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Carthage: A Lost Empire

Carthage life

A prosperous city
The harbours
Religion
Child sacrifice?
Government
Literature

The Carthaginians’ greatest legacy is the culture of the Mediterranean. Their ancestors may have come from the east, but in the olive groves, vineyards and orchards and in the bustling ports and shops of the Mediterranean, you see traditions that owe as much to Carthage as to Greece or Rome.

A prosperous city
Carthage was a city of magnificent temples, glittering palaces and luxury houses lived in by the rich merchant classes who benefited from Carthage’s trade. Their town houses were up to six storeys high, built around central courtyards. They also had private estates in the countryside around the city, with large houses and gardens backing on to extensive plantations that benefited from complex irrigation systems. Herds of cattle and flocks of sheep pastured on the surrounding plains.

Carthaginian coinage demonstrates that this was a rich city at the heart of a flourishing empire, producing extensive wealth in gold, silver and bronze. No wonder Rome was so keen to capture some (or all) of this in plunder.

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The harbours
Carthage’s main port contained two linked harbours, with a common entrance from the sea 21.3 metres (70 feet) wide, which could be closed with iron chains. The first harbour was rectangular and used by merchant vessels, while the second was circular and designed for military use. Its shipyards and dry docks had a capacity for 220 ships.

The central island rose to a considerable height, allowing Carthaginian commanders to observe what was going on at sea, while approaching ships had no clear view of what lay within. A double wall enclosed the docks of the circular harbour, and gates allowed merchant ships to move into the city without crossing the naval dockyards.

Archaeologists have discovered that the harbours were built, or at least restored, as late as 150 BC. So Carthage really was expanding rapidly in the last years of Punic rule (see Chronology. Perhaps the Romans did have something to fear, as Cato argued: the peace treaty at the end of the Second Punic War had restricted Carthage to just 12 warships and yet their new docks had capacity for 220.

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Religion
Carthage’s early settlers had brought their religious practices with them from Phoenicia. Among their pantheon of gods and goddesses, the chief deity was Baal Hammon, lord and protector, and his consort Astarte. Other gods included Melqart, principal deity of Tyre, and Eshmoun. Many Carthaginian names were derived from the gods: Hannibal means ‘favoured by Baal’, while Hamilcar means ‘favoured by Melqart’.

During the 5th century BC, a new fertility goddess began to be widely worshipped in Carthage. Tanit, another consort of Baal, became the dominant deity in Punic culture, and her distinctive triangular symbol appeared widely. By the time of its destruction, Carthage had dozens of temples dedicated to Tanit.

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Child sacrifice?
The question of whether Carthaginians sacrificed children has divided historians. A tophet is a place where the remains of the dead are deposited. In the tophet in Carthage, first excavated in 1817, hundreds of urns and stelae (engraved stones) have been recovered. Many of the stelae are inscribed with dedications to Tanit and Baal, while the urns contained the cremated bones of infants. Some archaeologists believe this is evidence that the Carthaginians sacrificed children, but others point out that that evidence is far from conclusive. So what are we supposed to make of the claims? Here are the arguments for and against.

Child sacrifice in Carthage

Arguments for	Arguments against
20,000 terracotta urns have been found in the tophet at Carthage, containing the cremated remains of infants, some with jewellery and animal remains.	These were not mass burials – the bones seem to have been carefully collected, and most urns have the remains of only one child.
These were very young children – 51% were less than one month old; only 3% were aged between one and four years. They were healthy as far as can be seen.
Many stelae are dedicated to Baal, god of fire.	No stele directly refers to sacrifice, and Baal was one of the main deities.
How else do we explain the votive descriptions, such as the image of a man thought to be a priest cradling a child?	The figure may not have been a ‘priest’, and he has a caring appearance.
Older children and adults were buried in a separate necropolis.	Separate burial of young children is known in other cultures, and few infant burials have been found in Carthage’s necropolises.
Adult funerary stelae are distinct from tophet stelae.	The tophet has been heavily altered by earlier archaeologists.
Why would young lambs receive the same ritual burial as young children unless they were being sacrificed?
The word mlk appears on many stelae, standing for Moloch, a Phoenician god. The Bible refers to human sacrifices to a god called Moloch.	The biblical references relate to the Phoenicians, and may indicate a rite to introduce the child to the god and not sacrifice involving death.
Diodorus Siculus writes of the Carthaginians publicly sacrificing 200 children to make amends to a god during a political crisis in 310 BC.	Diodorus was writing Roman propaganda – the Carthaginians were seen as oriental intruders who had no right to call Carthage home.
Classical writers may have exaggerated sacrifice rituals, but would they have totally made them up?	Besides Diodorus, there’s little documentary evidence for sacrifice.
Many urns date from 4th century BC, when Carthage was under pressure in Sicily.	There’s no firm evidence for child sacrifice as such.
The Carthaginians could have had cultural values we find uncomfortable.	We shouldn’t read unreliable speculation into the actual evidence.

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Government
Our knowledge of Carthaginian government is limited and, significantly, comes only from Greek and Roman sources. Before the 6th century BC, the city was ruled by a council of elders, but this system was replaced by a monarchy until the early 4th century BC. Political power then came into the hands of a merchant oligarchy, and there was a small but powerful senate. Judges and two magistrates exercised judicial power.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) considered the Carthaginians to have an excellent form of government. He praised their institutions, and noted that the common people remained loyal to the constitution, with the city never having had a major rebellion or coming under the rule of a tyrant.

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Literature
Carthage is said to have had vast libraries, although what these contained will never be known. Some of the texts may well have come from Phoenicia: it is likely that the original Tyrian colonists had sacred books, mythological tales and epic poetry. Punic chronicles are mentioned by later Greek and Roman historians, and Hannibal is said to have written works in Greek and Punic.

The one Carthaginian work that has survived is the treatise on agriculture by Hannibal Barca's brother Mago, adopted by the Romans keen to emulate Carthage’s agricultural expertise.

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Home

Chronology

Carthage life

Why Carthage failed

Remembering Carthage

What remains?

Find out more

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