While we were in Tunisia, we had to take a trip to the ruins of Carthage. I wanted to see it because of a sentimental attachment to The Aeneid, John was interested in visiting the setting for Flaubert’s lurid historical novel Salammbô.
Carthage was a Phoenician colony, one of a network of ports and colonies throughout the Mediterranean and up to the Southern Black Sea.
The ‘Phoenicians’ didn’t actually call themselves that or even consider themselves a unified people—the name was a Greek term for Semitic-speaking people from the Levant famous for their naval and mercantile activities. Their sense of identity was usually linked to a city-state. For example, Carthage’s name, Qart-Ḥadašt (𐤒𐤓𐤕 𐤇𐤃𐤔𐤕), means ‘New City’, the ‘Old City’ being Tyre, which is now in Lebanon.
Weirdly enough, Tyre’s greatest claim to ancient fame was a purple dye extracted from the stinky mucus of a sea snail (Bolinus Bandaris). In fact, it is widely supposed that the word Phoenician comes from ancient Greek ‘phoinix’, a crimson-purplish color. Purple clothing became the ultimate status symbol, partly because it required an enormous amount of shells and labor to produce.
The great gods of Carthage were derived directly from the Canaanite pantheon worshipped in Phoenicia proper: El, the father of all gods; Ba’al Hammon (‘Lord’) the storm god and protector against Chaos; Asherah the ‘mother’ goddess; Anath goddess of war and hunting. Incidentally, ‘Ba’al’ often included in Carthaginian boys’ names, the most famous example being Hannibal. Over time Carthage added its own local gods, one of whom was Tanit, who fulfilled the role of Astarte, important for sexual love and fertility; her cult and priest feature prominently in Salammbô.
As usual, getting to the site was fairly tiring. It was an hour’s drive to Tunis and the driver insisted on taking us to a souk first, even though we tried to convince him that souks were one of our least favourite things in the universe. It was inconceivable to him that a tourist wouldn’t go to a souk, so that took up two hours.
Finally, we arrived at the carpark at the top of Byrsa hill, where the citadel used to be. Byrsa (Greek βύρσα) means “oxhide” and may refer to Queen Dido, a refugee from Tyre and legendary founder of Carthage. Virgil recounts how she tricked a local chieftain when he said she could have as much land as she could encircle with an oxhide and proceeded to cut the hide into thin strips and create a kind of cordon around this hill. Whether or not the story is true, it is certainly a nice spot and would make a good lookout.
After three wars with Rome, in 146 B.C., the Romans under Scipio Africanus the Younger burned the city to the ground in a kind of frenzy of murder and destruction. The only remains of Carthaginian residences is preserved only because the Romans covered it with earth to make it disappear, which paradoxically helped to keep the structures fairly intact.
Following this destruction, the Romans built their own stuff on the bones of their enemies, including the headquarters for the proconsul in charge of Roman Africa. Much to my disappointment, the Carthage National Museum was closed. But there were some mosaics, pillars and statues in the open air.
One thing I didn’t expect to see here was a giant cathedral. This is the St. Louis Cathedral, built by the French between 1884 and 1890, sacred to the memory of Louis IX of France who died of plague in Carthage during the Eighth Crusade. It’s no longer used for worship but houses the museum and is used as an event space.
There were many other fragments of the Roman and Medieval periods. I liked the fragmentary, hodge-podge nature of the pieces, like rummaging through an open-air attic.
It started to drizzle a little so we retreated back to the carpark and our driver took us to another part of the ancient town, an area where the posh Romans had lived. This was quite amazing. We were the only ones there except for an old man sitting forlornly on a chair, guarding the relics in the rain. You could get a feel for how the town would have looked once, especially at the ‘Villa of the Aviary’, distinctive for its beautiful floor mosaics, which are (incredibly) completely uncovered! The same house featured a beautiful broken male torso.
We also saw the Baths of Antoninus, the biggest Roman baths outside of the Italian peninsula. It was incredible to think that what we were seeing was basically just the foundations, where they kept the heating system.
The next place we stopped at was the amphitheater, built at the end of the first century CE. In the eleventh century Al-Bakri wrote admiringly, “This building is composed of a circle of arches supported by columns and topped by other things similar to the forefront arcades. On the walls of this building, we see pictures representing animals […] can be distinguished figures that symbolize the winds: the East looks smiling, and the West has a frowning face.” Most of that has gone now, but it’s still an impressive site .
Finally, our indefatigable driver took us on a drive past the old harbour, one of the wonders of the ancient world and a remnant of Carthage proper, which is to say Phoenician Carthage. Being above all seamen, the Carthaginians spent a lot of time and resources into constructed an elaborate double port. The outer one was for merchant vessels, the inner and more protected one for military ships called a cothon. You can see what it might have looked like in the reconstruction (if the photo is hard to see, there is also a video here).
The last place we visited was the tophet, traditionally the resting place of victims of child sacrifice. Their ashes were preserved in urns and marked by stelae, many of which were marked with the sign of the goddess Tanit. It was a somber place, shaded with trees, and it made me feel a little queasy. Some people say that not all the children buried here were sacrifice victims, but there are Phoenicians burial sites throughout the western Meditteranean where urns have been found to contain the burnt remains of human infants and lambs. There are, too, several passages in the Bible and classical sources that refer (disapprovingly) to child sacrifice, or ‘passing a child through fire’, something kings did particularly when faced with the prospect of war.
By this time we were exhausted and fairly depressed thinking of all the dead babies. So we decided to head back to Hammamet, thinking that maybe the twenty-first century isn’t so bad after all. Despite various looming apocalypses, at least we don’t sacrifice children very often.
