The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1923-06-07
They Burned
French Scientists Exploring the Ruins of the
Ancient City of Carthage Have Uncovered
Mysterious Inner Sanctum of the
A.nsA Goddess Tanit. 1e

cet0! ASLoreJn! MyllLId!
Athara! ELISA! Tiratha!-By the
hidden symbols-by the resounding
sistra-by the burrows of the earth
by the eternal silence and by the
eternal NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. of the
gloomy sea and the azure shores, o
Queen of the watery world, all
hail!"
So prayed the women of Carthage
I two thousand and more years ago
when invoking the great Goddess
Tanit-Tanit the divinity Of love,
Of fruitfulness and of birth-Tanit
the omnifecund one-she whose rites
and festivals were attended with
license and an immortality of which
the modern world can not conceive.
So prayed the women Of Carthage
when they took their babies in arm
and hurried off to the temple Of the
goddess, to offer them up on the
fiery altar of Tanit.
Mystery From Ancient Days.
For twenty-five centuries the
blood-stained rites of this cruel
deity have been as yelled mystery.
How much blood was shed, how
many children offered UP as a vol
untary sacrifice Of the temple, none,
except the priests ever knew.
Today, after so many centuries of
oblivion, the curtain is being drawn
from the gruesome mystery. Two
French scientists, MN. Pouissot and
Lautier, who are now searching the
ruins of ancient Carthage, have dis
covered the ancient inner sanctum
of the temple Of Tanit. Before the
altar were found sacri1cial vaults in
a tier of three, filled with the
charred bones Of thousands Of in
fants, ranging in age from new
born babies to children one or two
years Of age-the bones of children
stolen from their parents-the bones
Of children given UP by fond moth
er in a burst of supreme alteration
or pacification of her goddess.
Burned One by One.
The cruel deity in whose honor so
much blood was shed was Camin-
fish goddess, reviled in our Bible as
Astoreth along with Moloch, the Sun
God, chief being of the Carthaginian
hierarchy. His rites were even
more horrible than those of Tanit's--
his victims being pushed one by one
into the bowels of a fiery idol. NM.
Pouissot and Lautier are even now
searching for the buried foundations
of the temple, of this god.
The sacrifice of infants to Tanit
was a secret rite little known to
anyone save the sacred college Of
priests-the sacrifice to Moloch was
public. Consequently the knowledge
of how it was conducted has accu-
rately come down to us through the
ages. Both rites, whether to Tanit
or to Moloch, are believed, however,
to have been pretty much the same
with the exception that the one to the
female deity was less extensive and
entirely secret. 1t always took place
in the innermost sanctum of the
Temple Of Tanit, a sanctuary famil-
lar to modern readers through the
wonderful descriptions in Gustave
Flaubert's romance of ancient
Carthage-Salambo
How the Rite Begins.
Human offerings we're sacrificed
UP to the gods probably every day in
the year, but it was in the occasion
of great public danger or calamity
that the unbelievable orgies took
place, Nor should it be imagined
that the children inundated by fire
were Of the poorer or despised
classes. In times Of supreme peril,
the force of public opinion caused
the sons of daughters of the greatest
and most influential people in the
state to be offered up. The more
important the child the greater ia
vor was its death supposed to incur
with Moloch or with Tanit.
Imagine a day of public sacrifice!
1t is a holiday for Carthage. The
walls Of the Temple of Moloch have
been preached to allow the removal
of the great bronze image Of the god.
AT sunrise the great idol is rolled
forth to begin its journey to the
principal square of the city.
The people as soon as they see the
great figure webbing through the
streets fee in all directions, for it
is not allowed them to look upon the
deity except when it is in the act Of
vengeance.
Perfumes Fill the Air.
The perfume from a thousand
censers fills the streets, for the tenn,
pies of the lesser gods, the offspring
OF Moloch, have been opened and the
tabernacles sent forth. People throng