By Selwyn Duke
“We like to think that we’re quite close to the ancient world, that they were really just like us,” said Oxford ancient history lecturer Josephine Quinn in 2014, talking about Carthaginian infant sacrifice. The “truth is,” she continued, “that they really weren’t.”
While true that even some contemporary cultures (e.g., the Taliban) are alien to us, never mind B.C.-era, North African pagans, we may have a bit more in common with the Carthaginians than the academic thinks. Those ancients, after all, sacrificed babies because they wanted better lives. The common explanation for their bloody habit, said Quinn, was “that the gods ‘heard my voice and blessed me.’” Today’s infant sacrifice is likewise driven by a desire for “better lives,” though the god worshiped isn’t Ba’al Hammon but materialism, hedonism, and “self-ism.”
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