposite sides
during the Punic Wars. Much of our
understanding of Carthaginian religion comes
from interpretatio roman a, specifically in
equating an enemy god with Saturn. Scholars
from both the mid-twentieth century and
contemporary times may be tempted to
project their understanding of child-eating
Kronos onto any deities associated with him,
but it is important the identity of those who
make these comparisons, and conflicting
attitudes towards the deity itself.
Considering the controversy
surrounding the available archaeological and
literary record, it is difficult to determine
whether the Carthaginian Tophet was a site
for ritual child sacrifice. Although we know
what ancient Israelites and Romans wrote
about their shared enemy, we have no way of
knowing how the Carthaginians would have
responded. We certainly do not know how
they interpreted their Israelite or Roman
traditions, let alone their apologetics. Even if a
local Carthaginian god was similar to Kronos
in the relevant sense, and if child sacrifice
started before or continued after Roman
occupation, how could it ever be proven
conclusively? Considering the ambiguity of
material and literary evidence, we must
reserve our judgement on the true role of the
Carthaginian Tophet.

Bibliography
Bergmann, Martin. In the shadow of Moloch: The sacrifice of children and its impact on
Western religions. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.
Bremmer, Jan. “Myth and Ritual in Greek Human Sacrifice: Lykaon, Polyxena, and the Case of
the Rhodian Criminal” in The strange world of human sacrifice. Edited by Jan Bremmer,
55-79. Leuven: Peeters, 2007.
Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology. New York: The Viking Press,
1959.

28
Cross, Andrew. “Child Sacrifice at the Tophet.” Master’s thesis, Hebrew University in
Jerusalem - Rothberg International School, 2012. Retrieved March 16, 2019, from
http://www.arcalog.com/papers/the-tophet-child-sacrifice/
Eliade, Mircea. A History of Religious Ideas, Volume One. University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Frazer, James The golden bough, Volume Four: The dying god (3rd Ed.) London and
Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1911.
Frazer, James. The golden bough, Volume Nine: The Scape Goat (3rd Ed.). London and
Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1913.
Frazer, James. The golden bough, Volume Five: Adonis, Attis, and Osiris (3rd Ed.). London and
Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1914.
Garnand, Brien. “From Infant Sacrifice to the ABC’s: Ancient Phoenicians and Modern
Identities.” Stanford Journal of Archeology.
Green, Alberto. The role of human sacrifice in the ancient Near East. Missoula: Scholars
Press, 1975.
Harden, Donald. “Punic Urns from the Precinct of Tanit at Carthage.” American Journal of
Archaeology 31, no. 3 (1927): 297-310. doi:10.2307/497821
Hubert, Henri & Marcel Mauss, Sacrifice: It’s Nature and Function. Translated by William Halls.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Hunt, Patrick. "Carthage." Encyclopaedia Britannica. February 06, 2019. Retrieved June 23,
2019, from: https://www.britannica.com/place/Carthaqe-ancient-citv-Tunisia.
Noort, Edward. “Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel” in The strange world of human sacrifice.
Edited by Jan Bremmer, 103-125. Leuven: Peeters. 2007.
Pals, Daniel L. Eight Theories of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Rives, James. Religion and Authority in Roman Carthage from Augustus to Constantine.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
Schwartz, Jeffrey, Frank Houghton, Roberto Macchiarelli & Luca Bondioli. “Skeletal Remains
from Punic Carthage Do Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of Infants.” PLoS ONE, 5 no.
2 (2010). Retrieved March 16, 2019, from:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371 /journal.pone.00091 IT
Schwartz, Jeffrey, Frank Houghton, Roberto Macchiarelli & Luca Bondioli. “Two tales of one
city: Data, inference and Carthaginian infant sacrifice,” Antiquity 91 no. 356 (2017): 442-
454. doi:10.15184/aqy.2016.270
Smith, Patricia, Lawrence Stager, Joseph Greene, and Gal Avishai, “Cemetery or Sacrifice?
Infant Burials at the Carthage Tophet,” Antiquity 87 no. 338 (2013): 1191-1198.
Xella, Paolo, Josephine Quinn, Valentina Melchiorri and Peter Dommelen. “Phoenician bones
of contention,” Antiquity 87 no. 338 (2013): 1199-1207.
Woods, W.H. A history of the devil. New York: Berkley, 1975.
Young, Francis. Sacrifice and the death of Christ. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2009.

Endnotes
1 Jeffrey Schwartz, Frank Houghton, Roberto Macchiarelli and Luca Bondioli, “Skeletal
Remains from Punic Carthage Do Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of Infants.” PLoS ONE, 5
no. 2 (2010), pp. 1-2
2 Ibid, pp. 1

29
3Andrew Cross, “Child Sacrifice at the Tophet.” Master’s thesis, Hebrew University in
Jerusalem - Rothberg International School, 2012: ‘Conclusion’; Brien Garnand, “From Infant
Sacrifice to the ABC’s: Ancient Phoenicians and Modern Identities.” Stanford Journal of
Archeology: pp. 11; Jeffrey Schwartz, Frank Houghton, Roberto Macchiarelli & Luca Bondioli
‘Two tales of one city: Data, inference and Carthaginian infant sacrifice,” Antiquity 91 no. 356
(2017), pp. 229
4 Cross, “Child sacrifice at the Tophet,” ‘Intro’; Donald Harden, “Punic Urns from the Precinct of
Tanit at Carthage,” American Journal of Archaeology 31, no. 3 (1927), pp. 299-304
5 Schwartz et al, “Two tales of one city,” pp. 447
3 Martin Bergmann, In the shadow of Moloch: The sacrifice of children and its impact on
Western religions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992): pp. 2-4; Patricia Smith,
Lawrence Stager, Joseph Greene, and Gal Avishai, “Cemetery or Sacrifice? Infant Burials at
the Carthage Tophet,” Antiquity 87 no. 338 (2013), pp. 1197
7 Cross, “Child sacrifice at the Tophet,” ‘Evidence from Greco-Roman Sources’
3 Schwartz et al, “Two tales of one city,” pp. 447
9 Brien Garnand, “From Infant Sacrifice to the ABC’s: Ancient Phoenicians and Modern
Identities.” Stanford Journal of Archeology, pp. 12-13
10 Schwartz et al, “Two tales of one city,” pp. 451
11 Alberto Green, The role of human sacrifice in the ancient Near East (Missoula, MT: Scholars
Press, 1975), pp. 182
12 Schwartz et al., “Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage”, pp. 9
13 Schwartz et al., “Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage”, pp. 9
14 Smith et al., “Cemetary of Sacrifice,” pp. 1196-1197
15 Paolo Xella, Josephine Quinn, Valentina Melchiorri and Peter Dommelen, “Phoenician
bones of contention,” Antiquity 87 no. 338 (2013), pp. 1203-1205
16 Schwartz et al., “Two tales of one city,” pp. 449-450
17 Patrick Hunt. "Carthage." Encyclopaedia Britannica.
18 Daniel L. Pals, Eight Theories of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 10;
Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (New York: The Viking Press,
1959), pp. 3, 462-463
19 See James Rives, Religion and Authority in Roman Carthage from Augustus to Constantine.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 133-134 for the analogous interpretia romana
20 For similar views, see Francis Young, Sacrifice and the death of Christ. (Eugene, OR: Wipf
6 Stock, 2009), pp. 26, 50-51
21 James Frazer, The golden bough, Volume Five: Adonis, Attis, and Osiris (3rd Ed.). (London
and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1914), pp 219-226
22 Ibid., pp. 220
23 As noted earlier, Frazer appeals to the fact that Moloch’s name is derived from the Hebrew
word for “King.” He then compiles a list of stories allegedly following the motive of a king
sacrificing his subjects in pp. 220-226. It’s beyond the scope of this project to determine the
strength of the parallel.
24 Edward Noort, “Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel” in The strange world of human sacrifice ed.
Jan Bremmer (Leuven: Peeters. 2007), pp. 116
25 Schwartz et al., “Skeletal Remains...,” pp. 1

30
26 Mircea Elaide argues the Ammonite’s were an offshoot of the Hittites, which he further
argues were the Indo-Europeans. See Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, Volume
One (University of Chicago Press, 1981)
pp. 140, 148-148. It’s beyond the scope of this project to evaluate either claim.
27 Noort, in The strange world of human sacrifice, pp. 116; Green, “The role of human
sacrifice...,” pp. 180-181
28 Ibid, pp. 182-183; Elaide, “A History of Religious Ideas,” pp. 159-160
29 Ibid., pp. 160-161, 184-185
30 Ibid., pp. 162-171
31 Ibid., pp. 148
32 Ibid., pp. 150-151, 184
33 Ibid., pp. 155
34 Ibid., pp. 184
35 Jan Bremmer, “Myth and Ritual in Greek Human Sacrifice: Lykaon, Polyxena, and the Case
of the Rhodian Criminal” in The strange world of human sacrifice ed. Jan Bremmer (Leuven:
Peeters, 2007), pp. 58 and Note 18.
36 Ibid., pp. 1202-1203
37 James Frazer, The golden bough, Volume Four: The dying god (3rd Ed.). (London and
Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1911), pp. 166-167. Scholars of Religion and Anthropologists have
constructed several classification schemas for sacrifice. Following the terminology of Hubert &
Mauss, the Carthaginian sacrifices on face value appear Votive (the sacrificial offering is
entirely consumed by the deity) and Oblative (analogous to a bargain). See Henri Hubert &
Marcel Mauss, Sacrifice: It’s Nature and Function trans. William Halls (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 10-12, 38-39. However, the semantic potential of the term is
seemingly endless - for example, it can refer to shared communal meals.
38 Bremmer in The strange world of human sacrifice, pp. 57-58
39 Xella et. al., “Phoenician bones...,” pp. 1203; Schwartz et. al., “Skeletal Remains...," pp. 1
40 James Frazer, The golden bough, Volume Nine: The Scape Goat (3rd Ed.). (London and
Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1913), pp. 306-309
41 Rives, “Religion and Authority...,” pp. 142-149
42 Ibid, pp 149
43 Rives, “Religion and Authority...,” pp. 143
44 Xella etal., “Phoenician bones...”, pp. 1204
45 Ibid., pp. 144
46 Ibid., pp. 151
47 Ibid., pp. 146-147
48 Xella et. al., “Phoenician bones...,” pp. 1204-1205
49 Noort, in The strange world of human sacrifice, pp. 119

31