Biblical Archaeology

Gezer was an ancient town about midway between Jerusalem and the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. R. A. S. Macalister (1870-1950), an archaeology professor from University College, Dublin, excavated Gezer from 1902-1905 and 1907-1909. His team discovered a High Place in the middle of the town, with a central sanctuary where a cult of Ashtoreth performed extensive child sacrifice. Ashtoreth is mentioned in several Bible verses (e.g. Judges 2:13, 10:6, 1 Samuel 7:3-4, 12:10, 1 Kings 11:5, 11:33, and 2 Kings 23:13). Macalister published his findings in three volumes from 1911-1912. Below are some excerpts from his findings. 

The whole area of the High Place was found on excavation to be a cemetery of new-born infants. That these infants were all the victims of sacrifice is suggested by their close association with the High Place, and confirmed by the fact that two at least displayed marks of fire. These infants were deposited in large jars...

The principal objects of religious use that were discovered were small figures of divinities and emblems of various kinds... The most valuable figure in the excavation is the bronze statuette of the horned Ashtoreth-the only indisputable figure of the goddess which has yet been discovered.

The beginning of the High Place may on the evidence of scarabs and datable pottery be approximately dated 2000-2500 B.C.

That the Canaanite inhabitants of Gezer sacrificed their infant children at the High Place is proved by the cemetery of jar-buried infants found under the earth all over the area.

That these sacrificed infants were the first-born, devoted in the Temple, is indicated by the fact that none were over a week old. This seems to show that the sacrifices were not offered under stress of any special calamity, or at the rites attaching to any special season of the year.

Macalister’s team uncovered several foundation sacrifices, where children were slaughtered as sacrifices to Ashtoreth and buried at the corners of buildings.

Under this head we group the following miscellaneous superstitions and religious practices: the rites observed at the foundation of a building...

Adult or adolescent victims were, however, rare in comparison with the number of infants or very young children, whose remains were found under the corners of houses. Such deposits were found in all the Semitic strata... The deposit was identical in its nature with the infant burials in the High Place above described…

Figures 2, 3, and 4 are sketches of some of the foundation sacrifices. The findings of Macalister and colleagues prove the inhabitants of ancient Gezer practiced systemic child sacrifice in their worship of Ashtoreth. To learn more about the cult of Ashtoreth, see Macalister’s book under References.

References

R. A. Stewart Macalister, The Excavation of Gezer, 1902-1905 and 1907-1909, Volumes I-III (London: John Murray, 1912)

The Phoenicians were a seafaring Canaanite people who built colonies along North Africa, the islands of the Mediterranean Sea, and southern Spain. Ancient Phoenicia was located mainly along the coasts of Lebanon and Syria. The primary god of Phoenician religion was Ba’al Hamon, also known as the Lord of the Incense Burner. The primary goddess was his consort, Lady Tanit. Ba’al was a god of child sacrifice. Most of the physical evidence of Phoenician child sacrifice comes from excavations of sites known as tophets, located in North Africa and islands of the Mediterranean Sea. The word tophet comes from Topheth, which refers to a place of pagan child sacrifice in the Valley of Ben Hinnom near Jerusalem.

They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire—something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind. (Jeremiah 7:31) 

Archaeologists discovered tophets at ancient Phoenician sites throughout North Africa, Sicily, Malta (possibly) and Sardinia. Archaeological discoveries show that infants and small animals were sacrificed at the tophets. Worshippers of Ba’al deposited at the tophets urns containing incinerated remains of sacrificed children and animals. The Phoenicians performed child sacrifice at the tophets over many centuries over a wide geographical region, with tens of thousands of sacrificial victims.

Archaeologists discovered a large tophet at Carthage in 1922 (figure 1). It has thousands of incinerated remains of young children in urns marked by stelae with religious inscriptions. Some urns had burned infants and small animals, usually sheep, interred together while other urns had separate infant and animal remains. Based on the density of urns in the excavated area, scholars estimate that as many as 20,000 urns containing burned infants and animals were deposited there between 400 and 200 BC. The sheer number of urns with sacrificial victims shows the practice of child sacrifice was extensive.

In the 1970s, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago sent several archaeological teams to further explore the ruins of ancient Carthage. They excavated the tophet in depth and identified many burned remains as children sacrificed to Ba’al Hamon and Tanit. Below are some excerpts from their findings, documented in the formal report released by the University of Chicago listed below (The Oriental Institute Annual Report 1977/78).

Since the discovery of the Carthaginian Tophet in 1922, successive excavators have extracted from this precinct thousands of dedicatory monuments in the form of carved limestone stelas or sandstone cippi and an even greater number of pottery urns containing the charred remains of humans and animals.

Some scholars, skeptical of the notion that child sacrifice was practiced systematically among the Canaanites, Israelites, and Phoenicians, have argued that the Carthaginians sacrificed their children only sporadically and in a form of "non-institutionalized worship." But the evidence—archeological, epigraphic, and historical—points to the contrary.

Inside the wall we have recovered over two hundred urns filled with charred human and animal bones and set in pits dug into five superimposed strata dating from ca. 400-200 B.C. If the density of urn burials within the small area covered by the present excavations is extrapolated throughout the Tophet, we estimate that several thousand urns were deposited during the two centuries after 400 B.C. This evidence alone is enough to suggest that the deposits were not a casual or sporadic occurrence.

The Carthage tophet has epigraphical evidence of human sacrifice. Below are three examples of typical inscriptions found at the tophet, documented in the article The Epigraphy of the Tophet listed below.

To the lady, to Tinnit, ‘face of Ba‘l’, and to the Lord, to Ba‘lamon (Ba‘l Hamon), this is what X, son of X offered, as (his) flesh.

To the lady, to Tinnit, ‘face of Ba‘l’, and to the Lord, to Ba‘l Hamon, this is what X, son of X, son of X, has offered as his flesh. May he bless him!

To the the Lord, to Ba‘l Hamon, and to the Lady, to Tinnit, ‘face of Ba‘l’, vow that X, son of X, son of X, vowed, a mlk of a human being as his own flesh. Indeed, they heard his voice. May they bless him.

(X refers to a proper name; the term mlk refers to a ‘kingly’ sacrifice.) Note the third example clearly declares a human being was offered as a mlk sacrifice. The evidence is indisputable; the Carthage tophet was a precinct for human sacrifice to Ba’al and Tanit.

Archaeologists excavated a large tophet at Hadrumetum (modern day Sousse in Tunisia) in 1947. They discovered a six-level cemetery with urns containing the incinerated remains of children and animals, most of them sacrificed to Ba’al Hamon and Tanit. Archaeologists concluded the sacrifices at the tophet of Hadrumetum were going on for approximately eight centuries without interruption. Artifacts recovered from the tophet include urns filled with remains of children and animals sacrificed in fire to Ba’al Hamon and Tanit. Those artifacts are on display at the Museum of Sousse.

An archaeological team from Palermo University excavated a tophet at Motya, off the west coast of Sicily, in 2013-2017. It is a relatively small tophet, probably because it was not used for long, since the Romans conquered Sicily and expelled the Phoenicians from Sicily. The excavation uncovered a field of urns containing sacrificial victims, similar to the findings at Carthage.

The sign of Tanit appears frequently at tophets (figure 2). If you are visiting ruins of ancient Phoenician civilization and you encounter this sign, beware! You have arrived at a precinct of child sacrifice to Ba’al.

Archaeologists produced diagrams of the strata (layers) of the tophet of Carthage. Figure 3 shows a cross section of the strata. The figure shows layers representing different eras of use of the tophet. From bottom to top, the layers are Tanit I (730-600 BC), Tanit IIa (600-400 BC), Tanit IIb (4th - 3rd centuries BC), and Tanit III (up to 146 BC, the year Carthage was destroyed by the Romans). Note the stele and the buried urn pictured at the right end of Tanit IIb. The stele displays the sign of Tanit, which is associated with child sacrifice, as stated above. Archaeologists unearthed and opened burial urns like the one pictured. Figure 4 has two images of a typical urn. The left image is the covered urn unearthed during excavation. The right image shows the urn with its cover removed. What you see in the urn is the remains of an infant that was burned as a sacrifice to Ba’al, Tanit, or both. Scholars estimated there are thousands of similar urns deposited at tophets in Phoenician (Punic) colonies throughout the Mediterranean world. The urns containing the remains of burned infants are very stark evidence of child sacrifice by worshippers of Ba’al.

Figure 3. Cross section of strata of the tophet of Carthage. Note the image of Tanit on the stele at the right end of layer Tanit IIb. Image from Punic Project, American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 4. The left image shows a seventh century BC urn unearthed at the tophet of Carthage during excavations performed by the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR). The right image shows the urn with its lid removed. The urn contains the remains of a child that was sacrificed to Ba’al, Tanit, or both. The urn was photographed by James Whitred of the Punic Project, ASOR. Licensed by Creative Commons under Non-Commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0), http://www.mmdtkw.org/CNAf0227cCarthageTophet.jpg, accessed September 17, 2022.

Some skeptics claim the children were merely dedicated to the gods after they died of other causes, and hence were not deliberately slain as sacrifices to the gods. That is contradicted by thousands of inscriptions that clearly identify children as sacrifices to Ba’al. The Phoenicians offered to their gods only what was most perfect and precious. It is unlikely they would have offered dead children to their gods. Images on stelae suggest the children were alive when they were handed over to the priest of Ba’al at the tophet. Figure 5 shows an image on a stele from the tophet of Carthage. A priest of Ba’al, dressed in priestly garment, is holding a child to be sacrificed. The child in the image appears upright and alive. One would expect a dead child to appear lame.

References

Adriano Orsingher, “Understanding Tophets: A Short Introduction,” Friends of ASOR 6, no. 2 (February 2018), https://www.asor.org/anetoday/2018/02/Understanding-Tophets-Short.

The Oriental Institute Annual Report 1977/78 (The University of Chicago)

Maria Giulia Amadasi Guzzo and José Ángel Zamora López, “The Epigraphy of the Tophet,” Studi Epigrafici e Linguistici 29-30, (2012-2013)

The Old Testament affirms Molek was an Ammonite god of human sacrifice. The cult of Molek involved fiery rituals.

He desecrated Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice their son or daughter in the fire to Molek. (2 Kings 23:10)

They built high places for Baal in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to sacrifice their sons and daughters to Molek, though I never commanded—nor did it enter my mind—that they should do such a detestable thing and so make Judah sin. (Jeremiah 32:35)

Some ancient ruins were discovered during expansion of the Amman Civil Airport (Jordan) in 1955. John Hennessy of the University of Sydney excavated the site in 1966. The excavation revealed a Late Bronze Age pagan temple consisting of a square embedded in a square (Figures 1 and 2).

The inner square is the inner sanctum, with an altar at the very center (Figure 3).

Part of the site extends below the airport runway and is unreachable for excavation. Hennessy concluded a fire cult with human sacrifice was practiced at the temple.

Two outstanding features associated with the use of the Temple were the enormous quantities of animal, bird and human bones and the abundant evidence of fire. All levels of occupation were thick with the ashes of small isolated fires and the altar stone was charred on top... Many of the bones found in both the fill and occupation levels were burnt. There can be little doubt that the Temple was associated with a fire cult.

Larry G. Herr (Philippine Union College, Caloocan City, Philippines) and colleagues further excavated the site in 1976. They examined a structured rock pile located at the north side of the site, and found over 1,000 bones, about 96 percent of them human, many of them burned. The structured rock pile could be the very spot where sacrificial victims were burned. Most of the bones appear to be adult, with a few pre-adolescents and very few infants.

The layout of the Amman Airport temple was found to be similar to the layout of another temple located on a shoulder of Mount Gerizim above ancient Shechem in the Transjordan region. The Mount Gerizim site was first excavated in 1931, and further excavated in later years. Religious artifacts were found on site. The temple was identified as a high place dedicated to some unknown deity. Its inner sanctum is about twice the size of the inner sanctum of the Amman Airport temple. Apparently, the Mount Gerizim temple was destroyed by fire at the end of the Middle Bronze Age.

The Amman Airport temple and the Mount Gerizim temple were classified as courtyard temples, i.e. unroofed structures dedicated to worship, with rooms built around a sacred court. Both temples appear to be isolated structures, with no evidence of any town nearby. Scholars think the temples were visited frequently by nomadic and seminomadic tribes of the Transjordan region.

Some scholars are convinced the Amman Airport temple is a temple of Molek. It is located in the land of the Ammonites, who worshipped Molek, according to the Old Testament. The temple was dated to the Late Bronze Age, fourteenth through thirteenth centuries BC, consistent with the era when the Hebrews entered Canaan. The burned human remains suggest people were sacrificed in fire as in Molek worship. This may be the closest we have come to finding a temple of Molek. However, the detestable Molek idol alluded to in the Bible has not yet been found (unless Molek and Ba’al are one and the same, as many scholars believe, in which case we have many Ba’al idols recovered from ancient Phoenician sites). To this day, it remains a mystery exactly who or what Molek was. The similarities between the Amman Airport temple and the Mount Gerizim temple raise interesting questions. Did they worship the same Canaanite deity at both temples? Is the Mount Gerizim temple a temple of Molek?

Acknowledgements

All images and citations in part 3 of this series are from the following article:

J. B. Hennessy, “Excavation of a Late Bronze Age Temple at Amman,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 98, no. 2 (1966): 155-62.

Images are copyrighted and are displayed in this website under license granted by Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandfonline.com.

References

J. B. Hennessy, “Excavation of a Late Bronze Age Temple at Amman,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 98, no. 2 (1966): 155-62.

Larry G. Herr, “The Amman Airport Excavations, 1976,” The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 48 (1981): 23

Edward F. Campbell and G. Ernest Wright, “Tribal League Shrines in Amman and Shechem,” The Biblical Archaeologist 32, no. 4 (1969): 104–16

Robert G Boling, “Bronze Age Buildings at the Shechem High Place: ASOR Excavations at Tananir,” The Biblical Archaeologist 32, no. 4 (1969): 82–103