Moloch, also known as Ba’al or Hadad was a god worshiped among the Phoenician cultures of the ancient world. Depicted as a calf, ox or a man with the head or horns of a bull, he was at times known as a god of rain, thunder, fertility, agriculture and lord of the heavens.

As time has passed, he has been transmuted and assimilated into other cultures and religions, often vilified. Baal and Moloch both became demonic entities in the Judeo-Christian religions. For example, the demon Beelzebub’s name came from the Hebrew, Ba’al zvuv. Whatever he happened to be god of, or whatever his name might have been at any given time, according to tradition, Moloch sure liked his sacrifices. He particularly enjoyed roasting children alive.

The Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaqi wrote:

“Tophet is Moloch, which was made of brass; and they heated him from his lower parts; and his hands being stretched out, and made hot, they put the child between his hands, and it was burnt; when it vehemently cried out; but the priests beat a drum, that the father might not hear the voice of his son, and his heart might not be moved.”

Another version of the story tells that the statue was hollow, having seven compartments with flour placed in one, turtledoves in another, a ewe in the third, a ram in the fourth, a calf in the fifth, an ox in the sixth, and in the seventh a child. The statue was then heated, killing and roasting everything inside.

The Carthaginians worshiped Moloch/Ba’al under the name of Cronus or Kronos. The historian Cleitarchus wrote:

“There stands in their midst a bronze statue of Kronos, its hands extended over a bronze brazier, the flames of which engulf the child. When the flames fall upon the body, the limbs contract and the open mouth seems almost to be laughing until the contracted body slips quietly into the brazier. Thus it is that the ‘grin’ is known as ’sardonic laughter,’ since they die laughing.”

Another Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus says:

“There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire.”

That’s some seriously tweaky shit. I wonder if Carthaginians had barbecue sauce back then.