7 - Making Offerings

Summary

Even if the chaîne opératoire of molk-style rites may have changed little between the eighth century BCE and the second century CE, how worshippers and communities wove significance around these ritualized gestures underwent a marked transformation. Focusing on the tophet of Hadrumetum, this chapter shows how stelae shifted emphasis from the molk as part of an individual, verbal relationship between worshipper and deity to a communal act that foregrounded and elevated a single sacrificant at an altar. Although these scenes of sacrifice-at-altar have been seen as simple calques on the iconography of Roman historical reliefs, worshippers in North Africa instead created new imagery that shared social dynamics and priorities rather than iconographies.