En la Biblia hebrea , Tofet o Topheth ( hebreo bíblico : תֹּפֶת , romanizado: Tōp̄eṯ ; griego : Ταφέθ , translit. taphéth ; latín : Topheth ) es un lugar en Jerusalén en el valle de Hinnom (Gehenna) , donde los adoradores participaban en un ritual que implicaba "pasar un niño por el fuego", muy probablemente un sacrificio de niños . Tradicionalmente, los sacrificios se han atribuido a un dios llamado Moloc . La Biblia condena y prohíbe estos sacrificios, y el tofet es finalmente destruido por el rey Josías , aunque las menciones de los profetas Jeremías , Ezequiel e Isaías sugieren que las prácticas asociadas con el tofet pueden haber persistido.
La mayoría de los estudiosos coinciden en que el ritual que se realizaba en el tofet era el sacrificio de niños, y lo relacionan con episodios similares a lo largo de la Biblia y registrados en Fenicia (cuyos habitantes eran denominados cananeos en la Biblia) y Cartago por fuentes helenísticas. Existe desacuerdo sobre si los sacrificios se ofrecían a un dios llamado "Moloch". Basándose en inscripciones fenicias y cartaginesas, un número cada vez mayor de estudiosos cree que la palabra moloch se refiere al tipo de sacrificio en lugar de a una deidad. Actualmente existe una disputa sobre si estos sacrificios estaban dedicados a Yahvé en lugar de a una deidad extranjera.
Los arqueólogos han aplicado el término "tophet" a los grandes cementerios de niños encontrados en yacimientos cartagineses en los que tradicionalmente se ha creído que se habían sacrificado niños humanos, como describen las fuentes helenísticas y bíblicas. Esta interpretación es controvertida, ya que algunos estudiosos sostienen que los tophets pueden haber sido cementerios de niños, rechazando las fuentes helenísticas como propaganda anticartaginesa. Otros sostienen que no todos los entierros en el tophet eran sacrificios.
El tofet y su ubicación luego fueron asociados con el castigo divino en la escatología judía .
No hay consenso sobre la etimología de tophet, una palabra que sólo aparece ocho veces en el Texto Masorético . [1] La palabra puede derivar de la palabra aramea taphyā que significa "hogar", "chimenea" o "asador", [2] una propuesta hecha por primera vez por William Robertson Smith en 1887. [3] Algunos han sugerido que la palabra ha sido alterada mediante el uso de la vocalización de bōsheth "vergüenza". [1] Otros derivan la palabra de la raíz hebrea špt "prender (fuego)", cognado con el ugarítico ṯpd "prender". [4] Una nueva propuesta ha sido hecha para interpretar el término como "lugar de voto" por Robert M. Kerr. [5]
El Talmud ( Eruvin 19a) y Jerónimo derivan el nombre de un verbo hebreo que significa "seducir". [6] La etimología históricamente más significativa, seguida tanto por exégetas judíos como cristianos hasta el período moderno, fue hecha por el rabino Rashi del siglo XI d.C. , quien derivó el término del hebreo toph "tambor", afirmando que los tambores eran golpeados durante el sacrificio a Moloch, derivando sus ideas de la descripción de Plutarco del sacrificio cartaginés. Esta derivación es, sin embargo, morfológicamente imposible. [7]
El tofet aparece 8 veces en la Biblia hebrea, principalmente para designar un lugar de fuego ritual o de quema, pero a veces como nombre de lugar. [1] La conexión con el fuego ritual se hace explícita en 2 Reyes 23:10, Isaías 30:33; y Jeremías 7:31-32. En 2 Reyes, el rey Josías
Y profanó a Tofet, que está en el valle del hijo de Hinom , para que ninguno pasase su hijo ni su hija por el fuego para ofrenda a Moloc.
El texto incluye la destrucción del Tofet entre otras medidas que Josías tomó para eliminar prácticas religiosas "desviadas" de Israel como parte de una reforma religiosa de gran alcance. [8] Sin embargo, la continua condena tanto del tofet como de las prácticas relacionadas por parte de profetas como Jeremías y Ezequiel sugiere que la práctica puede haber continuado después de la reforma de Josías, y una mención del tofet por parte de Isaías sugiere que puede haber continuado incluso después del exilio babilónico . [9] Antes de la reforma de Josías, se menciona el ritual de pasar a un niño por el fuego, sin especificar que se llevaba a cabo en el tofet, como realizado por los reyes israelitas Acaz y Manasés :
Pero Acaz anduvo en el camino de los reyes de Israel, e hizo pasar por el fuego a su hijo, conforme a las abominaciones de las naciones que Jehová había arrojado de delante de los hijos de Israel. (2 Reyes 16:3)
Y Manasés hizo pasar a su hijo por el fuego, y practicó agoreros, y usó de encantamientos, y designó a los que adivinaban por medio de fantasmas y adivinos; y aumentó el mal ante los ojos de Jehová, para provocarle. (2 Reyes 21:6)
Ambos reyes realizan los sacrificios ante la perspectiva de guerras. [10] Los sacrificios parecen haber sido a Yahvé , el dios de Israel, [11] y haber sido realizados en el tofet. [2]
El tofet es condenado repetidamente por su nombre en el Libro de Jeremías , y el término está especialmente asociado con ese libro de la Biblia. [2] Un ejemplo está en Jeremías 7:31–33:
Y han edificado los lugares altos de Tofet, que está en el valle del hijo de Hinom, para quemar al fuego a sus hijos y a sus hijas; cosa que yo no les mandé, ni me pasó por la cabeza. Por tanto, he aquí vienen días, dice Jehová , que no se llamará más Tofet, ni valle del hijo de Hinom, sino Valle de la Matanza; porque en Tofet enterrarán, por falta de espacio.
Jeremías asocia el tofet con Baal ; sin embargo, otras fuentes lo asocian con Moloc. [11]
P. Xella sostiene que no menos de veinticinco pasajes en la Biblia hebrea muestran a los israelitas y cananeos sacrificando a sus hijos, incluidos pasajes en Deuteronomio (Dt. 12:13, 18:10), Levítico (Lev. 18:21, 20:2-5), 2 Reyes, 2 Crónicas , Isaías, Esdras, Salmo 106 y el Libro de Job . [12] En 2 Reyes 3:26-27, el rey Mesha de Moab quema a su hijo primogénito como ofrenda mientras es asediado por los israelitas:
Cuando el rey de Moab vio que la batalla se había encarnizado, tomó consigo setecientos hombres que sacaban espada para abrirse paso hasta el rey de Edom, pero no pudieron. Entonces tomó a su hijo mayor, que había de reinar en su lugar, y lo ofreció en holocausto sobre el muro. Entonces vino una gran ira sobre Israel, y se apartaron de él y regresaron a su tierra.
Este acto se ha comparado con fuentes grecorromanas que hablan de que los fenicios y los cartagineses realizaban la misma práctica o una similar en tiempos de peligro (véase más adelante). Parece que se realizaba para el dios moabita Kemosh . [13]
No hay evidencia arqueológica del Tofet en Jerusalén, por lo que dependemos de las descripciones bíblicas para comprenderlo. [1] La arqueología aún no ha identificado con seguridad ningún Tofet en el Levante , pero hay otra evidencia de sacrificios de niños allí. [14] Las inscripciones del Antiguo Egipto del segundo milenio a. C. dan fe de la práctica en el Levante. [ 15] Una inscripción fenicia de finales del siglo VIII a. C. de İncirli en Turquía puede indicar que los hijos primogénitos fueron sacrificados allí junto con ovejas y caballos. [16] El sacrificio de los hijos primogénitos en tiempos de crisis parece ser tratado extensamente en la inscripción, aunque el contexto preciso no está claro. [17]
Las fuentes grecorromanas también hacen referencia al sacrificio de niños, como un intento en Tiro de revivir una costumbre de sacrificar a un niño durante el asedio de Tiro por Alejandro Magno en 332 a. C., registrado por el historiador romano del siglo I d. C. Quinto Curcio Rufo . [14] El historiador de la iglesia Eusebio (siglo III d. C.) cita la historia fenicia de Filón de Biblos que: [18]
En la antigüedad, los gobernantes de una ciudad o nación, para evitar la ruina de la población, solían entregar a sus hijos más queridos para que los sacrificaran como rescate a los demonios vengadores. Los sacrificaban con ritos místicos. Cronos, a quien los fenicios llaman Elus, que fue rey del país y que, después de su muerte, fue deificado como la estrella Saturno, tuvo un hijo único de una ninfa del país llamada Anobret, a quien por esta razón llamaron Ledud, y así se llamaba todavía entre los fenicios al único engendrado. Cuando los peligros de la guerra habían asolado el país, vistió a su hijo con ropas reales, preparó un altar y lo sacrificó.
- (Eusebio de Cesarea, Praeparatio Evangelica 1.10.44 = 4.16.11) [19]
Aunque una minoría de eruditos ha argumentado que el ritual del tofet descrito en la Biblia era una actividad inofensiva que no implicaba el sacrificio de ningún niño, la mayoría de los eruditos concuerdan en que la Biblia describe el sacrificio humano como algo que ocurre en el tofet. [4] La erudición moderna ha descrito el sacrificio en el tofet como un sacrificio mulk o mlk . El término parece derivar de un verbo que significa "presentación como ofrenda" de la raíz ylk "ofrecer, presentar" y que se encuentra en inscripciones fenicias y cartaginesas en las frases mlk ʾdm "sacrificar un humano", mlk bʿl "sacrificar a un ciudadano" y mlk bšr "sacrificio en lugar de carne". [16] Lawrence Stager y Samuel Wolff sostienen que el término "se refiere a un sacrificio vivo de un niño o un animal". [20] [21]
The god to whom these sacrifices was directed is disputed in modern scholarship, with a dispute arising over whether the sacrifices were part of the cult of Yahweh.[22] Traditionally, the god to whom the sacrifices were offered has been said to be Molech, supposedly an underworld god whose name means king.[23][24] The Bible connects the Tophet with Moloch in two later texts, 2 Kings 23:10 and Jeremiah 32:35.[25] Lindsay Cooper writes in support of this connection that "The location of the Jerusalem tofet outside the city's eastern wall, at the traditional entrance to the netherworld, explicitly connects child sacrifice with the cult of death."[23] However, while scholars recognize the existence of an underworld deity called "M-l-k" with various vocalizations (e.g. Molech, Milcom) as well as an Akkadian term maliku for the shades of the dead, there is no evidence to connect these deities or shades to human sacrifice. Later Phoenician and Punic sacrifices of children called mlk in inscriptions or described by Greco-Roman sources are not associated with these gods.[16] On the basis of the word mlk meaning "to sacrifice" "an increasing number of scholars now take the biblical traditions to attest not to the offering of children in fiery sacrifices to the deity "Molek", but rather to the sacrifice of children as "mlk" offerings to another deity".[26] On the basis of the stories of Abraham and Jephthah offering their children to Yahweh, as well as Micah 6:6-7 and other passages, Francesca Stavrakopoulou argues that the offerings were in fact for Yahweh rather than for a foreign deity.[27]
The topheth's description as a place of punishment derives in part by the use of the word in Isaiah 30:33, in which Yahweh ignites a large tophet to punish the Assyrians:
For a hearth [tophet] is ordered of old; yea, for the king it is prepared, deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.
The location of the tophet, the valley of Gehenna, subsequently became a place of punishment in the eschatology of Jewish Apocalypticism, something found in the 3rd- or 4th-century BCE Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 26:4; 27:2–3).[28] The Talmud, discussing the passage in Isaiah, states that whoever commits evil will fall there (Eruvin 19a).[6]
Various Greek and Roman sources describe the Carthaginians as engaging in the practice of sacrificing children by burning as part of their religion. These descriptions were compared to those found in the Hebrew Bible.[20] The ancient descriptions were seemingly confirmed by the discovering of the so-called "Tophet of Salambô" in Carthage in 1921, which contained the urns of cremated children.[29] However, modern historians and archaeologists debate the reality and extent of this practice.[30][31] Some scholars propose that all remains at the Tophet were sacrificed, whereas others propose that only some were.[32] Whilst scholars generally see the Carthaginians as faithful adherents to the mainland Phoenician religion, others believe that they were dissidents and that their sacrificial customs were unique innovations.[32]
In Phoenician sites throughout the Western Mediterranean except in the Iberian Peninsula and Ibiza, archaeology has revealed fields full of buried urns containing the burnt remains of human infants and lambs, covered by carved stone monuments.[34] These fields are conventionally referred to as "tophets" by archaeologists, after the location in the Bible. When Carthaginian inscriptions refer to these locations, they use the terms bt (house, temple or sanctuary) or qdš (shrine), not "tophet".[35][36] Archaeology reveals two "generations" of Punic tophets: those founded by Phoenician colonists between 800 and 400 BCE; and those established under Carthaginian influence (direct or indirect) in North Africa from the 4th century BCE onward.[37]
No Carthaginian literary texts survive that would explain or describe what rituals were performed at the tophet.[34] Archaeological evidence shows that the remains could consist of human infants or lambs, often mixed with small portions of other animals, including cows, pigs, fish, birds, and deer. The proportion of lamb to human remains differs by site. At Carthage, 31% of the urns contained lambs; at Tharros it was 47%.[38] Analysis of the bone fragments provides some information about the remains. In a sample of seventy infants from the tophet at Carthage, 37% were identified as male and 54% as female.[39] The age of the children and whether they had died before they were interred is controversial (see below). The lambs are usually between one and three months old; this might indicate that offerings were made at a specific time following the lambing (February/March and October/November). The bone fragments were subjected to uneven temperatures, indicating they were burnt on an open-air pyre over several hours.[40] The remains were then collected and placed in an urn, sometimes mixing in bones from other infants or lambs - suggesting that multiple infants/lambs were burnt on the same pyre.[40] Sometimes jewellery or amulets were added to the urn. The urn was placed in the ground, in holes cut into the bedrock or within boxes made from stone slabs. In some cases a stone monument was set up above the urn. This could take the form of a stele, cippus, or throne, often with figural decoration and an inscription. In a few occasions, a chapel was built as well.[41][40] Steles are oriented toward the east.[42]
The figural decoration on the stone monuments takes different forms in different regions. In Carthage, geometric patterns were preferred. In Sardinia, human figures are more common.[43][44] Inscriptions are most common in the Carthage tophet, where there are thousands of examples. There are some from other tophets as well. Matthew McCarty cites CIS I.2.511 as a typical inscription:
To Lady Tanit, face of Baal, and to Lord Baal Hammon: [that] which Arisham son of Bodashtart, son of Bodeshmun vowed (ndr); because he (the god) heard his (Arisham's) voice, he blessed him.[45]
Thus, these texts present the monument as a votive offering to the gods in thanks for a favour received from them.[45] Sometimes the final clause instead reads "may he (the god) hear his voice" (i.e. in expectation of a future favour). The individual making the offering is almost always a single individual, nearly always male. The dead child is never mentioned.[46] Tanit appears only in examples from Carthage. Other inscriptions refer to the ritual as mlk or molk. The meaning of this term is uncertain, but it appears to be the same word as the Biblical term "Molech" discussed above. The inscriptions distinguish between mlk b'l / mlk ʿdm (molk of a citizen/person) and mlk ʿmr (molk of a lamb).[40]
Over a hundred tophets have been identified. The earliest examples were established at Carthage, Malta, Motya in western Sicily, and Tharros in southern Sardinia, when the Phoenicians first settled in these areas in the ninth century BCE. The largest known tophet, the Carthage tophet,[29] seems to have been established at this time and continued in use for at least a few decades after the city's destruction in 146 BCE.[47] The stone markers first appeared at Salammbô, Carthage around 650 BCE and spread to Motya and Tharros around 600 BCE.[48] Between the fifth and third centuries BCE, tophets became more common in southern Sardinia and the Carthaginian hinterland as Phoenician settlement expanded. In Sicily and Sardinia, tophets slowly went out of use in the third and second centuries BCE, following the establishment of Roman control in the First Punic War. In the same period in North Africa, many new tophets were established, mainly inland in Tunisia. Many of these tophets remained in use after the fall of Carthage in 146 BCE. In the late first and second centuries CE, migration resulting from military deployment patterns led to establishing new tophets in Tunisia and eastern Algeria.[49] In the Roman period, inscriptions named the god to which the monuments were dedicated as Saturn.[36] In addition to infants, some of these tophets contain offerings only of goats, sheep, birds, or plants; many of the worshipers have Libyan rather than Punic names.[44] Their use appears to have declined in the second and third centuries CE.[50]
Greco-Roman sources frequently criticize the Carthaginians for engaging in child sacrifice.[51] The earliest references to the practice are bare references in Sophocles[52] and the Pseudo-Platonic dialogue, Minos, probably of the fourth century BCE.[53] The late fourth century BCE philosopher Theophrastus claimed that the Syracusan tyrant Gelon had demanded that the Carthaginians abandon the practice after he defeated them in the Battle of Himera (480 BC).[54]
The first detailed account comes from Cleitarchus, an early third-century BCE historian of Alexander the Great, who is quoted by a scholiast as saying:
Phoenicians, and above all Carthaginians, worship Kronos; if they wish to achieve something big, they devote a child of theirs, and in the case of success, sacrifice it to the god. There is a bronze statue of Kronos among them, which stands upright with open arms and palms of its hands facing upwards above a bronze brazier on which the child is burnt. When the flames reach the body, the victim's limbs stiffen and the tense mouth almost seems like it is laughing until, with a final spasm, the child falls in the brazier.
Cleitarchus FGrH no. 137, F 9[55]
The first century BCE Greek historian Diodorus Siculus writes that, when the Carthaginians were besieged by Agathocles of Syracuse in 310 BCE, the Carthaginians responded by sacrificing large numbers of children according to an old custom they had abandoned:
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.[56][57]
Elsewhere in the Bibliotheca[57](14.4) Diodorus claims that wealthy Carthaginians would purchase infant slaves to offer in lieu of their own children.
The writer Plutarch (c. 46–120 CE) also mentions the practice:
... 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."[58]
Several Christian authors allude to the practice in the early centuries CE. The Christian apologist Tertullian, about 200 CE, states that although the priests who sacrificed children had been crucified by a Roman procurator, "that holy crime persists in secret".[59] Another Christian writer, Minucius Felix, claims that Punic women aborted their children as a form of sacrifice.[60]
The degree and existence of Carthaginian child sacrifice is controversial. Some archaeologists and historians argue that the literary and archaeological evidence indicates that all remains in the tophets were sacrificed.[61] Sabatino Moscati and other scholars have argued that the tophets were cemeteries for premature or short-lived infants who died naturally and then were ritually offered.[31][62]
The account given by the Greco-Roman authors is questionable. They were not eye-witnesses, contradict each other on how the children were killed, and describe children older than infants being killed as opposed to the infants found in the tophets.[29] The archaeological evidence is not consistent with the mechanical statue of Cronus mentioned by Cleitarchus and Diodorus.[45] There are no references to child sacrifice in Greco-Roman accounts of the Punic Wars, which are better documented than the earlier periods in which mass child sacrifice is claimed.[29] Many, but not all, Greco-Roman authors were hostile to the Carthaginians because they had been enemies in the Sicilian and Punic Wars and this may have influenced their presentation of the practice.[63] Matthew McCarty argues that, even if the Greco-Roman testimonies are inaccurate "even the most fantastical slanders rely upon a germ of fact".[45]
The archaeological evidence is ambiguous.[64] An osteological study of the remains at Carthage by Jeffrey Schwartz et al. suggested 38% of a sample of 540 individuals had died before or during childbirth, based on the size of the bones, the development of teeth, and the absence of neonatal lines on teeth.[65] Another osteological study of the same material challenged these findings, arguing that it had not taken account of the shrinkage of the bones caused by the burning process.[66][67] The form of the deposits in tophets is different from Carthaginian graves for non-infants, which usually took the form of burials, not cremations. Phoenician grave goods are also different from the objects found with the human remains in tophets. However, cross-culturally, funerary practices for infants often differ from those for non-infants.[68]
Many archaeologists argue that the ancient authors and the evidence of the Tophet indicates that all remains in the Tophet must have been sacrificed. Others argue that only some infants were sacrificed.[32] Paolo Xella argues that "the principle of Occam's Razor" indicates that the weight of classical and biblical sources indicate that the sacrifices occurred.[69] He further argues that the number of children in the tophet is far smaller than the rate of natural infant mortality.[70] In Xella's estimation, prenatal remains at the tophet are probably those of children who were promised to be sacrificed but died before birth, but who were nevertheless offered as a sacrifice in fulfillment of a vow.[71] He concludes that
the tophet was not theatre of numberless massacres, but only of a certain number of sacred ceremonies felt as pious, and the bloody rite was the extrema ratio in critic [sic] situations (e.g. see the biblical cases). Moreover, it is assured that a lot of different ceremonies were performed in the tophet, included substitution rites (animal / human).[72]
The legendary death of Carthage's first queen Elissa (Dido) by immolation, as well as the deaths of Hamilcar and the wife of Hasdrubal the Boetharch in the same manner, has been connected to the tophet ritual by some scholars.[73] It is possible that the practice was more frequent in the earlier years of the city.[29]
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