Carthaginians

The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians (and sometimes as Western Phoenicians), were a Semitic people who migrated from Phoenicia to the Western Mediterranean during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'', the Latin equivalent of the Greek-derived term ''Phoenician'', is exclusively used to refer to Phoenicians in the western Mediterranean, following the line of the Greek East and Latin West. The largest Punic settlement was Ancient Carthage, but there were 300 other settlements along the North African coast from Leptis Magna in modern Libya to Mogador in southern Morocco,''Itineraria Phoenicia'' Edward Lipiński p 466
/ref> as well as western Sicily, southern Sardinia, the southern and eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, Malta, and Ibiza. Their language, Punic, was a variety of Phoenician, one of the Northwest Semitic languages originating in the Levant.

Literary sources report two moments of Tyrian settlements in the west, the first in the 12th century BC (the cities Utica, Lixus, and Gadir) that hasn't been confirmed by archaeology, and a second at the end of the 9th century BC, documented in written references in both east and west, which culminated in the foundation of colonies in northwest Africa (the cities Auza, Carthage, and Kition on the southern coast of Cyprus) and formed part of trading networks linked to Tyre, Arvad, Byblos, Berytus, Ekron, and Sidon in the Phoenician homeland. Although links with Phoenicia were retained throughout their history, they also developed close trading relations with other peoples of the western Mediterranean, such as Sicilians, Sardinians, Berbers, Greeks, and Iberians, and developed some cultural traits distinct from those of their Phoenician homeland. Some of these were shared by all western Phoenicians, while others were restricted to individual regions within the Punic sphere.

The western Phoenicians were arranged into a multitude of self-governing city-states. Carthage had grown to be the largest and most powerful of these city-states by the 5th century BC and gained increasingly close control over Punic Sicily and Sardinia in the 4th century BC, but communities in Iberia remained outside their control until the second half of the 3rd century BC. In the course of the Punic wars (264–146 BC), the Romans challenged Carthaginian hegemony in the western Mediterranean, culminating in the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, but the Punic language and Punic culture endured under Roman rule, surviving in some places until late antiquity.

Terminology

The English adjective "Punic" is used in modern academic writing to refer to the western Phoenicians. The proper nouns "Punics" and "Punes" were used in the 16th century, but are obsolete and there is no proper noun in current use. "Punic" derives from the Latin and , which were used mostly to refer to the Carthaginians and other western Phoenicians. These terms derived from the Ancient Greek word (), plural form (), which was used indiscriminately to refer to both western and eastern Phoenicians. Latin later borrowed the Greek term a second time as , plural form , also used indiscriminately.

Numismatic evidence from Sicily shows that some western Phoenicians made use of the term "Phoinix", but it is not clear what term (if any) they used for themselves; they may have called themselves 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍𐤌 (, " Canaanites"). A passage from Augustine has often been interpreted as indicating that they called themselves Canaanites ( in Latin), Augustine writes:

It has been argued by J.C. Quinn that this is a misreading, since although this term is "applied to Levantine people" in the Hebrew Bible, "there is no other evidence for self-identification as Canaanite, and so we might suspect him of learned optimism." However, this opinion is not shared by all scholars.

In modern academic writing, the term ''Punic'' exclusively refers to Phoenicians in the western Mediterranean. Specific Punic groups are often referred to with hyphenated names, like ''Siculo-Punic'' or ''Sardo-Punic''. (This practice has ancient roots: Hellenistic Greek authors sometimes referred to the Punic inhabitants of central northern Africa (''Libya'') as ''Liby-Phoenicians''.)

Overview

Like other Phoenician people, their urbanized culture and economy were strongly linked to the sea. They settled over Northwest Africa in what is now Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya and established some colonies in Southern Iberia, Sardinia, Sicily, Ebusus, Malta and other small islands of the western Mediterranean.
In Sardinia and Sicily, they had strong economic and political ties to the independent natives in the hinterland. Their naval presence and trade extended throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, to Atlantic Iberia, the British Isles, the Canaries.

Technical achievements of the Punic people of Carthage include the development of uncolored glass and the use of limestone from lakeside deposits to improve the purity of smelted iron.

Religion

The Punic religion was a direct continuation of the Phoenician variety of the polytheistic ancient Canaanite religion. At Carthage, the chief gods were Baal Hammon (purportedly "Lord of the Brazier")Walbank, Frank William (1979). ''A Historical Commentary on Polybius'', Volume 2, Clarendon Press, p. 47 and his consort Tanit, but other deities are attested, such as Eshmun, Melqart, Ashtart, Reshef, Sakon, and Shamash. The Carthaginians also adopted the Greek goddesses Demeter and Kore in 396 BC, as well as the Egyptian deities Bes, Bastet, Isis, Osiris, and Ra. Different Punic centres had their own distinct pantheons; in Punic Sardinia, for example, Sid or Sid Babi (known to the Romans as Sardus Pater and apparently an indigenous deity) received worship as the son of Melqart and was particularly associated with the island.

The Carthaginians appear to have had both part-time and full-time priests, the latter called (singular , cognate with the Hebrew term kohen), led by high priests called , as well as lower-ranking religious officials, called "servants" or "slaves" of the sanctuary (male: , female: or ), and functionaries like cooks, butchers, singers, and barbers. Sanctuaries had associations, referred to as in Punic and Neo-Punic inscriptions, who held ritual banquets. Some Phoenician communities practiced sacred prostitution; in the Punic sphere this is archeologically attested at Sicca Veneria ( El Kef) in western Tunisia and the sanctuary of Venus Erycina at Eryx in western Sicily. Punic sacred prostitution is mentioned by Latin author Valerius Maximus, who describes how Carthaginian women gained gifts by engaging in prostitution with visitors at Sicca Veneria.

Various Greek and Roman sources describe and criticize the Carthaginian practice of sacrificing children by burning. Many ancient Greek and Latin authors describe some version of child sacrifice to "Cronos" (Baal Hammon). These descriptions were compared to those found in the Hebrew Bible

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