carthage

1.2 Carthage in the Mediterranean

Carthage was part of a chain of commercial establishments around the Mediterranean founded by the city of Tire at the end of the 2nd millennium, for commercial purposes and to bring them closer to the mining areas of the West, especially the Iberian Peninsula and the Cassiterides.
The main Phoenician settlements in the Mediterranean were Utica, Tingis, Mogador, Sala, Volubilis, Lixus in North Africa, Bithia, Sulcis, Nora, Caralis and Tharros in Sardinia, Motya, Panormo and Solunte in Sicily, Malta, Gozo and Pantelleria, Leptis Magna, Hippo and Hadrumetum, while the oldest foundation in the West would be Gadir (1,100 BC), a fact not yet confirmed by archaeology.
Starting from Carthage, in turn, around the 6th century BC, numerous settlements were founded for the military control of the Punic area of ​​Cape Bon, such as Kelibia, Ras Fortas and Kerkuan.

1.3 The archaic Carthage

Cartago was, as its name indicates, a new capital . Although the characteristics of the primitive settlement are not known, only recently identifiable, Carthage should not have been different from the Tyrian settlements in the West. Finds relating to the 8th-7th centuries B.C. they show that the Tyrian colony very soon reached the rank of a true colonial city, endowed with institutions that other Phoenician settlements were slow to adopt. It was located high up and fortified, on a peninsula, surrounded by the sea and a lake, with two ports, one for war and the other for trade.

2. Political Institutions

The early foundation of Ibiza, an island where previous Phoenician settlements already existed, and its military force seem to indicate its creation to oppose the advance of the Greeks in the West.
The political institutions of Carthage were made up of Kings or Sufetes, Senate and Plebs . According to Aristotle the Carthaginians were thought to be very well governed, their Constitution is superior to others . Eratosthenes, Greek geographer of the 3rd century BC, writes:The Romans and the Carthaginians have very important political institutions; Polybius VI :Certain Constitutions have an excellent reputation, such as that of Carthage .

2.1 The Constitution of Carthage according to Aristotle

The Constitution of Carthage is the only non-Greek one that Aristotle included in his treatise Politics and he compares her to the Spartan and the Cretan.
It was a mixed Constitution, which brought together, like the Roman one, the best elements of the monarchy, the aristocracy, the oligarchy and democracy, which balanced each other. Thus, according to this author, there were in Carthage:Two kings or Suffetes (generally cited by Aristotle in the plural, basileis or reges ), a Council of Elders (gerousia ), a Council or Court of One Hundred and Four magistrates (later called, in XI, 7, supreme magistracy of the hundred ) and the People's Assembly (demos ). The magistrates were chosen for their merits and their wealth.
In relation to the monarchy, it should be noted that no Punic text mentions it, even though it must have existed in Carthage from its origins. And according to Ch. Picard, Carthage knew the evolution of the monarchy of divine right to democracy, passing through an aristocratic state . And each phase of Carthaginian history is dominated by a powerful family, almost a dynasty, whose members will maintain power for a long time.

2.2The Sufetes and other magistrates

The suffets they were from a certain time the supreme magistrates of Carthage and the best known, perhaps what Aristotle and Polybius called basileis and reges , since they did not have positions or equivalent words to designate their supreme magistrates. At the time of the Punic Wars they were equivalent to the Roman consuls.
Unknown in the West, the institution of Sufets is well known in the ancient West-Semitic world, as early as the 2nd millennium, in Mari, Ugarit and Israel.
The examination of the Punic inscriptions allows verifying the existence of two annual eponymous sufetes , at least from the year 300 B.C. roughly, charges that may perhaps date back to the 5th century B.C.
Their attributions were those already mentioned:to be eponymous (they name the year) and the annual duration of their mandate. These magistrates directed military affairs in the fifth and fourth centuries, but after this date they are not found at the head of an army or navy.
In addition to the aforementioned officials, the existence of others is known from epigraphy, such as the Questor , subordinate to the Sufete, positions that also existed in Ghadir; the Prefect of customs , which mentions Nepos, the Secretaries or Scribes , some accountants, always named in the plural, whose position was similar to that of the Roman quaestors, the Head of estimates , which roughly corresponds to the position of the Roman Censor, market inspectors , which correspond to the Roman mayors and numerous other positions that shared out the civic tasks.

3. The Punic religion

The difficulty of studying the Punic religion derives, like all other topics related to Punic culture, from the lack of direct sources. The Punic pantheon was essentially Phoenician, but it did not correspond to its Tyrian imprint, where the most important god was Melkart.

3.1 The gods of Carthage

In Carthage the existence of main and secondary divinities is known:The main god was a Lord of the weather or Sky Lord , Ba'al Shamin , sometimes assimilated to the Canaanite El. Below him in rank and importance, the two main divinities were Ba'al Hammon and the goddess Tanit, who formed a divine couple.

3.2 Tanit

The origin of this feminine divinity is obscure, since she was apparently not widely known in the Phoenician realm, where she may well have existed, given the Sarepta inscription dedicated to Tnt bLbnn Tnt in Lebanon , standing out in Carthage from the end of the 5th century B.C.
In the Punic inscriptions it is called Tanit cara de Ba’al , Tanit penis Ba’al , Tanit being here perhaps the Phoenician goddess Astarte, or a hypostasis of the goddess, since they do not appear completely assimilated.
But it cannot be denied that both goddesses went through a process of rapprochement or identification, since not only are their accessory characters interchangeable, but they also receive the same honorific title, for example, 'm (mother ) and 'dt (ma'am )—. In general, it can be said that it was a divinity that was both maiden, virgin and mother, largely guarantor of the fertility of nature and, at the same time, protector of the afterlife, that is, guarantor of immortality.
Stelae dedicated to these gods, both Ba'al Hammon and Tanit, often feature the so-called Tanit sign , which recalls the schematization of a human figure with open arms.

3.3 Other Punicgods

There were also other gods like Melkart , the god of Tyre, patron of merchants and navigators, assimilated to the Greek Heracles and the Roman Hercules, whose temples were famous in the West and throughout the Mediterranean, participating as banks in Phoenician commercial enterprises.
Ba'al Sapon , the Lord of the mountains , known for the famous Marseille commercial rate and numerous other gods and goddesses, sometimes assimilated to the Greeks and Romans.
Eshmun , god assimilated to Asclepius. protector of health for Strabo and Appian.
Reseph he was the equivalent of the Greek Apollo, also the Punic god of war, whose characters are sometimes difficult to distinguish.
There were also other epigraphically attested gods and goddesses; Sdr'o Sadrapha , a divinity of health and fertility; Skn, mediating figure; 'rs, tutelary divinity, Pgmljn, who is subordinate to strt (Astarte); 'lt, a virgin divinity; 'm' a mother divinity; B‘lt hhdrt, the mistress of the tomb (?); Hwt, perhaps a deity from beyond the grave; 's (Isis); finally the double or quasi-double divinities Sd-Tnt, Sd-MIqrt (?), str-Nj (?), 'smn 'strt, Mlk'strt and Htr-Mskr, but perhaps also B' I' dr, Bs, on the contrary, it is known only from archaeological evidence.

3.4 The Tophet

Topphet is a Hebrew word that designates in the Old Testament a place of human sacrifice in the valley of Bana-Hinnom, in Jerusalem.
Among the most important tophet of the Punic world we will point out those of Carthage, Sardinia (Nora, Sulcis, Tharros), etc.
In them, the molk sacrifice was practiced, in which it is intended to see child sacrifices to Satur-no-Ba'al Hammon, which were sometimes unborn or malformed newborns, while other times the substitution of human victims for lambs, as early as the 7th century B.C., in a similar way to how Isaac was substituted in the sacrifice, a fact recounted in the Old Testament.

3.4 Punic writing, language and texts

Punic is spoken of to designate the Phoenicians of the West and Africa, although only the Carthaginians. Punic, Semitic writing gave way in the 5th century BC. to neo-Punic, a term invented in the 19th century AD. to designate a cursive writing from North Africa, engraved on stone or metal, attested above all from the fall of Carthage, but which must have been known long before.
Among the Punic texts, we must remember the aforementioned Periplus of Hanno and Hannibal's oath, that is, part of the treaty of alliance between Hannibal and Philip V of Macedon, concluded in 215 BC. whose text has been transmitted by Polybius VII. Certain passages in Mago's treatise on agriculture are also known from Greek and Latin translations. As for the transcriptions of the Punic, the most important text is constituted by the passages of the Poenulus of Plautus. There are also some Latin-Punic texts, from Tripolitania, written in Latin letters transcribing texts in the Punic language, already from Roman times. Everything else is reduced to the large number of funerary inscriptions, having lost all his rich literary production of works:history, law, agriculture, geography, religious, etc. Along with the existing texts, we must also mention the long Sacrificial Tariffs, such as that of Marseille, whose value is not only religious but also literary.