Baal Hammon
Baal Hammon Baal Hammon or, sometimes nicknamed the "Saturn Africa", is the deity central religion Carthaginian who offered the sacrifice of molk.
Cosmic god, it occupies first place in the pantheon Berber - Punic , has its priesthood , its sanctuaries ( Tophet ), its representations and attributes of record. He had to consort Tanit. His cult was particularly demanding and required a complete trust from his followers.
God of fertility and harvest , it seems, by its specificity, constituted an element of permanence in the Berber world, and its central character ( henotheism ), paved the way for monotheism in Roman Africa. With the Romanization of North Africa , the god of Semitic origin is captured by the Roman god Saturn ( syncretism Association) before disappearing with the triumph of Christianity.
However, there is some survival in the onomastic and more specifically the anthroponymy , some names in use particularly in Tunisia piggybacking on behalf of god.
Yigal Yadin, archaeologist Israel , believes that a cult was rendered to Ba'al Hammon and Tanit during the Bronze Age at Hazor. He thus found in the ruins of this city steles, masks and a banner that brings the cult of the god of the Punic culture . The question of human sacrifice in Carthage is far from resolved, given the weakness of archaeological evidence and the partisan nature of literary sources.
References
Bibliography
- Marcel Leglay, Saturn Africa. History, ed. De Boccard, Paris, 1966
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