Sacrifice was the most important element in the religion of the Carthaginians and human sacrifice was its most prevalent form. Sacrifices were initially made only to Baal Hammon and were usually of infants, though adults, usually foreigners or prisoners-of-war, were also occasionally offered.
The charred bones of the children were put into urns and buried in the Tophet sanctuary, where most of the sacrifices took place.
In this quotation, the ancient historian Diodorus Siculus describes how 500 victims, 300 of them volunteers, were sacrificed to Baal Hammon and Tanit during the crisis when Syracuse was besieged during the First Punic War.
