Did the Carthaginians in antiquity actually sacrifice their children in religious rituals?

by Dom19
Antique_futurist

There isn't a true consensus one way or the other. I think scholars on the whole lean towards 'it's possible'. Since our only literary sources are Greco-Roman, we have to be extremely wary of them, as the Romans were masters of subjective history.

As for excavations, in "Carthage Must Be Destroyed" R Miles fairly well describes the current debate in archaeology over the Tophet, a set of cemeteries for infants and children that could represent either child sacrifice or just separate burial practices for the young. Given the number and status of the remains (tens of thousands at last count) and the parallel accounts of Phoenician child sacrifice, it's plausibly true, but the evidence isn't undeniable.

I believe that if we were more confident of the Ancient Near Eastern religious traditions the Phoenician settlers brought to Carthage we'd be more confident about what the Carthaginians themselves did.