The Ultimate Sacrifice

This story from the Greek oral tradition stands out as one of the most heinous crimes of the Trojan War. King Agamemnon made a foolish boast against Artemis after shooting a stag through the heart with a single arrow. She cursed his upcoming expedition against Troy unless he made a sacrifice: his eldest daughter Iphegenia. He obliged, and the war was ultimately successful, but the cruel king himself was murdered when he returned home by avenging family members. There is a similar story in the Bible's Old Testament centering around Jephtha, a Charismatic Judge who swore to sacrifice the first creature that approached him when he returned home if God would grant him a victory over the Philistines. The first creature was his daughter, whom he sacrificed to Yahweh, an event that stands completely alone in Judeo-Christian scriptures. The Greeks, Hebrews, and Romans had come to feel that human sacrifice was wrong by the 500's BCE or before, and kept it out of their worship, exiling it to their oral traditions as cautionary tales rather than promotional stories.

All this is to say that the Phoenicians were not alone in sacrificing people to their gods, but they were getting lonelier when they extended that practice into the early 100's CE. Carthage was the most powerful of the old Phoenician colonies, and by the 300's BCE its power was slowly being crushed under the weight of political corruption and a vacuum in leadership. Having almost no native military power because of their tendency to hire foreign mercenaries to do their fighting, they could only appeal to their gods when Scipio Africanus was at their gates.

The Phoenician deities were of a much older variety than the Greco-Roman gods, being much more like the savage Titans than the diplomatic Olympians. Ba'al was their chief deity, and his very name is derived from the Semitic word El, which means god, and is used in Hebrew words like El Shaddai or Elohim, referring to Yahweh and his angels. His partner goddess was Tanit, whose symbol included a crescent moon and star not unlike the modern Islamic symbol. The Romans identified Ba'al as Saturn, the father of Jupiter who had been usurped by the Olympians years ago, and it seems likely that they factored this into their ideas of superiority to the Carthaginians.

To me, the evidence of child sacrifice in Carthage is very clear. There are mass graves filled with children whose bones have been charred by sacrificial fire. Those who try and make the case that the children had already died of some disease or natural cause before being cremated are ignoring the fact that no evidence of any disease has been found among the remaining bones. I know very well the desire to demonize the Romans and try to rewrite history based on how we would have liked it, but the facts are the facts, and I see no benefit to these attempts at making the Carthaginians into something they are not.

In the cult of Ba'al, children were sacrificed to gain special favor from the gods. The idea was that only blood could show your true devotion to the gods' fame, and what better way to show your true devotion than giving your own child? The Romans and Greeks certainly were no strangers to the idea of blood sacrifice, often killing bulls, birds, and other animals in acts of worship and for divination, but human sacrifice of any kind had long since been outlawed by the Punic Wars.

That is not to say that the Carthaginians always sacrificed their own children. There are accounts (from 800 BCE) of aristocrats buying slave children to sacrifice in place of their own, but in times of famine, war, and hardship the priests would encourage parents to give their youngest child to the fires of Ba'al. Ba'al was associated with the sun, and by extension, fire, which is why the children were killed with a ceremonial knife before being thrown into the blaze.

One bit of evidence that often escapes Carthaginian apologists is the account of young Hannibal joining his father for a campaign in Iberia. It is written that he begged his father repeatedly to join him, and that his father, bitter from the recent defeats in the First Punic War, agreed to take Hannibal only if he would swear an oath against friendship with Rome. Hannibal responded by placing his arm over a nearby open firepit and swearing that he would use fire and steel to arrest the destiny of Rome. While this story is probably mostly fiction, it displays a practice that seems logical for a people who worship a god of fire. What better way to swear an oath by such a god than by allowing the fire to singe you just a little bit to prove your devotion?

No matter how antiquated or barbaric it seems to us, sacrificing animals to appease gods can certainly be said to contribute to the later spread of Christianity, which presented Christ, the sinless man who served as a blood sacrifice for all who believe.

Pax vobiscum

Theology Thursday: The Cult of Artemis

Looking at the statue of the Ephesian Artemis reminds me of when I lived in Japan, as the slender statue looks more like a Shinto deity than a Greek goddess. In fact, if you were to compare the idols of the Greek gods with the statue of Artemis which came from Ephesus, you'd probably think you were looking at completely different religious icons. And, in a way, you'd be right.

Artemis is unique among the Greek deities because she never married or had 'relations' with the other gods. She preferred the hunt to a dinner party, and the human lovers who were lucky enough to win her affection always met with tragic death, sometimes at her hand. She was the goddess of the moon, but the forest and childbirth were also within her realm of protection. Hunters would often lay the skins and horns of their prey upon a tree branch before leaving the woods as an offering so that Artemis wouldn't hunt them down for killing the animals before she had the chance. Women would cry out to her during childbirth in hope of relief from their pain either by the child emerging or receiving a quick death. The Greeks of Peloponnessus, that's the European side of ancient Greece, far preferred Zeus or Ares as their important deities, but for the Ephesians, none other than Artemis would do.

The Artemis image from Ephesus sticks out like a sore thumb in the Pantheon of Greek gods, and that is because that image predates Greek settlement in Asia Minor. It seems that before the Greek colonists came, the Ionian natives had built a matriarchal culture around a fertility goddess whose name has been erased by the fog of time. When the Greeks came and conquered the place, they adopted the image and claimed that it was Artemis, since the Greeks were fond of syncretism (that means incorporating local deities into your religion – word of the day!).

The Greek culture was extremely patriarchal, especially in Athens. Though it is true that Spartan women could own land and personal property (something Athenian women had no right to), this was done mostly out of necessity since the Spartans practiced open marriage. Thus it became necessary for the Greek priests to first break down the matriarchal local religion before they could alter the culture as well. Since the ancient worldview was typically that reality reflected the divine realm, those Ionians who were conquered must have figured that their religion was backwards, and so gave in to the priests and renamed their statue.

Her unique appearance, combined with the need for ancient people to have a lot of children to hedge their bet, made her a popular deity, and her temple in Ephesus was three times larger than the Parthenon temple that the Athenians built for their patron god Athena. In fact, the Ephesian Temple of Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the Ancient world, making Ephesus a huge tourist attraction for people from every corner of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Ephesus being a coastal town, its economy was dependent on trade and tourism, so much so that there was once a riot against Christian missionaries organized by idol craftsmen who feared the sag in their income that a more popular god would bring! You can read more about this uprising in Acts chapter 19, which is a very informative account of the fame of the Ephesian Artemis.

The cult surrounding Artemis, ironically, centered around her virginity. Priests who served this moon goddess would willingly castrate themselves while men who went off to war would swear vows of chastity before the idols and likely keep a pocket-sized version with them as a reminder. While encamped in rugged hills on campaign, I imagine many a veteran Hoplite telling a tale around a cookfire all about a foolish young soldier who broke his vow to Artemis and brought his entire army to ruin. There were many such tales, since the Greeks were so fond of Fables.

Though Artemis was widely beloved, she eventually fell to the cross, as did all her Olympian brethren. Over time, the Roman Empire became more and more Christian through either proselytizing or by political manipulation, and the old gods were cast aside like yesterday's newspaper. Artemis would hunt no more.

Pax vobiscum