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Greek city of Carthage in Zeugitana
Bronze 3 Shekels 27mm (20.01 grams) Struck circa 201-175 B.C.
Reference: Cf. MAA 105; cf. Müller, Afrique 242–50; cf. SNG Copenhagen 409–13
Head of Tanit left, wearing wreath of grain ears and single-pendant earring.
Horse advancing right; Punic letter below.
* Numismatic Note: Rare large denomination bronze coin of Carthage.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured,
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Tanit was a
Phoenician
lunar
goddess
, worshiped as the
patron goddess
at
Carthage
where from the fifth century BCE
onwards her name is associated with that of
Baal Hammon
and she is given the epithet
pene baal (“face of Baal”) and the title rabat, the female form of
rab (chief) (Markoe 2000:130). Tanit and Baal Hammon were worshiped in Punic
contexts in the Western Mediterranean, from
Malta
to
Gades
into Hellenistic times. In North Africa,
where the inscriptions and material remains are more plentiful, she was, as well
as a consort of Baal, a heavenly goddess of war, a virginal mother goddess and
nurse, and, less specifically, a symbol of fertility. Several of the major Greek
goddesses were identified with Tanit by the syncretic
interpretatio graeca
, which recognized as
Greek deities in foreign guise the gods of most of the surrounding non-Hellene
cultures.
Stele
with Tanit’s symbol in
Carthage
‘s
Tophet, including a crescent moon over the figure
Her shrine excavated at
Sarepta
in southern Phoenicia revealed an
inscription that identified her for the first time in her homeland and related
her securely to the
Phoenician
goddess
Astarte
(Ishtar). One site where Tanit was
uncovered is at
Kerkouan
, in the Cap Bon peninsula in Tunisia.
The origins of Tanit are to be found in the pantheon of
Ugarit
, especially in the Ugaritic goddess
Anat (Hvidberg-Hansen 1982), a consumer of blood and flesh. There is
significant, albeit disputed, evidence, both archaeological and within ancient
written sources (Markoe 2000:136), pointing towards child sacrifice forming part
of the worship of Tanit and Baal Hammon.
Tanit was also a goddess among the ancient
Berber people
.
Her symbol, found on many ancient stone carvings, appears as a
trapezoid
/trapezium
closed by a horizontal line at the top and surmounted in the middle by a circle:
the horizontal arm was often terminated either by two short upright lines at
right angles to it or by hooks. Later, the trapezoid/trapezium was frequently
replaced by an isosceles triangle
.The symbol is interpreted by
Hvidberg-Hansen as a woman raising her hands.
In
Egyptian
, her name means Land of Neith,
Neith
being a war goddess.
In modern times the name, with the spelling “Tanith“,
has been used as a female given name, both for real people and, more frequently,
in occult fiction.
Carthage
(Arabic:
قرطاج Qarāj,
Ancient Greek
: Καρχηδών
Karkhēdōn, Kartajen,
Hebrew
:
קרתגו kartago,
Latin
:
Carthago or Karthago, from the
Phoenician
Qart-ḥadašt קַרְתְּ חַדַשְתְּ
meaning New City, implying it was a ‘new Tyre’) refers to a series of
cities on the
Gulf of Tunis
, from a Phoenician colony of the
1st millennium BCE to the current suburb outside
Tunis
,
Tunisia
.
The first civilization that developed within the city’s
sphere of influence is referred to as Punic (a form of the word “Phoenician”) or
Carthaginian. The city of Carthage is located on the eastern side of
Lake Tunis
across from the centre of Tunis.
According to Roman legend it was founded in 814 BCE by
Phoenician
colonists from Tyre under the
leadership of Elissa (Queen
Dido). It became a large and rich city and thus a major power in the
Mediterranean. The resulting rivalry with
Syracuse
and
Rome
was accompanied by several wars with
respective invasions of each other’s homeland.
Hannibal
‘s invasion of Italy in the
Second Punic War
culminated in the Carthaginian
victory at Cannae
and led to a serious threat
to the continuation of Roman rule over Italy; however, Carthage emerged from the
conflict at its historical weakest. After the
Third Punic War
, the city was destroyed by the
Romans in 146 BCE. However, the Romans refounded Carthage, which became one of
the three most important cities of the Empire and the capital of the short-lived
Vandal kingdom
. It remained one of the most
important Roman cities until the Muslim conquest when it was destroyed a second
time in CE 698.
The study of the history of
Carthage
is often problematic. Due to the
subjugation of the civilization by the Romans at the end of the
Third Punic War
, very few Carthaginian
historical primary sources
survive. There are a
few ancient translations of
Punic
texts into Greek and Latin, as well as
inscriptions on monuments and buildings discovered in North Africa. However, the
majority of available primary source material about Carthaginian civilization
was written by
Greek
and
Roman
historians, such as
Livy,
Polybius
,
Appian
,
Cornelius Nepos
,
Silius Italicus
,
Plutarch
,
Dio Cassius
, and
Herodotus
.
These authors came from cultures which were nearly always in
competition, and often in conflict, with Carthage. The Greeks contested with
Carthage for Sicily
, for instance, and the
Romans
fought the
Punic Wars
against Carthage. Inevitably the
accounts of Carthage written by outsiders include significant bias. Recent
excavation of ancient Carthaginian sites has brought much more primary material
to light. Some of these finds contradict or confirm aspects of the traditional
picture of Carthage, but much of the material is still ambiguous.
Carthage was one of a number of Phoenician settlements in the
western Mediterranean that was created to facilitate trade from the cities of
Sidon, Tyre and others from
Phoenicia
, which was situated in the coast of
what is now Syria, Lebanon and Israel. In the
10th century BC
, the eastern Mediterranean
shore was inhabited by various
Semitic
-speaking populations, who had built up
flourishing civilizations. The people inhabiting what is now Lebanon called
their language Canaanite
, but were referred to as
Phoenicians by the
Greeks
. The
Phoenician language
was very close to ancient
Hebrew, to such a degree that the latter is often used as an aid in translation
of Phoenician inscriptions.
The Phoenician cities were highly dependent on both land- and
seaborne trade and their cities included a number of major ports in the area. In
order to provide a resting place for their merchant fleets, to maintain a
Phoenician monopoly on an area’s natural resource, or to conduct trade on its
own, the Phoenicians established numerous colonial cities along the coasts of
the Mediterranean, stretching from Iberia to the Black Sea. They were stimulated
to found their cities by a need for revitalizing trade in order to pay the
tribute extracted from
Tyre
,
Sidon
, and
Byblos
by the succession of empires that ruled
them and later by fear of complete Greek colonization of that part of the
Mediterranean suitable for commerce. The initial Phoenician colonization took
place during a time when other neighboring kingdoms (Greek, Hittite, Cretan)
were suffering from a “Dark Age”, perhaps after the activities of the
Sea Peoples
.
Carthage was founded by
Phoenician
settlers from the city of
Tyre
, who brought with them the
city-god
Melqart
.
Philistos of Syracuse
dates the founding of
Carthage to c. 1215 BC, while the Roman historian
Appian
dates the founding 50 years prior to the
Trojan War
(i.e. between 1244 and 1234
BC, according to the chronology of
Eratosthenes
). The Roman poet
Virgil
imagines that the city’s founding
coincides with the end of the Trojan War. However, it is most likely that the
city was founded sometime between 846 and 813 BC.
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