Baal Hammon, properly 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.
Tanit or Tinnit was a chief deity of Ancient Carthage; she derives from a local Berber deity and the consort of Baal Hammon. As Ammon is a local Libyan deity, so is Tannit, which she represents the matriarchal aspect of Numidian society, whom the Egyptians identify as Neith and the Greeks identify as Athena. She was the goddess of Wisdom, civilization and the crafts; she is the defender of towns and homes where she is worshipped. Ancient North Africans used to put her sign on tombstones and homes to ask for protection, her main temples in Thinissut, Cirta, Lambaesis and Theveste.
Utica was an ancient Phoenician and Carthaginian city located near the outflow of the Medjerda River into the Mediterranean, between Carthage in the south and Hippo Diarrhytus in the north. It is traditionally considered to be the first colony to have been founded by the Phoenicians in North Africa. After Carthage's loss to Rome in the Punic Wars, Utica was an important Roman colony for seven centuries.
Motya was an ancient and powerful city on San Pantaleo Island off the west coast of Sicily, in the Stagnone Lagoon between Drepanum and Lilybaeum. It is within the present-day commune of Marsala, Italy.
Soluntum or Solus was an ancient city on the Tyrrhenian coast of Sicily near present-day in the comune of Santa Flavia, Italy. The site is a major tourist attraction. The city was founded by the Phoenicians in the sixth century BC and was one of the three chief Phoenician settlements in Sicily in the archaic and classical periods. It was destroyed at the beginning of the fourth century BC and re-founded on its present site atop Monte Catalfano. At the end of the fourth century BC, Greek soldiers were settled there and in the 3rd century BC the city came under the control of the Roman Republic. Excavations took place in the 19th century and in the mid-20th century. Around half of the urban area has been uncovered and it is relatively well preserved. The remains provide a good example of an ancient city in which Greek, Roman and Punic traditions mixed.
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.
The traditional Berber religion is the ancient and native set of beliefs and deities adhered to by the Berbers. Many ancient Berber beliefs were developed locally including the cults for local gods such as Atlas, and the goddess Tanit and Ammon, whereas others were influenced over time through contact with others like ancient Egyptian religion such as Isis which was worhsipped in eastern Libya, or borrowed during antiquity from the Punic religion such as Eshmun and Baal, Judaism, Iberian mythology, and the Hellenistic religion like the worship of Apollo and Ceres. Some of the ancient Berber beliefs still exist today subtly within the Berber popular culture and tradition. Syncretic influences from the traditional Berber religion can also be found in many other faiths around the mediterranean.
The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians, 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, as well as western Sicily, southern Sardinia, the southern and eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, Malta, and Ibiza. Their language, Punic, was a dialect of Phoenician, one of the Northwest Semitic languages originating in the Levant.
The Bardo National Museum is a museum of Tunis, Tunisia, located in the suburbs of Le Bardo.
Ancient Carthage was an ancient Semitic civilisation based in North Africa. Initially a settlement in present-day Tunisia, it later became a city-state and then an empire. Founded by the Phoenicians in the ninth century BC, Carthage reached its height in the fourth century BC as one of the largest metropoleis in the world. It was the centre of the Carthaginian Empire, a major power led by the Punic people who dominated the ancient western and central Mediterranean Sea. Following the Punic Wars, Carthage was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC, who later rebuilt the city lavishly.
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.
The culture of the ancient Phoenicians was one of the first to have had a significant effect on the history of wine. Phoenicia was a civilization centered in current day Lebanon. Between 1550 BC and 300 BC, the Phoenicians developed a maritime trading culture that expanded their influence from the Levant to North Africa, the Greek Isles, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula. Through contact and trade, they spread not only their alphabet but also their knowledge of viticulture and winemaking, including the propagation of several ancestral varieties of the Vitis vinifera species of wine grapes.
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 Lilybaeum stele is a notable Phoenician gravestone stele found in Sicily and first published in 1882.
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 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.
The Makthar Museum is a small Tunisian museum, inaugurated in 1967, located on the Makthar archaeological site, the ancient Mactaris. Initially a simple site museum using a building constructed to serve as a café on the site of a marabout, it comprises three rooms, some of which are displayed outside in a lapidary garden. Additionally, just behind the museum are the remains of a basilica.
The Sanctuary of Thinissut is an archaeological site located in Tunisia, whose excavation started in the early 20th century. It is situated in the present-day locality of Bir Bouregba in the Cap Bon region, approximately five kilometers from the town of Hammamet and sixty kilometers southeast of the capital, Tunis.
