To the lord - to Baal Hammon, (the stele) which vowed Hanno
ʾDNBʿL BN GRʿŠTRT BN ʾDNBʿL
son of Adonbaal son of Gerastart son of Adonbaal
K ŠMʿ QLʾ YBRKʾ
for he heard his voice, may he bless him!
Design
Stelae and statues from Orthostat temple in Hazor. The stelae line (positioned as they were found) are similar to the line on top of Lilybaeum stele, and in the middle there is a stele with a crescent and disc (Baal Hammon symbol) and hand spread towards it (related to Tinnit)
The stele shows some important Phoenician religious symbols. These symbols include symbols of Tanit (Sign of Tanit) and Baal Hammon (a crescent and a disc), Caduceus, an incense burner and a Priest spreads his right hand up (a position related with the cult of Tanit), as well as a depiction of a line of stelae on a stage, similar to a stelae line found in Hazor.[4] On one of the stelae in Hazor, a crescent with a disc and two hand spread ur towards them are engraved.[5]
...the chief interest of the monument lies in the bas-relief on its upper part. In the middle of the field stands one of those candelabra of which we have already given examples taken from Carthaginian steles; to the left is the sacred cone, here represented with head and arms as on the coins of certain Asiatic towns; near the cone stands a caduceus, on the right there is a man adoring. He is dressed in a robe falling to the feet and gathered in a band about the waist; a pointed cap is on his head. The whole thing is without value as a work of art, but it gives a good idea of the Phoenician costume, a costume which resembles that still worn in the Levant by those Greek, Syrian, and Armenian merchants who have not yet adopted the costume of Europe.[6]
The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization.
Astarte is the Hellenized form of the Ancient Near Eastern goddess ʿAṯtart. ʿAṯtart was the Northwest Semitic equivalent of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar.
Baal Hammon, properly Baʿal Ḥammon or Baʿal Ḥamon, meaning "Lord Hammon", was the chief god of Carthage. He was a weather god considered responsible for the fertility of vegetation and esteemed as King of the Gods. He was depicted as a bearded older man with curling ram's horns. Baʿal Ḥammon's female cult partner was Tanit.
In the Hebrew Bible, Tophet or Topheth is a location in Jerusalem in the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna), where worshipers engaged in a ritual involving "passing a child through the fire", most likely child sacrifice. Traditionally, the sacrifices have been ascribed to a god named Moloch. The Bible condemns and forbids these sacrifices, and the tophet is eventually destroyed by king Josiah, although mentions by the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah suggest that the practices associated with the tophet may have persisted.
Tanit or Tinnit was a Carthaginian Punic goddess, and the chief deity of Ancient Carthage, alongside her consort Baal Hammon.
Ancient Semitic religion encompasses the polytheistic religions of the Semitic peoples from the ancient Near East and Northeast Africa. Since the term Semitic itself represents a rough category when referring to cultures, as opposed to languages, the definitive bounds of the term "ancient Semitic religion" are only approximate.
The Punic religion, Carthaginian religion, or Western Phoenician religion in the western Mediterranean was a direct continuation of the Phoenician variety of the polytheistic ancient Canaanite religion. However, significant local differences developed over the centuries following the foundation of Carthage and other Punic communities elsewhere in North Africa, southern Spain, Sardinia, western Sicily, and Malta from the ninth century BC onward. After the conquest of these regions by the Roman Republic in the third and second centuries BC, Punic religious practices continued, surviving until the fourth century AD in some cases. As with most cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, Punic religion suffused their society and there was no stark distinction between religious and secular spheres. Sources on Punic religion are poor. There are no surviving literary sources and Punic religion is primarily reconstructed from inscriptions and archaeological evidence. An important sacred space in Punic religion appears to have been the large open air sanctuaries known as tophets in modern scholarship, in which urns containing the cremated bones of infants and animals were buried. There is a long-running scholarly debate about whether child sacrifice occurred at these locations, as suggested by Greco-Roman and biblical sources.
Carthage National Museum is a national museum in Byrsa, Tunisia. Along with the Bardo National Museum, it is one of the two main local archaeological museums in the region. The edifice sits atop Byrsa Hill, in the heart of the city of Carthage. Founded in 1875, it houses many archaeological items from the Punic era and other periods.
Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften, or KAI, is the standard source for the original text of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions not contained in the Hebrew Bible.
Carthaginian or Punic currency refers to the coins of ancient Carthage, a Phoenician city-state located near present-day Tunis, Tunisia. Between the late fifth century BC and its destruction in 146 BC, Carthage produced a wide range of coinage in gold, electrum, silver, billon, and bronze. The base denomination was the shekel, probably pronounced in Punic. Only a minority of Carthaginian coinage was produced or used in North Africa. Instead, the majority derive from Carthage's holdings in Sardinia and western Sicily.
The sign of Tanit or sign of Tinnit is an anthropomorph symbol of the Punic goddess Tanit, present on many archaeological remains of the Carthaginian civilization.
The Baal Lebanon inscription, known as KAI 31, is a Phoenician inscription found in Limassol, Cyprus in eight bronze fragments in the 1870s. At the time of their discovery, they were considered to be the second most important finds in Semitic palaeography after the Mesha stele.
The Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum is a collection of ancient inscriptions in Semitic languages produced since the end of 2nd millennium BC until the rise of Islam. It was published in Latin. In a note recovered after his death, Ernest Renan stated that: "Of all I have done, it is the Corpus I like the most."
Carthaginian tombstones are Punic language-inscribed tombstones excavated from the city of Carthage over the last 200 years. The first such discoveries were published by Jean Emile Humbert in 1817, Hendrik Arent Hamaker in 1828 and Christian Tuxen Falbe in 1833.
Phoenician metal bowls are approximately 90 decorative bowls made in the 7th–8th centuries BCE from bronze, silver and gold, found since the mid-19th century in the Eastern Mediterranean and Iraq. They were historically attributed to the Phoenicians, but are today considered to have been made by a broader group of Levantine peoples.
The Pricot de Sainte-Marie steles are more than 2,000 Punic funerary steles found in Carthage near the ancient forum by French diplomat Jean-Baptiste Evariste Charles Pricot de Sainte-Marie in the 1870s. The find was dramatic both in the scale—the largest single discovery of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions—and also due to the finds almost being lost in the sinking of the French ironclad Magenta at Toulon.
The Mitsri genealogy inscription, known as KAI 78 or CIS I 3778, is a votive stele from Carthage in the Punic language.
Phoenician votive inscriptions or Punic votive inscriptions are votive inscriptions in the Phoenician and Punic religion, dedicated to a certain god or gods, mostly on stelae. The inscriptions have a standard formula, including the name of the god, the statement of the vow, the name of the vower and a closing statement. Most of the inscriptions were found in Carthage, and dedicated to Tinnit, Baʿal Ḥammon or both.
The Persephone Punic stele is a marble bas-relief stele of the Greek deity Persephone above a short punic inscription.
The Carthage tophet, is an ancient sacred area dedicated to the Phoenician deities Tanit and Baal, located in the Carthaginian district of Salammbô, Tunisia, near the Punic ports. This tophet, a "hybrid of sanctuary and necropolis", contains a large number of children's tombs which, according to some interpretations, were sacrificed or buried here after their untimely death. The area is part of the Carthage archaeological site, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
