The Carthage tophet, is an ancient sacred area dedicated to the Phoenician deities Tanit and Baal, located in the Carthaginian district of Salammbô, Tunisia, near the Punic ports.

The major difficulty in determining the cause of the burials lies in the fact that the only written sources reporting the rite of child sacrifice are all foreign to the city of Carthage (for example, Bible).

[5]These stelae were scattered throughout the Carthage archaeological site due to the dispersal that occurred following its destruction in 146 BC and the subsequent urban development activities that disturbed the soil during the construction of the Roman city.

[6]A special place in Carthage's history must also be given to the cargo of the Louvre and the sinking of the Magenta, flagship of the Mediterranean fleet, which sank at Toulon on October 31, 1875, following a fire followed by an explosion.

The archaeological finds had been loaded at La Goulette, and came from the excavations (authorized by Sadok Bey) of Pricot de Sainte-Marie, an interpreter for the French General Consulate.

Following the shipwreck, the divers recovered some of the steles and the statue, while the archaeological pieces were dispersed among various collections, including the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Three archaeological campaigns were carried out in 1995–1998 by Max Guérout and the Groupe de recherche en archéologie navale to recover steles and the head of the statue.

Faced with a piece that seemed to confirm in every respect the biblical data and certain classical authors, the two enthusiasts were moved and decided to put an end to the clandestinity so that no discovery could escape the notice of archaeologists and historians.

[citation needed] The first American excavation, led by Francis Willey Kelsey and Donald Benjamin Harden in 1925, provided a comprehensive understanding of the site's organization.

Surrounded by masonry in a chamber measuring approximately 1 m², what was interpreted as a high-period foundation deposit was made up of ceramic pieces of various origins dating from the 7th century BC, the earliest evidence of the Phoenician presence on this land.

[13] These latest excavations, linked to the international campaign led by UNESCO, took place between 1976 and 1979 under the aegis of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) and Lawrence Stager.

[14]The remains discovered during the initial excavations were subjected to forensic analysis, the results of which caused more confusion than provided answers to the nagging questions posed by specialists.

[citation needed] The typology of the finds, and stelae in particular, is the fruit of American excavations, starting with the Kelsey-Harden digs of 1925, and was refined in the 1970s, as summarized by François Decret: "Taking into account the various types of pottery containing the ashes of victims and the installation of sacrificial deposits, we can distinguish three phases in this stratification: the earliest, where the vases were covered under piles of small stones or pebbles; the second [...] which contains urns placed under obelisk-shaped stones, baetylus or under cippes of various types; and the most recent, characterized by flat stelae with triangular tops, sometimes flanked by acroterion".

[citation needed] There are many religious symbols, including the sign of Tanit, long considered to be specific to the Phoenicians of the western Mediterranean basin, but examples of which have been discovered in excavations in present-day Lebanon.

Diodorus Siculus refers to them at length in connection with the attack on Carthage by Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse:[23] "They [the Carthaginians] considered that Cronus was also hostile to them, because they, who had previously sacrificed the best of their sons to this god, had begun secretly buying children whom they then fed and sent to the sacrifice.

Considering these things, and seeing the enemy [Agathocles' army] encamped before the walls, they felt a religious dread at the thought of having ruined the traditional honors due to the gods.

Among them [in Carthage] was a bronze statue of Cronus, with hands outstretched, palm up, and bent towards the ground, so that the child placed in it would roll and fall into a pit full of fire".

[24] Dionysius of Halicarnassus refers to the supposed human sacrifices in his Antiquités romaines (I, 38, 2): "It is said that the ancients sacrificed to Cronus in the way that was done in Carthage for as long as the city lasted".

Later, Tertullian, in the Apologeticus, considered that "children were publicly immolated to Saturn, in Africa, until the proconsulship of Tiberius, who had the very priests of this god exposed, tied alive to the very trees of his temple, which covered these crimes with their shadow, as to so many votive crosses: I take as witness my father who, as a soldier, carried out this order of the proconsul.

[26] Faced with these damning texts, it's worth pointing out the silence of other historians,[weasel words] particularly when it comes to major sources for ancient history such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius or Livy Titus, Lancel points out that "[this] silence [...] stands out sharply in the concert of accusations of impiety and perfidy that are, among classical authors, the usual lot of the Carthaginians".

[27] According to this specialist, such an absence makes sense, as these ancient authors would point out any attitude they found shocking in relation to the ordinary practices of their Greek or Latin cultures.