The Controversy of Death: The Tophet of Carthage

The Grim is opening the gate to the Tophet of Carthage, an ancient Phoenician site buried beneath the soil of modern Tunis and steeped in centuries of mystery. Here, archaeologists uncovered thousands of urns filled with the ashes of infants, children, and animals, alongside dedications to the gods Baal Hammon and Tanit. Was this sacred ground a cemetery for the young taken too soon, or an altar of fire where lives were sacrificed to appease divine wrath?

Ancient writers described flames devouring innocence, while modern scholars continue to debate whether these were acts of grief or offerings of blood. Within these charred remains, history has left behind one of its most haunting enigmas, a place where archaeology, legend, and sorrow converge. Step carefully, for in Carthage, the past still burns.

Support The Grim by buying a cup of our next Grave Grind!
https://buymeacoffee.com/kristinlopes

Find All of The Grim's Social Links At:
https://linktr.ee/kristinlopes

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Grin morning and welcome to the Grin.
I'm your host, kristen.
Today we're not unlatching irongates, but crossing deserts of
timepping onto the sands thatveil an ancient mystery the
topit of Carthage.
Lost to centuries yet steepedin controversy, these grounds
may or may not be a true burialplace for the dead, their story

(00:36):
caught between history andlegend.
The aroma of coffee mingles inthe air.
The gates stand open.
Step carefully.
It's time to descend into thehauntings of history.
The Grim this week has headed toa little-known place, the Topet
of Carthage.
Unless you're steeped inknowledge of ancient history or

(00:56):
have wandered the ruins ofCarthage, the fabled Venetian
city in North Africa, you'velikely never heard of it.
But we're about to change that.
This episode will feeldifferent from the gates we've
opened before, because thetoment of Carthage is ancient,
its story pieced together notfrom clear records but from
shards, ash and theinterpretations of

(01:19):
archaeologists.
What remains is tangled inuncertainty, findings that blur
the line between burial groundand sacrificial site, and that
makes it one of the mostcontroversial places the Grimm
has stepped into.
Yet Most of you are probablywondering what exactly is a
tophid and why is it beingfeatured on the Grimm.

(01:40):
Is it a cemetery or somethingdarker.
A tophid was a sacred place inthe ancient world, most often
tied to Carthage and Jerusalem.
These sanctuaries held urnsfilled with cremated remains of
infants and children, often leftto dedications to deities such
as Baal and Tanit.
The word itself comes from theHebrew tophet, meaning place of

(02:04):
burning or drum, a name thatreflects its haunting ties to
ritual fire and sacrifice.
While later writers sometimesused tophet as a synonym for
hell, its original meaningpointed to very real sites of
burial, or perhaps offerings,that blurred the line between
cemetery and altar, just beyondthe modern streets of Tunis,

(02:26):
where the ancient walls ofCarthage once rose.
Smugglers in 1921 prided theearth and unearthed stones
carved for the gods.
What they disturbed was noordinary cemetery, but the
oldest and largest topet everfound, established within two
generations of Carthage'sfounding, in the late 9th or

(02:46):
early 8th century BCE.
For more than six centuries,until Rome razed the city in 146
BCE, this ground drank fire andash.
The site grew vast, spreadingacross more than 6,000 square
meters, its soil layered withremains of children and the
animals buried beside them.

(03:06):
Professors Lawrence Steger andSamuel Wolfe estimated that as
many 20,000 urns were loweredinto the earth between 400 and
200 BCE, each guarded by a stonestele carved with messages to
Balhamun and Tanit.
Over 6,000 such monuments havebeen recovered through

(03:28):
inscriptions, whispering of vows, offerings and devotions.
Basin amulets were sometimesplaced with the small bones,
fragile tokens of protection orfarewell.
To the casual eye, the Tophetmay seem like a cemetery, but
here the silence is heavier, thededications darker.
There was no field of rest, buta sanctuary of fire where

(03:52):
innocence and offerings blurredand where the gods of Carthage
demanded remembrance in ash andstone.
The discoveries grow strangerstill.
Within the urns, thearchaeologists found not only
the cremated remains of infants,but the bones of animals, most
often lambs.
Both children and beasts hadbeen burned, sometimes on the

(04:14):
same pyres, then sealed togetherin clay.
The lambs were usually only afew months old, suggesting the
rites followed the turning ofthe seasons, aligned with the
birth of flocks.
For centuries, the Topet borewitness to these mingled flames.
Whether sacrifice, burial orritual, we can no longer wholly

(04:38):
name.
No Carthaginian texts surviveto clarify the rituals that took
place here, leaving the Topetof Carthage shrouded in mystery
and debate.
However, carthaginianinscriptions do refer to the
location as a house, temple orsanctuary, not a burial ground.
Yet the Topheth of Carthage wasnot unique.
Across the Phoeniciansettlements in the western
Mediterranean, everywhere exceptthe Iberian Peninsula and Ibiza

(05:01):
, archaeologists have uncoveredsimilar fegals of urns, each
holding the cremated remains ofinfants and lambs buried beneath
stone-carved monuments.
These sanctuaries stretch fromCarthage itself to Malta,
sardinia and Sicily, tracing theexpansion of Phoenician and
later Carthaginian influence.
Their earliest stone markersappeared at Salambo in Carthage

(05:25):
around 650 BCE, spreading toMoitia and Tharos by 600 BCE.
Over the next centuries,tophids multiplied, particularly
in southern Sardinia and inlandTunisia.
Some remained even in use afterCarthage's destruction in 146
BCE.
Under Roman rule, dedicationshifted.

(05:46):
Inscriptions began namingSaturn as the deity honored, and
the offerings were not childrenbut lambs, goats, birds or even
plants.
By the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, their use declined, but for
nearly a millennium thesegrounds were made active sites
of rituals.
Ancient writers, though oftenhostile to Carthage, left

(06:08):
chilling accounts of what theybelieved took place here.
The Greek historian DiodorusSiculus wrote that during a
siege in 310 BCE, carthaginiansdesperate to appease the god
Cronus, sacrificed 200 noblechildren, while others offered
themselves voluntarily.
He described a bronze statuewith outstretched hands sloping

(06:31):
downward into a fiery pit inwhich the children fell.
Glutarch, writing in the 1stcentury CE, gave a similarly
grim account.
Parents are the wealthy whopurchase children from the poor
but place them before the statue, their cries drawn out by drums
and flutes so that the crowdwouldn't hear them.
Later, Christian authors likeTertullian and Marcus Minucius

(06:54):
Felix accused the Carthaginiansof continuing the practice in
secret.
Accused the Carthaginians ofcontinuing the practice in
secret, even suggestingabortions were performed as
ritual sacrifices.
So far we've traced the evidencethat cast the Tophet of
Carthage as a grim altar, less aburial ground than a sanctuary,
where fire was believed toconsume innocence in exchange

(07:14):
for a divine favor.
Yet shadows stir among thestones and doubt lingers.
Not all scholars hear the samecries in the ash.
To some, these urns speak notof sacrifice but of sorrow.
An infant cemetery set apart, aplace where grieving families
carved prayers into stone andtucked amulets beside tiny bones

(07:35):
.
The silence of the site is opento many readings.
To some it whispers of ritualslaughter, to others it murmurs
of mourning.
On the other side of the debateare those who argue that the
evidence is too sparse, tooambiguous, and that the ancient
text may have been written withulterior motives, particularly
concerning Rome's bitter warwith Carthage.

(07:58):
No other classical sourcesmention child sacrifice at
Carthage, and while the Biblereferences Tophets, it never
directly names this one.
Ulterior explanations abound.
Some archaeologists suggest theTophet may have been a
specialized burial ground forinfants, deliberately set apart
from adult cemeteries.
The amulets, offerings andcarefully maintained graves

(08:22):
could reflect ritual care forchildren who died naturally,
perhaps even in the ways ofepidemic disease, as Carthage's
population swelled.
Inscriptions invoking Baal andTanit may not record sacrifices
at all, but instead prayers forrenewal, protection or fertility
for grieving families.
Even the ancient testimoniesare fraught with problems.

(08:45):
Writers like Diodorus andPlutarch were not eyewitnesses.
They contradicted one anotherwith how the children were
killed and described oldervictims, whereas the
archaeological remains areoverwhelmingly infants.
The lurid stories of bronzestatues and fiery pits don't
align with the cremated bonesfound in the urns.

(09:06):
And, given their hostilitytoward Carthage, it's not
difficult to imagineexaggeration or outlight slander
shaping their accounts.
Western classical authors oftenpainted eastern rites in
grotesque colors.
They relished recounting talesof Venetian's child's sacrifice
and in doing so branded theCarthaginians with a

(09:27):
blood-soaked reputation thatendured for centuries.
Roman writers eager to provetheir defeated enemy was
barbaric.
Further distortedVenetian-inspired cults to cast
Rome's conquest as a moraltriumph over savagery.
The Bible too speaks of thepractice of molt rituals,
slaughter of children offered toBaal and passages from the

(09:48):
second kings, exodus andJeremiah.
These sacrifices were placednear Jerusalem, in the valley of
Ben-Hingham, a site rememberedas a place of slaughter and
identified as Phoetian in origin.
Whether the Venetians trulyearned their grim reputation as
baby killers is a question onlymodern scholarship has begun to

(10:09):
untangle.
It's also worth remembering thathuman sacrifice wasn't unique
to Carthage, but woven into thefabric of many ancient cultures.
In the Old Testament, abrahamraises the knife over his son
cultures.
In the Old Testament, abrahamraises the knife over his son,
isaac.
In the texts from Ugarit, thefirstborns are pledged in times
of peril, and in Homer's Iliad,king Agamemnon is compelled to

(10:30):
sacrifice his daughter so thatthe Greek fleet may sail for
Troy.
Against this backdrop, theCarthaginian tophet, whether
cemetery, sanctuary orsacrificial ground, was part of
a much broader and moreunsettling human story, one that
, according to Oxford scholars,deserves to be studied not as
slander, but as a window intohow ancient civilizations

(10:53):
understood life, death and thedivine.
Death and the divine.
Dr Josephine Quinn of OxfordUniversity's Faculty of Classics
has argued that the evidence isnow too strong to ignore.
It's becoming increasinglyclear that the stories about
Carthaginian child sacrifice aretrue and that this is something
the Romans and Greeks said theCarthaginians did, and it was

(11:15):
part of the popular history ofCarthage in the 18th and 19th
centuries.
But in the 18th and 19thcenturies, but in the 20th
century, people increasinglytook the view that this was
racist propaganda on part of theGreeks and Romans against their
political enemy and thatCarthage should be saved from
this terrible slander.
What we are now saying is thatthe archaeological, literary and

(11:36):
documentary evidence for childsacrifice is overwhelming and
that, instead of dismissing it,we should try to understand it.
And yet, with such conviction,the earth resists giving up its
secrets.
The bones themselves areelusive, fragile fragments that
refuse to speak with one voice.
They're the only testimony wepossess, and yet their whispers

(11:57):
are riddled with ambiguity, atonce suggestive of ritual fire
and just as easily the ashes ofgrief.
One osteological study of 540individuals suggested that
nearly 40% had died before orduring childbirth, based on the
bone size and tooth development.
Critics countered that theburning process itself, though

(12:20):
distorted these remains, makingit nearly impossible to
distinguish natural death fromritual killing.
Burial practices for infantshave often differed from those
from adults across cultures, sothe Tophet's unusual form does
not by itself prove sacrifice.
The true scale of Phoeniciansacrifice is difficult to gauge,

(12:40):
and it's unlikely to have beena routine ritual.
No society can endure thesteady loss of its own young.
Ancient accounts suggest thatsuch offerings only arose in
moments of crisis, when warpressed at the gates, when
plagues stalked the streets orwhen famine and disaster
threatened collapse.
Even in Phoenician myth, thegod El gives up his son Lud, not

(13:04):
as custom but as a desperateact to preserve his people from
ruin.
Diodorus records that duringthe siege of Argento in the 5th
century BCE, the Carthaginiangeneral Hamilcar surrendered a
child to the flames as diseaseswept through his army.
And in nearly all suchnarratives it's not the children
of the poor who were named, butthose of rulers and nobles

(13:28):
lives considered heavy enough tosway the gods when common blood
was thought to hold littleweight.
Among modern scholars too, thedebate refuses to rest.
Some scholars insist that everychild interred within the
Tophet was sacrificed.
There are scholars who believeonly a portion met this fate.
Still other scholars that nonewere and that the place was less

(13:50):
an altar than a hollowedcemetery, sanctified by fire but
not by slaughter.
The Italian scholar Palo Zellaoffers perhaps the most tempered
view that the Tophet was not afield of endless massacre, but a
sacred ground of ceremonies,where child sacrifice was rare,
summoned only in times of direcrisis, and where lambs and

(14:12):
other animals often stood insubstitution for human lives.
The weight of controversy makesstepping into these grounds feel
all the more dramatic, and yetthe topit itself hardly looks
like a place of horror.
Time has crumbled its stones,but the sun still spills across
sand and palm and the sight liesquiet beneath a sky that feels

(14:33):
more like a holiday than ahaunting.
The effect is disarming,inviting wonder, confusion and
unease in equal measure.
So we turn the question to you,listeners of the Grimm.
What do you see here?
A burial ground for lives lostto young, an altar of fire and
sacrifice?
Or perhaps both tangledtogether in ash and myth?

(14:56):
Share your thoughts with us onInstagram and join the debate
that still divides scholars andwanderers alike.
For whether a cemetery, asanctuary or a place of
fire-born offerings, the Tofitof Carthage endures as one of
antiquity's most hauntingenigmas.
And in the silence left byCarthage itself, no words of

(15:17):
their own to explain, only ashes, stone and the hostile whispers
of enemies remain, daring us topiece together a truth the
centuries have tried to erase.
As we leave the topher ofCarthage to its sands, the
stories slip back into stone andthe dead return to their uneasy
rest, but they're never quietfor long.

(15:38):
Thank you for walking with usthrough the veil and into the
topher of Carthage and fordescending once more into the
hauntings of history.
The gate is sealed, the veildrawn, but death keeps no
calendar, and so we shall return, as we always do, on the grim.