So apparently the Caannites are known to sacrifice children and even practice cannibalism. I buy that since in reality, most ancient cultures did do some level of human sacrificing though to different degrees. But the big question was, just how common and significant, was it?
I'm doubtful of biblical sources because a group of people doing mass murder would have very good reason to demonize the people they were slaughtering. A kind of 'history is determined by the victors' situation. Plus I'm highly certain there are instances in the bible which aren't as accurate as described.
I totally buy that human sacrifices and so on was a thing. Since that's common and almost every ancient culture.
But just how extreme was it really? And more importantly, are there any non-biblical sources? Like any archaeological records?
Trigger warning because these details get gruesome at times.
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Child sacrifice is widely attested among the Phoenicians and Canaanites and Punic peoples in the Mediterranean. This is attested not only in hostile sources like Diodorus, Lucian, Plutarch, and the Church Fathers, but also from Philo of Byblos, who was a Canaanite (Phoenician) himself and attests that they would burn children alive. This is the most widely attested practice in literary sources of the time. One particularly visceral story goes as follows:
Again, would it not have been far better for the Carthaginians to have taken Critias or Diagoras to draw up their law-code at the very beginning, and so not to believe in any divine power or god, rather than to offer such sacrifices as they used to offer to Cronos? These were not in the manner that Empedocles describes in his attack on those who sacrifice living creatures:
"Changed in form is the son beloved of his father so pious,Who on the altar lays him and slays him. What folly !"
No, but with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums so that the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people. (Plutarch, Moralia 2, De Superstitione 13)
The legend is corroborated by the epigraphic evidence. In this case, we are relatively certain following Otto Eissfeldt that there was no deity named "moloch" but that the lmlk was a type of sacrifice, specifically of children. It is widely attested in Punic epigraphic sources.
Another account goes:
They also alleged that Kronos had turned against them inasmuch as in former times they had been accustomed to sacrifice to this god the noblest of their sons, but more recently, secretly buying and nurturing children, they had sent these to the sacrifice; and when an investigation was made, some of those who had been sacrificed were discovered to have been substituted by stealth... In their zeal to make amends for the omission, they selected two hundred of the noblest children and sacrificed them publicly; and others who were under suspicion sacrificed themselves voluntarily, in number not less than three hundred. There was in the city a bronze image of Kronos, extending its hands, palms up and sloping towards the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire. It is probable that it was from this that Euripides has drawn the mythical story found in his works about the sacrifice in Tauris, in which he presents Iphigeneia being asked by Orestes:
"But what tomb shall receive me when I die? A sacred fire within, and earth's broad rift."
Also the story passed down among the Greeks from ancient myth that Cronus did away with his own children appears to have been kept in mind among the Carthaginians through this observance. (Diodorus Siculus, Library 20.14)
I regret that the stories only get more gruesome in detail and can be intensely horrifying to read. So, I caution you on this. It is not for the light hearted. While many have sought to dismiss these accounts as polemical, Philo of Byblos and Punic sources attest to this, and we have further found the burnt remains of children in numerous places. While some wish to argue this was of dead bodies, they find no support and the literary sources on all sides make it clear this was a living sacrifice. I find no reason to doubt these accounts given Philo's testimony.
Stavrakopoulou notes that "Stelae have been found at sites at Carthage, Cirta and Sousse (Roman Hadrumetum) in modem Tunisia, Motya and Lillibeum in Sicily, and Tharros, Sulcis, Monte Sirai and Nora in Sardinia" which all attest to the mlk sacrifice, showing that this was not isolated to Carthage and so is likely something all these Canaanite colonies inherited from their ancestors. At Hierapolis, instead of burning children alive, they threw them from rooftops it appears.
Sources:
Dewrell expands on this in his 2018 volume, demonstrating that it was very likely that child sacrifice occurred amongst the Israelites as well.
Harold Attridge and Robert Oden Jr., Philo of Byblos the Phoenician History: Introduction, Critical Text, Translation, Notes, CBQMS 9 (W. D. C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1981), 61-63.
Harold Attridge and Robert Oden, De Dea Syria (Scholars Press, 1976), 59
Heath Dewrell, Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2018), 8-16.
Albert Baumgarten, The Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 244-247
Francesca Stavrakopoulou, King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 216-217
Seeing as the carthaginians were originally canaanites and practiced a caananite religion, this answer by u/yodatsracist might be of interest to you:
These papers are about Carthage rather than Canaan, but as it's been brought up in connection already I figure it's worth adding to the discussion:
*Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage Do Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of Infants, Schwartz et al 2010
*Two tales of one city: data, inference and Carthaginian infant sacrifice, Schwartz et al 2017
The main gist is that the bioarchaeology of the Tophet cemeteries is not consistent with a model of widespread child sacrifice, but rather of simple perinatal mortality, from a wide variety of causes of death.