Archaeology Odyssey

Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage—Religious Rite or Population Control?” BAR 10:01.

De Prorok, In Quest of Lost Worlds (London: Frederick Muller, 1935), p. 4.

Byron Khun de Prorok, Smithsonian Annual (1925), p. 571.

See P.G. Mosca, Child Sacrifice in Canaanite and Israelite Religion: A Study in Mulk and Molech, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University (1975), p. 22.

It has been suggested that this temple was dedicated to Mercury. I believe the temple to Mercury was located elsewhere, however. In the southern part of the city is a hill named Sheikh Abdallah, on which were seen the remains of a large temple a hundred years ago. Numismatic and epigraphic finds testify to the fact that the Temple of Mercury stood on this spot.

To be exact: 105 meters long and 101 meters wide.

In 1917 two archaeologists, Theodor Wiegand and Karl Wulzinger, carried out additional investigations and published an impressive three-volume work that appear between 1921 and 1925. Archaeological activity of a more limited scope took place between the two world wars, when Lebanon was under French control. The Frenchmen Pierre Coupel and Pierre Anus, along with the Lebanese Haroutune Kalayan, were in charge of these preservation and reconstruction activities, especially at the Bacchus and Venus temples.

The team was headed by A. Puchstein and also included D. Krencker, B. Schultz and M. Sobernheim.

Gabrieli, Arab Historians, pp. 174–175.

Jacoby, “Workshop,” pp. 377–378.