>>15042462

(Please read from the start)

>> Wow! Really?! = the burned bones are conclusive evidence that the Phoenicians practiced child sacrifice. So does that mean you finally found ONE bone with knife marks on it? Or any type of trauma on it indicating that child was truly sacrificed? Anyone can burn some bones, so if a simply burned bone is evidence for this dude…. (rolling eyes). Also we know the Carthaginians buried in the necropolis the dead beyond 5 years of age, while they cremated the dead below 5 years of age. This practice was not exclusively Carthaginians as we saw earlier, it was practiced by many cultures/civilizations worldwide and through the ages. So finding some burned bones is not an indicator child sacrifice took place. It simply indicates the dead infants were cremated. When you find knife marks, or binding marks or trauma marks, like a blow to the head…then…yeah…that’s a sign these infants were sacrificed. But nothing of the sort was found.

“Moreover, the osteological evidence reveals that most of the victims were children two to three months old, though some were as old as age five. So far no skeleton has shown any signs of pathological conditions that might have caused death. These were healthy children deliberately killed as sacrifices in the manner described in the classical and biblical texts.”

>> We haven’t found the cause of death yet, so we cannot rule out sickness. These were not healthy children. He is conveniently omitting the mention of stillborn and pre-mature children; making you think all the infants made it through birth unharmed = which is not correct. There are different age categories in that infant burial, the eldest being 5 years of age. And if my memory is not betraying me, there is one exceptional case of a 12 years old buried there. I’m saying this from memory.

“The sex of the victims is unclear. We do not know for certain whether they were exclusively males, as some have asserted, or both males and females. Some biblical texts suggest that firstborn males were chosen as the ultimate sacrifice to the deity. For example, during a military engagement between the Moabites and the Israelites, the king of Moab "took his firstborn son who was to succeed him, and offered him as a burnt offering." Upon witnessing this sacrifice, the Israelites retreated and "returned to their own land" (2 Kings 3:27). The prophet Micah lists the sacrifice of the firstborn male as the highest form of offering a human can give to a god‹even better than "calves a year old," rams or "rivers of olive oil" (Micah 6:6-7). Other texts, however, specify that both "sons and daughters" were sacrificed in the Tophet (Jeremiah 7:31 and 2 Kings 23:10).”

>> First of all the buried infants were from both sexes if this dude likes it or not. An honest bone study by an honest institution, mostly the pelvic bones, should put this to rest once and for all. So no….it’s not “as some have asserted” = the bones don’t lie, but this dude does.

Secondly, I don’t understand what Phoenicians and Carthaginians have anything to do with the kingdom of Moab and their king whom sacrificed his eldest son? Is the kingdom of Moab Phoenician? Here we are talking specifically about the sacrifice of children in Carthage, not in Moab. Can someone please explain to me what this has got to do with the issue we are discussing? This dude is arguing how a tomato looks like by giving a cucumber as a supportive example for it. You get what I mean there?! He’s really something. Why doesn’t he give us an example from the burial in Carthage? According to him there are plenty of sacrificial victims there. This means he can find easily an example to give us, instead of using the Bible & Moab, right?

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>>15043366

(Please read from the start)

“Infant skeletons are insufficiently developed to allow the determination of sex on the basis of bone morphology alone. Ongoing DNA analysis of bones from the jars, however, may resolve the question of whether the victims were all males or a mix of males and females.”

>> He just argued up above that some victims were around 5 years of age. How come their bones are insufficiently developed to allow the determination of sex? What about the 1, 2, 3 and 4 years old? Are their bones also under developed for study? So according to this dude what should be the right age of a child to have his bones fully developed in order to recognize it’s a male or a female child? When a homicide detective finds a decomposed body of a child, how does he know it’s a male or female victim? It’s the same thing here = they rely on the bones. So saying the bones are not fully developed is this dude lying to himself. It doesn’t matter if the dead was an infant or a couple of years old child, the bones tell the same story in either case. And finally, he said something with a bit of sense in it = DNA testing. Let’s check out those chromosomes, shall we? And then ask yourselves anons why this type of test wasn’t done before till now, to put at least an end to the gender debate?

“The classical and biblical texts, as well as the archaeology, all indicate that healthy living children were sacrificed to the gods in the Tophet. Our purpose in making this case is not to malign the Phoenicians but to understand them.”

>> His purpose is what he denied it to be = to malign the Phoenicians….but I thought we were discussing the burial in Carthage, not Phoenicia? How did we end up talking about the Phoenicians again? Being Carthaginian or Punic doesn’t mean you are Phoenician because other elements such as Greek, Ancient Egyptian, Berber etc. all mixed, merged into the Phoenician colony to form a new hybrid form which became known as the Punic civilization. So again, why is he bringing up the Phoenicians in all of this, I thought we are talking about the Carthaginians here.

The next part at first doesn’t seem to be connected at all with the burial of Carthage and with this thread. That is, if you haven’t paid attention at all to what I’m working on this thread. Do you remember what we found out about Ashkelon? Do you remember we found it was a center, just like Ephesus, of the sacred prostitution? Do you remember we found out the cult of a mutated form of the Evil Lady took place? So let’s check what comes next in this same article we’ve been reading till now, but do keep in mind what we found out about Ashkelon so far. Please go back and recheck things out, I’m talking from memory right now.

“Excavations in Ashkelon prove that the Romans drowned, threw away their male babies

DNA Analysis Sheds New Light on Oldest Profession at Ashkelon

By Lawrence E. Stager and Patricia Smith

From Biblical Archaeology Review BAR 23:04, Jul/Aug 1997”

>> Do you remember Patricia Smith from page 1 593? It’s the same “expert”. Now watch carefully how she is going to word her sentences and how she is going to argue and interpret things ^_^ This one is going to be fun for the old man.

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>>15043387

(Please read from the start)

“The latest scientific techniques using DNA analysis have enabled us to conclude that the fourth- to sixth-century A.D. building at Ashkelon we confidently identified as a bathhouse also served as a brothel.”

>> A bathhouse was also used like a brothel = remember the bathhouse design of Epstein Island temple? Didn’t Qteam guide us to the bathhouse design from Islamic era in Syria, so we could find the meaning of the Epstein Temple? = it was a site where sacred prostitution rituals were taking place: what does the ritual of sacred prostitution consist of? Well, I’m going to ask you to go re-read what Alexander the not so Great did. Then I’m going to ask you to think about it and try to put things together.

This brothel/bathhouse, Qteam also pointed to it by showing us the pool of Biltmore castle. If we also look, we will find out that this brothel bathhouse is much older than the 4th century A.D. It dates back to many centuries. Just check out the mutated forms of the Evil Lady in Ashkelon and how far back it goes. It’s not that hard to find and back then, there were no Romans in the area. The Jews lived there and practiced the cult of the Evil Lady and the sacred prostitutions. Just check things out yourselves anons.

“Its identity as a bathhouse of the late Roman period was never in doubt. Its architecture included a hypocausta and a tub. The real question was, Did it also serve as a brothel? During this period there is ample textual evidence to indicate that “mixed bathing” led to more than just cleanliness. One author, writing in the time of Nero, describes a father who went to the baths, leaving one child at home, only to return from the baths as the prospective father of two more. The poet Martial wrote that the “bathman lets you in among the tomb-haunting whores only after putting out his lantern.”

>> The first sentence is there to make you think this was taking place only under Roman times solely and it’s not older. Which is not true, because if you look, you will find out its way older = I mean the practice, not the bathhouse itself. Don’t get confused or get me wrong here. I’m saying the sacred prostitution and the use of bathhouses as prostitution places were the rituals of the Evil Lady cult were practiced is very very old….but this bathhouse, yeah, it was built during Roman times.

It was because of Qteam’s hint to the bathhouse in Aleppo that I finally understood how it’s linked to the sacred prostitution. It took me some time to figure it out, but I finally did. I also want to caution anons that this doesn’t mean every single bathhouse in the world is a place where the cult of the Evil Lady took place. Each ancient bathhouse should be examined as a case on its own and verify if the cult of the Evil Lady was taking place there or not. Not all bathhouse were for mixed genders, and I’m sure the cult of the Evil Lady was NOT practiced in all bathhouses worldwide.

“Our suspicions that the Ashkelon bathhouse might also have been a brothel were aroused by the Israeli archaeologist and epigraphist Vasilios Tsaferis, who read a tantalizingly incomplete Greek inscription scrawled on the side of the tub as “Enter, enjoy and …” But the epigraph was too short to be decisive.”

>> I agree, the inscription is incomplete and cannot determine on its own if the bathhouse had a double function of a bathhouse and a brothel.

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