Phase 1

The Establishment of Carthage

Map of the Western Ancient World ca 800 BCE

 Carthage, Phoenician “Qart-hadast,” (Latin: Carthago) was a great city of antiquity on the north coast of Africa, located now near a suburb of the city of Tunis in Tunisia. Carthage was not the first the first Phoenician settlement in the region. Utica may predate it by fifty years. This may be the reason for its Phoenician name which when translated means, “New City.”

  Commencing as early as the 12 Century BCE under the sway of a Semitic civilization from the East the Phoenicians arrived on the Tunisian coast as traders (known in the Roman West under the name Punic) and founded the city-state of Carthage.

Temple of Hercules Melqart

  However, at first it was just one of the many trading posts of the Phoenicians and little more. Philistus of Syracuse dates the founding of Carthage at 1215 BCE, while the Romans date its founding to fifty years before the Trojan War (i.e. between 1244 and 1234 BCE, according to the chronology of Eratosthenes).   The Roman poet Virgil imagines that the city's founding coincides with the end of the Trojan War. However, it is most likely that the city location  was first used sometime between 846 and 813 BCE. (Lance, Serge, Carthage: A History).  Timaeus of Taormina, a Greek historian from Sicily ca. 300 BCE, gives the foundation date of Carthage as thirty-eight years before the first Olympiad (in 776), which accordingly would be the year 814 BCE. Living in Sicily, Timaeus was close to Carthaginians and likely to hear their versions of the city's foundation. Accord is found in lost Phoenician records, cited second-hand by the Jewish historian Josephus.

Map of Main Phoenician Trade Routes

  The historical era begins with advent of traders coming from the Phoenician cities on the coast of Palestine, in particular Tyre.  Eventually there arrived a stream of colonists landing and settling the coasts of Africa and Iberia (Spain) and on the islands in the western Mediterranean.  Technological innovations and economic development in the eastern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, and along the Nile, increased the demand for various metals not found locally in sufficient quantity.  Phoenician traders recognized the abundance and low cost of these metals among the goods offered for trade by the local merchants in Iberia (another name for Spain), which caused an increase in trade with markets in the East - in particular with the city-state of Tyre.  The kings directed much of this Mediterranean commerce, as well as the corresponding trading settlements located at coastal stops along the way to the west, e.g., Hiram of Tyre (969-936 BCE).

 At this time, the Levant and Hellas enjoyed a remarkable prosperity resulting in very large populations in their cities.  City-states organized their youth to migrate in groups to locations where the land was less densely settled. Most importantly, the number of colonists coming from Greece was larger than those coming from Phoenicia.  To these migrants, lands in the western Mediterranean presented an opportunity and could be reached relatively easily by ship, without marching through foreign territory. Colonists sailed westward following in the wake of their commercial traders. The Greeks arrived later, coming to (what is now) southern France, southern Italy including Sicily, and eastern Libya. Earlier the Phoenicians had settled colonies on the coasts (what is now) Corsica, Sardinia  Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Sicily, Tunisia, and the Balearic Islands.

   Founding dates several hundred years earlier are given by ancient authors (such as the aforementioned Timaeus, Pliny the Elder, and Strabo), for other Phoenician cities in the western Mediterranean. These include Gades (1110 BCE) in Iberia, and Utica (said by Pliny to said be founded in 1101 BCE too) near Carthage. Recent archeology has been unable to verify these earlier dates, yet objects made in Syria dating to the second millennium have been unearthed at and near Gades (Cadiz).  If so, Utica would long predate Carthage as the first Punic trading center in the region, Utica would have been for centuries the leading Punic presence among the native Berbers.  

Remains of Ancient Utica

  The name Utica is derived from a Punic stem 'dtaq, meaning "to be old", which lends some support to this chronology, for Carthage signifies "new city" (as stated above) the fleets of the King Hiram of Tyre, as recounted in the Bible, perhaps joined at times by ships assigned to Solomon, would date to the 10th century BCE. "For the king had a fleet of ships of Tarshish at sea with the fleet of Hiram." The Punic port city of Utica was located at the mouth of the fertile Wadi Majardah (Medjerda River), at a point along the coast about 30 kilometers north of Carthage.   Probably Carthage started as one of Tyre's permanent stations en route to its very profitable, ongoing trade in metals with southern Hispania. Such stations often were established by Tyre at intervals of about 30 to 50 kilometers along the African coast.

  A number of foundation myths have survived in Greek and Roman literature.  Ancient Historians give various dates for the founding of Carthage and Rome.  Archeological evidence of the settlement of the site of Carthage before the last quarter of the 8th Century BCE cannot been found. 

   According to ancient tradition a queen of Tyre, Elissa, (or later Dido, which appears to be her African appellation), founded Carthage in about 814 BCE.  Elissa’s great aunt may be Jezebel wife of King Ahab of Israel of Bible fame (875-853 BCE).  The Roman historian Pompeius Trogus relays Dido’s story to us (1st century BCE) a contemporary of Virgil.  Trogus describes a sinister web of court intrigue in Tyre in which the king Pygmalion (brother of Elissa)  slays the chief priest of Melqart Acharbas (husband of Elissa), which causes queen Elissa  and some nobles of the court to flee the city of Tyre take a ship and go westward with  a fleet of ships carrying gold.  After a stop at Cyprus, the fleet continues westward and lands in North Africa.  She requested land to establish a new city from the king of the Libyan tribe living near Byrsa after reaching Africa. He gave her the hill of Byrsa at a price.  

Ruins of Byrsa

  The initial city of Carthage was founded on that spot. When the Libyan king later sought to marry her, which would have caused the city to become part of that king's domain, she chose instead to kill herself. The tradition says she took her own life by the sword, publicly casting herself into a ceremonial fire. Thereafter she was celebrated as a goddess of Carthage.  A legend grew up around her death and in Virgil’s epic-she commits suicide and burns in a funeral pyre.   Dido became assimilated to the Punic or Berber goddess Tanit. Each autumn a pyre was built outside the old city of Carthage; into it, the goddess was thought to throw herself in self-immolation for the sake of the dead vegetation god Adonis-Eshmun.

The goddess Trophet Tanit Symbol at Carthage

  The Phoenicians settled the locations of their maritime colonies with great care, focusing on the quality of harbors, and their proximity to trade routes.  The site chosen for Carthage was built on a triangular peninsula covered with low hills and backed by the Lake of Tunis, with its safe anchorage and abundant supplies of fish.  The location offered access to the Mediterranean and shielded from many violent storms that affected Mediterranean ports.  The site of the city was well protected and easily defensible, and its proximity to the Strait of Sicily placed it at a strategic bottleneck in the east-west Mediterranean trade.

   The 6th century Hebrew prophet Ezekiel in a lamentation nonetheless sings the praises of the Phoenicians, specifically of the cities of Tyre and Sidon. "Tyre, who dwells at the entrance to the sea, merchant of many peoples on many coastlands.… Tarshish trafficked with you because of your great wealth of every kind; silver, iron, tin, and lead they exchanged for your wares."  Modern consensus locates this ancient, mineral-rich region (called Tarshish [TRSYS] by Ezekiel) in the south of Iberia, possibly linked to Tartessos, a native city of the Iberians. 

Location of Tartessos (Tarshish)

  Here mining was already underway, and early on the Phoenicians founded the city of Gades [GDR "strong wall"] (Latin Gades) (currently Cadiz). Bronze then was a highly useful and popular material, made from copper and tin. Tin being scarce though in high demand, its supply became very profitable. Yet Iberia was even richer in silver. Originally, Carthage was probably a stop on the way between Tyre and the region of Gades, a stop where sailors might beach their boats and re-supply with food and water. Eventually, local trade would begin, and huts built; later homes that are more permanent and warehouses constructed, then fortified, perhaps also a shrine was added. All would change and transform on the day when a Queen of Tyre arrived with a fleet of ships, carrying nobility with well-connected merchants, and royal treasure.

  The relationship the first Phoenicians had with the local Berbers who inhabited areas inland were at first minimal.  The earliest Phoenician landing stations located on the coasts were probably meant merely to re-supply and service ships bound for the lucrative metals trade with the Iberian peninsula.  Perhaps these newly arrived sea traders were not at first particularly interested in doing much business with the Berbers. Probably because the goods the Berbers had to offer was not what they were looking for.  The grand tribal identities of 'Berber antiquity' are said to be three (roughly, from west to east): the Mauri, the Numidians by Carthage, and the Gaetulians. The Mauri inhabited the far west (ancient Mauritania, now Morocco and central Algeria). The Numidians were located in the regions between the Mauri and the city-state of Carthage. Both the Numidians and the Mauri had significant sedentary populations living in villages, and their peoples both tilled the land and tended herds. The Gaetulians were more mobile, with predominantly pastoral elements, and lived in the near south on the margins of the Sahara.  In fact, for a time their numerical superiority enabled some Berber kingdoms to impose a tribute on Carthage, a condition that continued into the 5th century. Also perhaps due to the recent Berbero-Libyan Meshwesh dynasty ruling Egypt (945-715 BCE), the Berbers near Carthage commanded significant respect, although certainly more rustic than the Pharaohs. Correspondingly, in early Carthage careful attention was given to securing the most favorable treaties with the Berber chieftains, "which included intermarriage between them and the Punic aristocracy.  This social-cultural interaction in early Carthage has been described:"Because the Carthaginians imported their religion, their laws, and their governmental concepts from the more sophisticated lands of the Near East, they exposed the indigenous Berbers to a more complex and fully developed culture. This exposure set in motion the integration of the Berbers into a Mediterranean world in which they had previously functioned only on the fringes. The dichotomy between the lifestyle of the urban (and urbane) Carthaginians and that of the primitive, rural-dwelling Berbers was immediately apparent. Aside from commercial transactions, limited contact occurred between the two groups, and each retained a clear sense of identity.”  Lack of contemporary written records make the drawing of conclusions here uncertain, which can only be based on inference and reasonable conjecture about matters of social nuance. Yet it appears that the Phoenicians generally did not interact with the Berbers as economic equals, but employed their agricultural labor, and their household services, whether by hire or indenture; many became sharecroppers.

  Carthage was built on a promontory with sea inlets to the north and the south. The city's location made it master  of the Mediterranean's maritime trade. All ships crossing the sea had to pass between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia, past Carthage‘s location, affording it great power and influence. Two large, artificial harbors were located within the city, one for harboring the city's massive navy of 220 warships and the other for mercantile trade. A walled tower overlooked both harbors at Byrsa.

An aerial view of the Ports of Carthage 

  The Phoenicians leading city at that time was Tyre.  Tyre originally consisted of two distinct urban centers, Tyre itself, which was on an island just off shore, and the associated settlement of Ushu on the adjacent mainland.  The original island city had two harbors, one on the south side and the other on the north side of the island. It was these two harbors that enabled Tyre to gain the maritime prominence that it did; the harbor on the north side of the island was, in fact, one of the best harbors on the eastern end of the Mediterranean. The harbor on the south side has silted over, but the harbor on the north side is still in use.  In ancient times, the island city of Tyre was heavily fortified (with defensive walls 150 feet (46 m high) and the mainland settlement. Originally it was called Ushu (later called Palaetyrus, meaning "Old Tyre," by the Greeks). It was actually more like a line of suburbs than any one city and used primarily as a source of water and timber for the main island city. Josephus records that the two fought against each other on occasion, although most of the time they supported one another because they both benefited from the island city's wealth from maritime trade and the mainland area's source of timber, water and burial grounds.  The commerce of the ancient world was gathered into the warehouses of Tyre. 

Colonnaded street in Tyre

"Tyrian merchants were the first who ventured to navigate the Mediterranean waters; and they founded their colonies on the coasts and neighboring islands of the Aegean Sea, in Greece, on the northern coast of Africa, at Carthage and other places, in Sicily and Corsica, in Spain at Tartessus, and even beyond the pillars of Hercules at Gades (Cadiz)"

  The ancient Phoenicians themselves were an ancient Semitic civilization that originated in the coastal part of Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia facing the Mediterranean Sea.  It was at heart a maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from about 1500-300 BCE.   The Phoenicians used the galley, a man-powered sailing vessel; and are given credit with the invention of the bireme.  The bireme was an ancient oared warship (galley) with two decks of oars.  They were famed in Classical Greece and Rome as 'traders in purple', referring to their monopoly on the precious purple dye of the Murex snail, used, among other things, for royal clothing, and for their spread of their alphabets (or abjad), from which almost all modern phonetic alphabets are derived.  This purple dye  became to be known as Tyrian Purple.  From 1200-1000 BCE Phoenicia was ruled by the port city of Byblos which was located north of Tyre with Sidon in the center of the two. The Phoenician language was very similar to ancient Hebrew, to such a degree that the latter is frequently used as an aid in the translation of Phoenician inscriptions. 

  Then from about 1000-333 BCE. Tyre became the Phoenician capitol. Carthage always claimed descent from Tyre.  Phoenicia was really a Classical Greek term used to refer to the major Canaanite port cities, and does not correspond directly to a cultural identity that the Phoenicians would have recognized themselves.  The term in Greek means 'land of purple', a reference to the valuable murex-shell dye they exported.  Their civilization was organized in city-states, similar to ancient Greece. However, in terms of archaeology, language, life style and religion, there is little to set the Phoenicians apart as markedly different from other Semitic cultures of Canaan. However, as Canaanites, they were unique for their remarkable seafaring achievements.

The Phoencian Homeland

  The Phoenicians established the population necessary to establish self-sustaining city-states abroad and most of their cities had an estimated 1,000 inhabitants, but a few of the cities one of which was Carthage developed into a large, self-sustaining, and independent City-states.  These city-states were highly dependent on both land and sea trade.  Their cities included a number of major ports in the area in order to provide a resting place for merchant fleets, to maintain a monopoly over that area’s natural resources or to conduct trade on their own.  The Phoenicians established numerous coastal cities along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea but seldom did they control the inland areas.  Their coastal communities stretched from Spain to the Black Sea.  All of them sent tribute to their parent cities of Byblos, Sidon, or Tyre

  Phoenicia was a league of independent city-state ports, with others on the islands and along other coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, who were ideally suited for trade between the Levant areas, rich in natural resources, with the rest of the ancient world. During the early Iron Age, in around 1200 BCE an unknown event occurred, historically associated with the appearance of the Sea Peoples from the north. They weakened and destroyed the Egyptians and the Hittites respectively. In the resulting power vacuum, a number of Phoenician cities rose as significant maritime powers.  The societies rested on three power-bases: the king; the temple and its priests; and councils of elders. Byblos first became the predominant center from where the Phoenicians dominated the Mediterranean and Erythraeum (Red) Sea routes. It was here that the first inscription in the Phoenician alphabet was discovered, on the sarcophagus of Ahiram (c. 1200 BCE). Later, Tyre gained in power. One of its kings, the priest Ithobaal (887–856 BCE) ruled Phoenicia as far north as Beirut, and part of Cyprus. Carthage was founded in 814 BCE under Pygmalion of Tyre (820–774 BCE).

   Carthage derived the original core of its religion from Phoenicia. The Phoenician pantheon was presided over by the father of the gods, but a goddess was the principal figure in the Phoenician pantheon too. The supreme divine couple was that of Tanit and Baal Hammon. Ba'al-Hamon (Punic: "Ruler of a Crowd or Multitude") was the chief god of Carthage. He was a deity of sky and vegetation, depicted as a bearded older man with curling ram's horns. Ba’al Hammon's female cult partner was Tanit. The goddess Astarte seems to have been popular in early times. At the height of its cosmopolitan era Carthage seems to have hosted a large array of divinities from the neighboring civilizations of Greece, Egypt and the Etruscan city-states.  Surviving Punic texts portray an organized caste of temple priests and acolytes performing different types of functions, for a variety of prices. Priests were clean-shaven, unlike most of the population. In the first centuries of the city, ritual celebrations included rhythmic dancing, derived from Phoenician traditions.  Cippi and stele of limestone are characteristic monuments of Punic art and religion, and can be found throughout the western Phoenician world in unbroken continuity, both historically and geographically. The majority were set up over urns containing the ashes of sacrifices, which were placed within open-air sanctuaries. Some Carthaginian votive stela (several in Egyptian style) display a priest carrying a child; at least one was interpreted as a living child for sacrifice. The identification of this child as living sacrifice has been questioned.  However, some historians have disputed that child sacrifice occurred, suggesting instead that the "Tophets" were resting places for the cremated remains of children that died naturally. Sergio Ribichini has argued that the Tophet was "a child necropolis designed to receive the remains of infants who had died prematurely of sickness or other natural causes, and who for this reason were "offered" to specific deities and buried in a place different from the one reserved for the ordinary dead". The few Carthaginian texts, which have survived, make no mention of child sacrifice (very few mention religion at all). Child sacrifice may have been overemphasized for effect; after the Romans finally defeated Carthage and destroyed the city, they engaged in post-war propaganda to make their archenemies seem cruel and less civilized.

    Other of their gods we know something about:  there was Eshmun (or Eshmoun, less accurately Esmun or Esmoun was a Phoenician god of healing and the tutelary god of Sidon.  This god known at least from the Iron Age period at Sidon and was worshipped in Tyre, Beirut, Cyprus, Sardinia, and in Carthage where the site of Eshmun's temple is now occupied by the chapel of Saint Louis.  Melqart (Phoenician lit. Melek-qart, "King of the City"; Akkadian: Melqart) was the tutelary god of the Phoenician city of Tyre. Melqart was often titled "Lord of Tyre", and considered the ancestor of the Tyrian royal family. In Greek, he was identified with Heracles and referred to as the Tyrian Herakles.  As Tyrian trade and colonization expanded, Melqart became venerated in Phoenician and Punic cultures from Syria to Spain. Archaeological evidence for Melqart's cult is found earliest in Tyre and seems to have spread westward with the Phoenician colonies established by Tyre as well as eventually overshadowing the worship of Eshmun in Sidon. The name of Melqart was invoked in oaths sanctioning contracts, according to one authority, thus it was customary to build a temple to Melqart, as protector of Tyrian traders, in each new Phoenician colony: at Cadiz, the temple to Melqart is as early as the earliest vestiges of Phoenician occupation. (The Greeks followed a parallel practice in respect to Heracles.) Carthage even sent a yearly tribute of 10% of the public treasury to the god in Tyre up until the Hellenistic period.  Many names in Carthage reflected this importance of Melqart, for example, the names Hamilcar and Bomilcar; but Ba‘l "Lord" as a name-element in Carthaginian names such as Hasdrub’al and Hannib’al almost certainly do not refer to Melqart but  to Ba`al Hammon, the chief god of Carthage.

Ba`al Hammon, the chief god of Carthage