An Anthropological Approach to the Question of Child Sacrifice

Discover the seventh session of the 2025–2026 seminar series "Crossed Perspectives on Early Childhood" – "An Anthropological Approach to the Question of Child Sacrifice in Light of Recent Tunisian Excavations at the Carthage Sanctuary Known as the 'Tophet of Salammbô'."

The seminar approaches early childhood as a social, historical, and cultural construct. Knowledge and theories relating to conception, birth, and child development are analysed in terms of the child’s interactions with their surroundings and according to gender norms. The seminar also explores the boundaries of this age category and its temporality, according to medical, international, anthropological, and historical standards.

In 1862, Gustave Flaubert presented in his novel Salammbô a dramatic depiction of child sacrifices within the besieged city: young victims are cast into an intense fire burning inside a gigantic statue of the god Moloch. Is this an expression of historical reality or a Roman‑oriented discourse intended to stigmatize the alleged cruelty of their enemies? The National Heritage Institute of Tunisia has recently resumed excavations at the sanctuary of Baʿal Hammon and Tanit in Carthage, discovered in 1921 and known as the Tophet of Salammbô, thus providing a unique opportunity to revisit a heated controversy more than a century old. Biological anthropology analyses of the burned bones contained in nearly 200 urns supply crucial evidence for reconstructing cremation practices and for interpreting them, situated between mass sacrifice and funerary rites.

• Henri Duday: Emeritus Research Director at CNRS, UMR 5199 PACEA, University of Bordeaux
• Émilie Portat: Associate Professor at Université Paris 1 – Panthéon‑Sorbonne, UMR 7040 Arscan
• Imed Ben Jerbania: Research Fellow at the National Heritage Institute of Tunisia
• Discussant: Nathalie Sage Pranchère: Historian, CNRS, UMR 7219 SPHERE