Yet the interpretive process that draws a straight line between rites described in the Hebrew Bible (like the “first fruits” offering) and the archaeological remains of tophets raises another key question: What is the connection between the textually attested rites in Canaan/Israel and those in the Phoenician West?
The Origins of the Rites
Modern scholarship often uses evidence for practices described in the Hebrew Bible to help interpret tophets; even the name for this type of sanctuary explicitly makes such a connection, for it is borrowed from the specific place—Tophet—near Jerusalem, where children were “made to pass through a fire,” sometimes explicitly in a mlk rite (Xella 2013: 264). Yet while the mlk rite may have existed in the ancient Near East, it was fundamentally transformed—newly institutionalized and monumentalized—in the colonial contexts of the central Mediterranean (Quinn 2011).
To date, no archaeological evidence for tophets has been found east of Malta or (prior to the fall of Carthage) west of Cirta. Stelae discovered in Tyre that were originally hypothesized as evidence for a tophet were later shown to be regular tomb markers (Moscati 1993). A number of urns containing the remains of children discovered at Amathus (Cyprus) have only been published preliminarily, but for the moment they seem to represent a children’s section of an adult cemetery (Christou 1998).
Instead, the formation of large tophet precincts where the remains of mlk rites were collected, buried, and marked seems to be closely linked to Phoenician colonization of the central Mediterranean. The earliest tophets are all roughly contemporary with each other and with the foundation of the colonies in which they sit. Ceramic evidence places the foundation of Carthage around 775 bce; the earliest datable ceramics at Salammbô (in the “chapelle Cintas”) can be dated to around the middle of the eighth century (Bénichou-Safar 2004: 121–29). At Sulcis (Sardinia), the earliest domestic assemblages and tophet pottery date to the mid- to late eighth century bce (Melchiorri 2008: 113–15); the same is true at Motya in Sicily (Ciasca 1992: 116). The two inscriptions mentioning mlk sacrifices from Malta have been dated paleographically slightly later, contemporary with Phoenician colonization of the island. The other archaic tophets—at Bitia (Sardinia), Tharros (Sardinia), Nora (Sardinia), and Hadrumetum (Tunisia)—all date one or two generations later, but seem contemporary with the foundations of those colonies. The contemporaneity of these earliest tophets suggests that the rite itself must have existed prior to colonization; it was not invented at one of these sites and then somehow disseminated to other colonies.
Why did central Mediterranean Phoenician colonies found tophets, while western Phoenician colonies in Iberia and Morocco did not? María Eugenia Aubet (2001: 254–55) suggests that there was a planned difference between urban colonies (which included tophets) and commercial colonies (which did not). Sabatino Moscati (1991) saw a similar distinction that developed over time, but privileged Carthage as a center in which the mlk developed and spread. Paolo Bernardini (1996) likewise sees Carthage as central, dividing the Phoenician West into the “Circle of the Strait,” more closely tied to the Levant, and the “Circle of Carthage,” linked to that city and reflecting its unique mlk practices. Given the archaeological data that question the chronological priority of Salammbô, Bruno D’Andrea, and Sara Giardino (2011) have suggested that the foundation of archaic tophets, connected to a deity of limited importance in the Levant, may have been a way for the “political refugees” founding these new colonies to express an identity distinct from that of the Tyrian elite. Josephine Quinn (2013) similarly suggests that the tophet-founding immigrants in these colonies were part of a distinct Phoenician socioreligious group who, in diaspora, further developed their contrast with “mainstream” Phoenician religion by emphasizing tophet-rites.
Further institutionalization of the rite seems to have happened in tandem at these archaic tophets, all the while each community worked to create connections to and distinctions from its peers. In the earliest strata of the first-generation tophets, the deposits lacked worked-stone monuments. At Salammbô, a range of carved markers appeared around 650 bce, including geometric shapes, thrones, and above all, small shrines (naiskoi; Bénichou-Safar 2004: 36–37, 68–69). About a generation later (around 600 bce), similar markers began to appear at other tophet sites, including Motya and Tharros (Bondì 2004).
This practice of monumentally marking at least some deposits may reflect a response to Carthaginian models, and yet the iconography of the monuments at each site focuses on different points of reference and identification (Quinn 2013). At Carthage, most monuments show geometric figures (lozenges, “baetyls,” and “bottle-idols”), while those at Sulcis focus on a wide range of human figures. The “stool-altar” appears at Motya, Sulcis, Tharros, and Nora, reproducing a motif popular in the Levant, but unattested at Carthage (Moscati and Uberti 1981: 62). That is, although each sanctuary community seems to have been aware of what its peers at other sites were doing, and adapting their ritual practice along similar lines, each created its own imagined linkages to other places and rites. The ritual operation of burning, burying, and marking certain offerings to Baal Hammon (and Tanit at Carthage) was consistent, yet each community of worshippers situated that practice differently and freighted it with different meanings through the iconography of the monuments.
Tophets in the Roman Empire
Given that all ancient cult practices—including mlk rites—were enmeshed with wider social and cultural dynamics, as Roman hegemony transformed Punic territories, tophets underwent myriad changes. The island tophets seem gradually to have gone out of use in the third to first centuries bce as their communities of worshippers moved or found other ways of dealing with the gods. Yet in North Africa, the number of tophets increased dramatically in the generations following the destruction of Carthage, and these late tophets are often used as evidence of Punic “continuity” through the imperial period (see chapter 14, this volume).
Yet two features of these new tophets suggest a more complex picture (McCarty 2018a). First, these new foundations date several generations after the destruction of Carthage: they are not the product of a Carthaginian diaspora spreading through inland Africa in the wake of the 146 bce disaster (as suggested by D’Andrea and Giardino 2013). Second, the range of offerings buried at these sites becomes much wider (McCarty and Quinn 2015): in addition to infants and lambs, some communities offered only ovicaprines, while others chose entirely new offerings, like birds or only plants. The inscriptions from these new tophets also include far more worshippers with “Libyan” names. These changes, coupled with the appropriation of other Carthaginian terms and institutions, suggests that communities across North Africa were reimagining tophets and mlk rites. The adoption of mlk practices and related monuments, but applied to new offerings by new groups, especially in towns on the border between the Roman province of Africa (Vetus) and the Numidian kingdom, may be tied to the ways these communities sought to find a potent middle ground for identification—Carthage—between the two new political powers they faced (McCarty and Quinn 2015).
Even at Hadrumetum, a tophet that was founded in the seventh or sixth century bce, demonstrates the impact of incorporation into the Roman Empire and the reinvention of mlk traditions (McCarty 2011). In the first century bce through the first century ce, the iconography of the stelae changed dramatically to include scenes of sacrificants at altar, accompanied by sacrificial animals. One such sacrificant even wears a toga capite velato in imitation of Roman civic sacrifices and their representation, setting his own act in the context of the new religious and political norms of the empire. In the final level of the tophet, mlk sacrifices cease altogether; only carved stone monuments were erected in the precinct. Visible connections to past practices were maintained, even while those practices themselves were abandoned.
With a few exceptions, many tophets underwent substantial changes in the late second–early third centuries ce, as mlk rites—especially of infants—declined. The la
st stela we can date is from 323, and the last lamb in a pot dates probably to around 400–420 (Hr. el-Hami). Tophet areas including those at Hr. el-Hami (Ferjaoui 2007), Thugga (McCarty 2013), and Ammaedara (Baratte and Benzina ben Abdallah 2000) were replaced with temples dedicated to Saturn. The end of tophets has often been connected with a corrupt passage in Tertullian describing Roman authorities putting a violent end to human sacrifice in the late second century ce (Tert. Apol. 9.2–3). Still, most tophets show signs of transition to temples or gradual abandonment rather than sudden closure or destruction. Rather than statal intervention, the decline of popularity of the mlk sacrifice seems to have been driven by wider social changes and internal factors. Brent Shaw (2016), for example, argues that the decline of the rite was driven by African elites embracing cosmopolitan “Roman” norms and seeking to end potentially embarrassing local practices. In similar terms, I have argued elsewhere (McCarty 2011, in press) for changing social expectations driving the decline of the mlk, but stemming rather from elite competition in sacrifice that privileged public spectacle and communal dining: both modalities of cult that were incompatible with the personal holocaust sacrifice of a child.
The social and cultural pressures that drove these changes in practice might have been felt widely in an interconnected region, leading to common responses like the abandonment of mlk sacrifices and the transformation of tophet sites to temple sites. And yet such responses were also deeply localized, tied to the personal and social dynamics of an individual community. For example, in the early fifth century ce, at Henchir el-Hami—a tophet where mlk sacrifices had not been made for nearly 200 years—worshippers burned and buried one last offering, a lamb, reimagining and mobilizing older ritual practices in an increasingly Christian world (McCarty 2013). Even in their twilight, tophets were hardly a monolithic phenomenon, but were predicated upon the imaginations and innovations of individual worshippers.
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