Image Details

Grim vestiges of a barbarian ritual. In the urn below this sandstone monument, the ashes of a sacrificed child were buried. The monument stands in the tophet, or Phoenician sacred burial ground, at Carthage. The weathered relief on the monument depicts the goddess Tanit holding a tambourine and standing in the portal of a temple. This burial dates to 400300 B.C., but an older layer of sacrificial burials at Carthage dates to 750–600 B.C, Phoenician colonists practiced child sacrifice in Sardinia, as well, and established a similar tophet at Tharros probably in the eighth century B.C.