Moloch  

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Moloch, Molech, Molekh, or Molek, representing Hebrew מלך mlk, (translated directly into king) is either the name of a god or the name of a particular kind of sacrifice associated with fire and child sacrifice. Moloch was historically affiliated with cultures throughout the Middle East and related cultures in North Africa and the Levant.

In modern English usage, "Moloch" can refer derivatively to any person or thing which demands or requires costly sacrifices.

Flaubert's Salammbô

Gustave Flaubert's Salammbô, a historical novel about Carthage published in 1862, included a version of the Carthaginian religion, including the god Moloch, whom he characterized as a god to whom the Carthaginians offered children. Flaubert described this Moloch mostly according to the Rabbinic descriptions, but with a few of his own additions. From chapter 7:

Then further back, higher than the candelabrum, and much higher than the altar, rose the Moloch, all of iron, and with gaping apertures in his human breast. His outspread wings were stretched upon the wall, his tapering hands reached down to the ground; three black stones bordered by yellow circles represented three eyeballs on his brow, and his bull's head was raised with a terrible effort as if in order to bellow.

Chapter 13 describes how, in desperate attempt to call down rain, the image of Moloch was brought to the center of Carthage, how the arms of the image were moved by the pulling of chains by the priests (apparently Flaubert's own invention), and then describes the sacrifices made to Moloch. First grain and animals of various kinds were placed in compartments within the statue (as in the Rabbinic account). Then the children were offered, at first a few, and then more and more.

The brazen arms were working more quickly. They paused no longer. Every time that a child was placed in them the priests of Moloch spread out their hands upon him to burden him with the crimes of the people, vociferating: "They are not men but oxen!" and the multitude round about repeated: "Oxen! oxen!" The devout exclaimed: "Lord! eat!" and the priests of Proserpine, complying through terror with the needs of Carthage, muttered the formula: "Pour out rain! bring forth!"

The victims, when scarcely at the edge of the opening, disappeared like a drop of water on a red-hot plate, and white smoke rose amid the great scarlet colour.

Nevertheless, the appetite of the god was not appeased. He ever wished for more. In order to furnish him with a larger supply, the victims were piled up on his hands with a big chain above them which kept them in their place. Some devout persons had at the beginning wished to count them, to see whether their number corresponded with the days of the solar year; but others were brought, and it was impossible to distinguish them in the giddy motion of the horrible arms. This lasted for a long, indefinite time until the evening. Then the partitions inside assumed a darker glow, and burning flesh could be seen. Some even believed that they could descry hair, limbs, and whole bodies.

Night fell; clouds accumulated above the Baal. The funeral-pile, which was flameless now, formed a pyramid of coals up to his knees; completely red like a giant covered with blood, he looked, with his head thrown back, as though he were staggering beneath the weight of his intoxication.

Italian director Giovanni Pastrone's silent film Cabiria (1914) was largely based on Salammbô and included an enormous image of Moloch modeled on Flaubert's description. American antisemite and anti-communist agitator Elizabeth Dilling, and her husband Jeremiah Stokes, wrote an antisemitic work, The Plot Against Christianity (1964). Re-released under the title The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today – with Talmudic writings annotated by Dilling – it quoted Flaubert's description as if it were historically accurate. Information from the novel and film still finds its way into serious writing about Moloch, Melqart, Carthage, and Baal Hammon.

See also

see behemoth

• Apis, an Egyptian bull god
• Baal
• Brazen bull
• Horned God
• Holocaust (sacrifice)
• Melkor
• Minotaur
• The Moloch Idol, with 7 chambers or chapels
• Child sacrifice