The Pozo Moro monument was discovered in an ancient Phoenician graveyard in what is now southern Spain. It contains many examples of ancient Near Eastern iconography dating to the end of the 6th century BC. (The Phoenicians had migrated west from Canaan in the Iron Age.)
The stone monument contains many separate scenes, including one depicting child sacrifice. One particular carving shows a seated god on the left who is holding (and about to consume) a child inside of a bowl. A second figure to the right is offering another bowl containing a child toward the god, while a third figure with a sickle sword is grasping yet another bowl with a child inside of it.
In various Phoenician cemeteries around the Mediterranean, archaeologists have discovered several specialized areas within these cemeteries that were set aside specifically to bury the burned bones of infants, fetuses, and children. In one cemetery in Carthage, archaeologists found approximately 6,000 urns containing burned human bones.
This human sacrifice, probably associated with the cult of Milkom (or Milcom, or Molech), had been practiced centuries earlier in Canaan. A 13th-century BC text from Ugarit, north of Canaan, also mentions the offering of a child to Ba’al in order to drive away an attacking enemy from the city. This practice is also depicted on a 13th-century BC Egyptian stone relief depicting the siege of Ashkelon by the Egyptians.
Child sacrifice was even practiced in Judah in the 8th and 7th centuries BC until King Josiah destroyed the tophets (fire-pit ovens associated with human sacrifice) and put an end to the rituals.
Summary
The practice of offering of humans to a deity through fire sacrifice is mentioned in the Bible, and has unquestionably been corroborated by archaeological finds of ancient artwork, multiple texts from antiquity, and in some archaeological digs.
