City

Carthage

Also Known As Carthaginian

Tunisia

Carthage was founded by Phoenician settlers from Tyre on the North African coast, by tradition in 814 BCE, and grew into the religious and commercial capital of the Punic world, worshipping the goddess Tanit alongside her consort Baal Hammon at open air sanctuaries including the debated tophet burial ground. Rome destroyed the Punic city in 146 BCE after the Third Punic War and refounded it a century later as a Roman colony, which grew into North Africa's leading Christian center: home to the writer Tertullian, the martyred bishop Cyprian, the young Augustine of Hippo's studies, and a series of church councils that helped settle both the Donatist controversy and the canon of the New Testament.

Facts

Disputed

Ritual Context

The tophet sanctuary's infant and animal burials, dedicated to Tanit and Baal Hammon, are read by some archaeologists as evidence of ritual child sacrifice and by others as an infant cemetery; the question is unresolved 3

Ancient authors (Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch) describe child sacrifice at Carthage; modern archaeologists including Stager and Quinn largely concur based on tophet evidence, while others including Moscati and Fantar read the same burials as natural infant deaths. No excavation has settled the dispute.

Origins

Founded

Traditionally founded in 814 BCE by Phoenician settlers from Tyre; ancient legend credits the founding to the exiled queen Dido 1

Status

UNESCO World Heritage

Inscribed on the World Heritage List 2

Attributions

Tradition

Punic (Canaanite-Phoenician) religion, then Roman religion, then Christianity 1

Traditions

Sacred and Liturgical Languages

Punic for the Phoenician colonial city; Latin for the refounded Roman and Christian city 1

Learn More

Tanit, Baal Hammon and the Tophet Question

Punic Carthage worshipped a pantheon inherited and adapted from its Phoenician founders, headed in the city's own religious life by the goddess Tanit, called "Face of Baal," alongside the older god Baal Hammon, her consort. Their principal sanctuary, excavated in the modern Salammbo district, is known to archaeology as the tophet, a walled precinct that yielded thousands of urns containing the cremated remains of infants and young animals, each often marked by a carved stele recording a vow to Tanit and Baal Hammon.

What those burials mean is genuinely disputed. Ancient Greek and Roman writers, including Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch, describe Carthaginians sacrificing children to these gods in times of crisis, and some modern archaeologists, including Lawrence Stager and, more recently, Josephine Quinn, read the tophet's contents and inscriptions as consistent with ritual child sacrifice, of the sickly or in periods of danger to the city. Others, including Sabatino Moscati and M'hamed Hassine Fantar, argue the tophet was primarily a burial ground for infants who died of natural causes or stillbirth and were dedicated to the gods rather than killed for them. No consensus has settled the question, and this record states the disagreement rather than a side.

From Punic Ruin to Christian See

Rome razed Carthage in 146 BCE at the end of the Third Punic War, enslaving or dispersing its surviving population, and the site lay largely unbuilt for roughly a century until Julius Caesar and then Augustus refounded it as a Roman colony. It grew rapidly into the second city of the Latin-speaking western empire and, by the second century CE, its leading center of Christian thought. Tertullian, writing there around 200 CE, was among the first major Christian authors in Latin; Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, was martyred in 258 CE during the persecution under the emperor Valerian and left an influential body of writing on church unity.

The young Augustine of Hippo studied rhetoric in Carthage before his conversion, and the city later hosted the councils that shaped North African Christianity's response to the Donatist controversy, a dispute over whether clergy who had handed over scriptures during Diocletian's persecution could validly administer the sacraments afterward. A Council of Carthage in 397 CE also affirmed a list of New Testament books matching the twenty seven eventually recognized across the wider church, an early and influential step toward a settled canon, even as the city's own political fortunes passed from Rome to Vandal and then Byzantine rule before the seventh century Muslim conquest ended its life as a major urban center.

Connections

Associated With

Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo studied rhetoric in Carthage as a young man before his conversion.

Source Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient CivilizationRichard Miles

Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization

This source names Carthage directly: "Richard Miles's Carthage Must Be Destroyed, The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization, published by Allen Lane in 2010, is a scholarly history of Carthage and its Phoenician Punic religious and..."

Source Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient CivilizationRichard Miles

Louis IX of France

He died of disease in 1270 in the camp outside Tunis, on the ruins of the ancient city, weeks after landing on his second crusade.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity (Menologion of Basil II)

This source names Carthage directly: "martyrs, executed in the arena at Carthage in 203 CE."

Source Wikimedia Commons File Record, Menologion of Basil II Martyrdom Miniature

Mediterranean Sea

A major Phoenician and later early Christian centre on the sea's southern rim

Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn

Missouri and Illinois Mobs Suppress the Latter-day Saints

This source names Carthage directly: "Hyrum were murdered by a mob at the Carthage jail in June 1844, and renewed mob violence, including a September 1846 siege by roughly eight hundred armed men, forced the remaining Saints out of..."

Source Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 1, The Standard of Truth, 1815-1846The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saintsthe holders' own account

Perpetua and Felicity (Wikipedia)

This source names Carthage directly: "Christian martyrs executed together at Carthage in 203 CE, naming and reproducing a manuscript illumination captioned "The martyrdom of Perpetua, Felicitas, Revocatus, Saturninus and Saturus from..."

Source Perpetua and Felicity (Wikipedia)

Phoenician

This source names Carthage directly: "their western Mediterranean colonies, Carthage foremost."

Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn

Phoenician and Punic Religion

This source names Carthage directly: "Sardinia and Iberia, most prominently Carthage."

Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn

Roman Religion

Roman Carthage, refounded after 146 BCE, practiced the state religion of its Roman colonists.

Source Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient CivilizationRichard Miles

Second Punic War

Carthage fought the war and lost it, accepting a punitive peace in 201 BCE that left it without an empire.

Source The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265-146 BCAdrian Goldsworthy

Tanit

This source names Carthage directly: "The presiding goddess of Carthage from at least the fifth century BCE onward, titled "Face of Baal" (pene Baal) and paired with Baal Hammon as the city's two chief deities, her name eventually..."

Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn

The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265-146 BC

This source names Carthage directly: "Adrian Goldsworthy's The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265-146 BC, published by Cassell in 2000, is a scholarly military and political history of the three Punic Wars by a historian specialising..."

Source The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265-146 BCAdrian Goldsworthy

Usury (Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)

This source names Carthage directly: "only) through the First Council of Carthage (345), the Council of Aix or Aachen (789, the actual extension to the laity), the Third Lateran Council (1179) and the Second Council of Lyons (1274), to..."

Source Usury (Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)

Contained In

Tunisia

The ruins and modern suburb of Carthage lie within the Republic of Tunisia, near Tunis.

Source Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient CivilizationRichard Miles

Sacred To

Baal

Baal Hammon was worshipped at Carthage alongside Tanit; the Punic Baal Hammon is a specific figure within the broader Baal title.

Source Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient CivilizationRichard Miles

Christianity

Roman Carthage became North Africa's leading center of Christian thought, home to Tertullian, Cyprian and a series of influential church councils.

Source Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient CivilizationRichard Miles

Sources

1. Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization

Richard Miles, Allen Lane, 2010

2. Carthage (Wikipedia)

Lead section: UNESCO status

Quote, Lead section: UNESCO status

The site of the ruins is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

View the Source

3. In Search of the Phoenicians

Josephine Quinn, Princeton University Press, 2018

The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition

Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source

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Carthage

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