Carthage (, ) was an ancient city in northern Africa founded by the legendary Phoenician queen Dido on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classical world. It became the capital city of the civilization of Ancient Carthage and later Roman Carthage.
The city developed from a Phoenician colony into the capital of a Punic empire which dominated large parts of the Southwest Mediterranean during the first millennium BC. The legendary Queen Elissa, Alyssa or Dido, originally from Tyre, is regarded as the founder of the city,Josephus, Against Apion (Book I, §18) though her historicity has been questioned. In the myth, Dido asked for land from a local tribe, which told her that she could get as much land as an oxhide could cover. She cut the oxhide into strips and laid out the perimeter of the new city. As Carthage prospered at home, the polity sent colonists abroad as well as magistrates to rule the colonies.
The ancient city was destroyed in the nearly three year siege of Carthage by the Roman Republic during the Third Punic War in 146 BC. It was re-developed a century later as Roman Carthage, which became the major city of the Roman Empire in the province of Africa. The question of Carthaginian decline and demise has remained a subject of literary, political, artistic, and philosophical debates in both ancient and modern histories.
Late antique and medieval Carthage continued to play an important cultural and economic role in the Byzantine period. The city was sacked and destroyed by Umayyad forces after the Battle of Carthage in 698 to prevent it from being reconquered by the Byzantine Empire. It remained occupied during the Muslim period and was used as a fort by the Muslims until the Hafsid period when it was taken by the Crusaders with its inhabitants massacred during the Eighth Crusade. The Hafsids decided to destroy its defenses so it could not be used as a base by a hostile power again. It also continued to function as an episcopal see.
The regional power shifted to Kairouan and the Medina of Tunis in the medieval period, until the early 20th century, when it began to develop into a coastal suburb of Tunis, incorporated as Carthage municipality in 1919. The archaeological site was first surveyed in 1830, by Danish consul Christian Tuxen Falbe. Excavations were performed in the second half of the 19th century by Charles Ernest Beulé and by Alfred Louis Delattre. The Carthage National Museum was founded in 1875 by Cardinal Charles Lavigerie. Excavations performed by French archaeologists in the 1920s first attracted attention because of the evidence they produced for child sacrifice. There has been considerable disagreement among scholars concerning whether child sacrifice was practiced by ancient Carthage.Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage Do Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of InfantsAncient Carthaginians really did sacrifice their children. University of Oxford News The open-air Carthage Paleo-Christian Museum has exhibits excavated under the auspices of UNESCO from 1975 to 1984. The site of the ruins is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Etymology
The name Carthage ( ) is the Early Modern anglicization of Middle French ,cf. Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage (c. 1590); Middle English still used the Latin form Carthago, e.g., John Trevisa, Polychronicon (1387) 1.169: That womman Dido that founded Carthago was comlynge. from Latin and (cf. Greek (), as well as (), and Etruscan ) from the Punic "new city", implying it was a "new Tyre". The Latin adjective , meaning "Phoenician", is reflected in English in some borrowings from Latinnotably the Punic Wars and the Punic language.
The Modern Standard Arabic form () is an adoption of French , replacing an older local toponym reported as Cartagenna that directly continued the Latin name. It also traces back to the Punic name "Qart-ḥadašt", meaning "new city".
Topography, layout, and society
Overview 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, where Carthage was built, affording it great power and influence. Two large, artificial harbors were built within the city, one for harboring the city's prodigious navy of 220 warships and the other for mercantile trade. A walled tower overlooked both harbors. The city had massive walls, long, which was longer than the walls of comparable cities. Most of the walls were on the shore and so could be less impressive, as Carthaginian control of the sea made attack from that direction difficult. The of wall on the isthmus to the west were truly massive and were never penetrated.
Carthage was one of the largest cities of the Hellenistic period and was among the largest cities in preindustrial history. Whereas by AD 14, Rome had at least 750,000 inhabitants and in the following century may have reached 1 million, the cities of Alexandria and Antioch numbered only a few hundred thousand or less. According to the history of Herodian, Carthage rivaled Alexandria for second place in the Roman empire.
Layout The Punic Carthage was divided into four equally sized residential areas with the same layout. It had religious areas, market places, a council house, towers, a theater, and a huge necropolis; roughly in the middle of the city stood a high citadel called the Byrsa. Surrounding Carthage were walls "of great strength" said in places to rise above 13 m, being nearly 10 m thick, according to ancient authors. To the west, three parallel walls were built. The walls altogether ran for about to encircle the city.Warmington, Carthage (1964) at 138–140, map at 139; at 273n.3, he cites the ancients: Appian, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Polybius.Harden, The Phoenicians (1962, 2d ed. 1963), text at 34, maps at 31 and 34. According to Harden, the outer walls ran several kilometers to the west of that indicated on the map here. The heights of the Byrsa were additionally fortified; this area being the last to succumb to the Romans in 146 BC. Originally the Romans had landed their army on the strip of land extending southward from the city.Picard and Picard, The Life and Death of Carthage (1968, 1969) at 395–396.For an ample discussion of the ancient city: Serge Lancel, Carthage (Paris: Arthème Fayard 1992; Oxford: Blackwell 1995, 1997) at 134–172, ancient harbors at 172–192; archaic Carthage at 38–77.
Outside the city walls of Carthage is the Chora or farm lands of Carthage. Chora encompassed a limited area: the north coastal tell, the lower Bagradas river valley (inland from Utica), Cape Bon, and the adjacent sahel on the east coast. Punic culture here achieved the introduction of agricultural sciences first developed for lands of the eastern Mediterranean, and their adaptation to local African conditions.Charles-Picard, Daily Life in Carthage (1958; 1968) at 85 (limited area), at 88 (imported skills).
The urban landscape of Carthage is known in part from ancient authors,e.g., the Greek writers: Appian, Diodorus Siculus, Polybius; and, the Latin: Livy, Strabo. augmented by modern digs and surveys conducted by archeologists. The "first urban nucleus" dating to the seventh century, in area about , was apparently located on low-lying lands along the coast (north of the later harbors). As confirmed by archaeological excavations, Carthage was a "creation ex nihilo", built on 'virgin' land, and situated at what was then the end of a peninsula. Here among "mud brick walls and beaten clay floors" (recently uncovered) were also found extensive cemeteries, which yielded evocative grave goods like clay masks. "Thanks to this burial archaeology we know more about archaic Carthage than about any other contemporary city in the western Mediterranean." Already in the eighth century, fabric dyeing operations had been established, evident from crushed shells of murex (from which the 'Phoenician purple' was derived). Nonetheless, only a "meager picture" of the cultural life of the earliest pioneers in the city can be conjectured, and not much about housing, monuments, or defenses.Serge Lancel, Carthage (Paris 1992), as translated by A. Nevill (Oxford 1997), at 38–45 and 76–77 (archaic Carthage): maps of early city at 39 and 42; burial archaeology quote at 77; short quotes at 43, 38, 45, 39; clay masks at 60–62 (photographs); terracotta and ivory figurines at 64–66, 72–75 (photographs). Ancient coastline from Utica to Carthage: map at 18.Cf., B. H. Warmington, Carthage (London: Robert Hale 1960; 2d ed. 1969) at 26–31. The Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BC) imagined early Carthage, when his legendary character Aeneas had arrived there:
"Aeneas found, where lately huts had been, marvelous buildings, gateways, cobbled ways, and din of wagons. There the Tyrians were hard at work: laying courses for walls, rolling up stones to build the citadel, while others picked out building sites and plowed a boundary furrow. Laws were being enacted, magistrates and a sacred senate chosen. Here men were dredging harbors, there they laid the deep foundations of a theatre, and quarried massive pillars... ."Virgil (70–19 BC), The Aeneid [19 BC], translated by Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Random House 1983), p. 18–19 (Book I, 421–424). Cf., Lancel, Carthage (1997) p. 38. Here capitalized as prose.Virgil here, however, does innocently inject his own Roman cultural notions into his imagined description, e.g., Punic Carthage evidently built no theaters per se. Cf., Charles-Picard, Daily Life in Carthage (1958; 1968).
The two inner harbors, named cothon in Punic, were located in the southeast; one being commercial, and the other for war. Their definite functions are not entirely known, probably for the construction, outfitting, or repair of ships, perhaps also loading and unloading cargo.The harbors, often mentioned by ancient authors, remain an archaeological problem due to the limited, fragmented evidence found. Lancel, Carthage (1992; 1997) at 172–192 (the two harbors).Harden, The Phoenicians (1962, 2d ed. 1963) at 32, 130–131.Warmington, Carthage (1960, 1964) at 138. Larger anchorages existed to the north and south of the city.Sebkrit er Riana to the north, and El Bahira to the south [their modern names]. Harden, The Phoenicians (1962, 2d ed. 1963) at 31–32. Ships then could also be beached on the sand. North and west of the cothon were located several industrial areas, e.g., metalworking and pottery (e.g., for amphora), which could serve both inner harbors, and ships anchored to the south of the city.Cf., Lancel, Carthage (1992; 1997) at 139–140, city map at 138.