The Tripolitania Punic inscriptions are a number of

Punic language The Punic language, also called Phoenicio-Punic or Carthaginian, is an extinct variety of the Phoenician language, a Canaanite languages, Canaanite language of the Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic branch of the Semitic languages. An ...

inscriptions found in the region of Tripolitania – specifically its three classical cities of

Leptis Magna Leptis or Lepcis Magna, also known by #Names, other names in classical antiquity, antiquity, was a prominent city of the Carthaginian Empire and Roman Libya at the mouth of the Wadi Lebda in the Mediterranean. Established as a Punic people, Puni ...

Sabratha Sabratha (; also ''Sabratah'', ''Siburata''), in the Zawiya DistrictOea Oea (; ) was an ancient city in present-day Tripoli, Libya. It was founded by the Phoenicians in the 7th century BC and later became a Roman–Berber colony. As part of the Roman Africa Nova province, Oea and surrounding Tripolitania wer ...

(modern

Tripoli Tripoli or Tripolis (from , meaning "three cities") may refer to: Places Greece *Tripolis (region of Arcadia), a district in ancient Arcadia, Greece * Tripolis (Larisaia), an ancient Greek city in the Pelasgiotis district, Thessaly, near Larissa ...

), with the vast majority being found in Leptis Magna. The inscriptions have been found in various periods over the last two centuries, and were catalogued by

Giorgio Levi Della Vida Giorgio Levi Della Vida (22 August 1886 in Venice – 25 November 1967 in Rome) was an Italian Jewish linguist whose expertise lay in Hebrew, Arabic, and other Semitic languages, as well as on the history and culture of the Near East. Biography B ...

. A subset of the inscriptions feature in all the major corpuses of

Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions The Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, also known as Northwest Semitic inscriptions, are the primary extra-Biblical source for understanding of the societies and histories of the ancient Phoenicians, Ancient Hebrews, Hebrews and Arameans. Semitic ...

, notably as KAI 119-132. In addition to inscriptions in the Punic script, the corpus includes a number of Punic inscriptions written in Latin script, such as KAI 304-305. According to Karel Jongeling, 68 inscriptions are known from Leptis Magna, 15 from Sabratha, 10 from Oea, 4 from Zaiuet el-Mahgiub, 3 from Wadi el-Amud, 2 from Germa and 1 each from El-Amruni, Gasr Doga, Bir Gebira, Bu Khemmàsc, Henchir Gen Rieime, Misurata Marina, Al-Qusbat, Ras el-Hadagia, Sàmet el-Crèma, Taglit and Tarhuna.

Early discoveries

Prior to 1927, only eight Punic inscriptions from all of Tripolitania had been published. The first find was in 1806 by Jacques-Denis Delaporte at

, published by Ali Bey el Abbassi in 1814-16, and later in Delaporte‘s 1836 memoir:Reynolds, J. M. “Some Inscriptions from Lepcis Magna.” Papers of the British School at Rome, vol. 19, 1951, pp. 118–21. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40310492. Accessed 9 Oct. 2022.

I turned south and climbed the remains of the temple of ''Friendship''. I had barely reached the mound when I set foot upon a hard stone. The foreign characters under the Latin characters engraved on it made this monument so precious in my eyes, that I have not hesitated to include a copy of the inscription... It is a shame that it is only a fragment, because it could allow clarification of Punic or Phoenician writing, which is, I believe, that of this inscription, because ''lingua punica quidquid terraram est à Cyrene usque ad Gades occupavit''... The stone is still on the spot: I have not urged the Americans to seize it, because it suits France better, if it is deemed worthy of adorning the Napoleon Museum.

Delaporte identified the language as Punic by reference to a quote from

Samuel Bochart Samuel Bochart (30 May 1599 – 16 May 1667) was a French Protestant biblical scholar, a student of Thomas Erpenius and the teacher of Pierre Daniel Huet. His two-volume (Caen 1646) exerted a profound influence on seventeenth-century Biblical e ...

's 1646 work ''

Canaan CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...

'', which translates in full as: "...the language of Canaan, whether Phoenician or Punic, which was brought from Phoenicia into Africa, and occupied all the world from Cyrene to Gades." By 1857,

Moritz Abraham Levy Moritz Abraham Levy (also M. A. Levy; 11 March 1817 – 22 February 1872) was a German rabbi, orientalist, paleographer and numismatist. Life Levy was born on 11 March 1817 in Altona. His life path is not known in detail. He was trained as a ra ...

stated that five inscriptions were known.

Later discoveries

For forty years between 1927-1967,

worked to prepare a corpus of the Punic inscriptions in Tripolitania, intended as the Punic parallel of Joyce Reynolds' and

John Bryan Ward-Perkins John Bryan Ward-Perkins, (3 February 1912 – 28 May 1981) was a British classical archaeologist and academic, specialising in ancient Rome. He served as director of the British School at Rome from 1946 to 1974. Family and early life John B ...

' ''The Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania'' (IRT). Levi Della Vida's corpus brought together research which has often appeared in periodicals that are not very accessible, sometimes defunct, and were not always accompanied by adequate photographic documentation.

Concordance

Other

* KAI 178 Leptis Magna Latino-Libyan n LATIN

Bibliography

* Levi Della Vida, 1927: Giorgio Levi Della Vid
Le iscrizioni neopuniche della tripolitania
Libya (Rivista didella Tripolitania) 1 (III) 1927 91-116 * Levi Della Vida, 1935: Giorgio Levi Della Vida Due iscrizioni neopuniche di Leptis Magna, Africa Italiana 6 1935 3-15; 107-115 * Levi Della Vida, 1938: Giorgio Levi Della Vida Il Teatro Augusteo di Leptis Magna secondo le ultime scoperte e un'iscrizione bilingue in latino e neo-punico II, Africa Italiana 6, 3-4 1935 (published 1938) 104-109 * Levi Della Vida, 1942: Giorgio Levi Della Vida The Phoenician God Satrapes, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 87 1942 29-32 * Levi Della Vida, 1949: Giorgio Levi Della Vida Iscrizioni neopuniche di Tripolitania, Rendiconti di Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 8 1949 399-412 * Levi Della Vida, 1967: Giorgio Levi Della Vida Su una bilingue latino-punica da Leptis Magna, Atti dell'Accademia delle Scienze di Torino 101 1967 395-409 * Levi Della Vida, 1987: Giorgio Levi Della Vida and Amadasi Guzzo, Iscrizione Puniche della Tripolitania, 1987 *

References

{{reflist

External links

Archaeological artifacts KAI inscriptions Punic inscriptions Tripolitania Archaeological discoveries in Libya