“Carthage Must be Destroyed” - The BAS Library
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Home > Magazines > Archaeology Odyssey > November/December 2000

“Carthage Must be Destroyed”

But must it be forgotten?

By David Soren

Turn on the Discovery Channel or the History Channel and chances are you’ll see programs about the wonderful accomplishments of the ancient Greeks and Romans. But what about that other great, contemporaneous, central Mediterranean 018power: the nearly forgotten city-state of Carthage? Most of us recall that the Carthaginian king Hannibal (c. 247–182 B.C.), the scourge of Rome, led elephants and soldiers over the Alps to inflict heavy casualties on unsuspecting Italian armies. We all learned that the Romans defeated Hannibal—but what else do we really know about this enigmatic people? The French writer Gustave Flaubert set his novel […]

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Footnotes

1.

See Barry B. Powell and P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., “An Odyssey Debate: Who Invented the Alphabet?” AO 01:01.

2.

Referring to the Phoenicians—and their language—in the western Mediterranean, the term “Punic” derives from the Latin adjective punicus, a transliteration of the Greek Phoinikos (Phoenician), which derives from the Greek word for purple (as in purple dye).

3.

Similar, though smaller, Tophets have been found at Punic sites in Sicily, Sardinia and Mallorca.

4.

Many of the stones marking the burial niches where the urns were laid are inscribed with the triangular symbol of Tanit. The disk (or double disk) with extended lines on top of the symbol of Tanit may be the symbol of Ba’al Hammon.

Endnotes

1.

See P.G. Mosca, Child Sacrifice in Canaanite and Israelite Religion: A Study in Mulk and Molech, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University (1975), p. 22.

2.

Byron Khun de Prorok, Smithsonian Annual (1925), p. 571.

3.

De Prorok, In Quest of Lost Worlds (London: Frederick Muller, 1935), p. 4.

4.

Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage—Religious Rite or Population Control?” BAR 10:01.

5.

Tertullian, Apology 9:2–4, trans. T.R. Glover (Loeb Classical Library, 1931).