Carthage: Ancient Phoenician City-State

LiveScience ^ | 24 October 2012 | Owen Jarus

[SunkenCiv]

The Phoenicians were originally based in a series of city-states that extended from southeast Turkey to modern-day Israel. They were great seafarers with a taste for exploration. Accounts survive of its navigators reaching places as far afield as Northern Europe and West Africa. They founded settlements throughout the Mediterranean during the first millennium B.C.

Carthage, whose Phoenician name was Qart Hadasht (new city), was one of those new settlements. It sat astride trade routes going east to west, across the Mediterranean, and north to south, between Europe and Africa. The people spoke Punic, a form of the Phoenician language...

The earliest archaeological evidence of occupation at Carthage dates to about 760 B.C. The settlement quickly grew to encompass a 25-30 hectare (61-74 acres) residential area surrounded by a necropolis (graveyard), notes Roald Docter, of Ghent University.

Within a century the settlement would have city walls, harbor installations and a "Tophet," a controversial installation in the southeast of the city that may have been used for child sacrifice (it could simply have been a special burial ground).

A great marketplace (which the Greeks called an "agora") also developed...

By 500 B.C., the city's system of government, as suggested by the large marketplace, was a republic of sorts...

In the second century B.C., just before it was destroyed by Rome, the city boasted a population estimated at more than half a million people.

[SunkenCiv]

Location of Carthage and Carthaginian sphere of influence prior to the First Punic War (264 B.C.) CREDIT: Public domain

[SunkenCiv]

New Light on the Dark Age of Greece
by Jan Sammer
The Date of Carthage’s Founding
http://www.varchive.org/nldag/carthage.htm

[IronJack]

And then came Scipio ...

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[bert]

“Turn here.....there’s the battlefield. I can Smell it” Patton

[1010RD]

Ober on the Ancient Greek Economy
-Josiah Ober

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/08/ober_on_the_anc.html

Josiah Ober of Stanford University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the economy of ancient Greece, particularly Athens. Ober notes that the standard view of ancient Greece is that it was very poor. Drawing on various kinds of evidence, Ober argues that Greece was actually quite successful, and that the average citizen of ancient Athens lived quite well by ancient standards. He suggests two possible explanations for Greece’s economic success—an openness of the political process that reduced transaction costs and encouraged human capital investment or innovation and cross-fertilization across Greek states. The conversation also explores the nature of evidence for understanding antiquity and the prospect for future discoveries pertaining to ancient Greece.

[1010RD]

Not until the Roman Army built a navy that could fight land battles on water.

[AnalogReigns]

I have an archaeology professor who spent a lot of time digging up the Tophet, the child-sacrifice burial ground, of Carthage.

The Phoenicians lived in what is now Lebanon—and are a Canaanite people, culturally very similar to other neighbors of ancient Israel. The word “Tophet” is in the bible—as are many historical references to the Canaanite practice (too often adopted by the Hebrews too...) of live sacrifice of children to the gods Ashteroth or Baal.

The child would be burned alive (apparently after being drugged) in a brazier in front of the idol. This was usually done to appease the god(s) to ensure good crops and fertility...

The Tophet at Carthage has TENS OF THOUSANDS of grave pots—filled the the charred bones of babies and kids, many with gravestones. The charring is on the back of the bones, showing how the child was laid on its back over the fire. It was used over a period of 400 years.

According to my professor, human sacrifice of children was nearly universal when one looks at very ancient societies around the world. Even in “civilized” Rome (which ended up wiping Carthage out), setting unwanted babies outside to die by exposure...was a common practice, and something only stopped by Christianity.

It seems that when people don’t worship God, abortion, euthanasia, and even outright human sacrifice becomes common.

[mosesdapoet]

Thanks for the posting and the map

[Explorer89]

“Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I READ YOUR BOOK!” - Patton :)

[X Fretensis]

Ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem delendam esse.

[FreedomPoster]

See tagline.

[colorado tanker]

This is a nice summary of Carthage’s history.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!