Hi all, had a friend share an image of this script and given the object was found in Tunisia I thought it was most likely Punic, but I'd prefer to get a more informed opinion.
I'm not a historian. I'm someone who got obsessed with Carthage and got frustrated that most of what's easily readable online is the same handful of set pieces (elephants, Cannae, "salting the earth", etc), with the long arc left out and nearly everything filtered through the people who destroyed the city. I spent months building the reference I wanted to exist: https://qart-hadasht.org
What I tried to do differently:
- Every factual claim is its own entry with sources attached, tagged 'attested / inferred / contested / legendary', so you can see how solid the ground is instead of reading a flat wall of assertions.
- Sources are first-class pages, including the lost ones (Philinus, Fabius Pictor, Timaeus, Sosylus and Silenus), each showing the gap between when it was written and when the events happened.
- Side-by-side source comparisons for contested episodes: Polybius vs Livy vs Appian vs Diodorus on the same event, with the points where they diverge called out and a working reconstruction. This is my favorite thing from entire site.
- Where I take a position I label it as mine, give the reasoning and name the readings I'm rejecting and why.
- Gaps get their own pages. What we can't reconstruct about Punic women's lives, or what was actually in Mago's agricultural treatise, is treated as content rather than silence.
For this sub specifically: I've tried to keep Carthage inside the Phoenician world rather than treating it as a standalone Rome-antagonist.
Two disclosures, since the whole pitch of the site is epistemic honesty:
I'm an amateur. The synthesis may be mine, but the scholarship is everyone else's. I'm certain there are errors in there.
I use AI assistance for some initial drafts and to help structure material, site, etc. Which sources to use, what positions to take, and reviewing the output are all mine. It's disclosed on the methodology page.
What I'd most value is being told where I'm wrong and if anyone else finds this valuable. Thanks!
So I was searching up the og punic pronounciations of Hannibal's generals and found something interesting from my friend whose very interested in the ancient world, that being how the punic language had shifted in saying some vowls and consonants. Specifically by the later period of Carthage's history
For example Carthalo's punic name of Melqart-Hilesh would be Qart-Halats by the time of the infamous 2nd Punic War, or how the ''Ba'al'' in Baal-Hamon or in Hannibaal would be pronounced closer to ''Bol'' so yeah, can anyone weigh their two cents on this? is my friend being accurate? He says his source is that Phoenician-Punic dictionary. But hopefully I'd get some good insights on this.
Thanks
Have you ever wondered who was the second Carthaginian in history after Dido?
Meet Malchus.
He is the first historical Carthaginian we can actually name after the legendary founder. His story comes down to us through the much later Roman historian Justin, and it’s a strange, messy, almost cinematic tale of victory, exile, civil war, and family betrayal.
Malchus (his name is simply the Phoenician word mlk - “king”) was remembered as a general who first won glory fighting Greek cities in Sicily. Then he suffered a defeat in Sardinia. The Carthaginians exiled him for the failure. He returned with what was essentially a private army, camped outside the walls of Carthage, and laid siege to his own city.
While the siege was underway, his son Carthalo arrived back from Tyre. The young man had been sent on a religious mission to deliver tribute to the temple of Melqart and was still wearing his priestly robes. Malchus was so enraged by what he saw as a sacrilege that he had his own son killed.
He then stormed the city, executed ten of the ruling senators, and briefly seized power before being overthrown himself, put on trial for treason and the murder of his son, and (presumably) executed.
The story is full of contradictions and later Roman coloring, but it seems to capture a real and violent moment of transition. Malchus may have been one of the last figures who still carried the aura of kingship. After him, Carthage clearly moves into the era of the sufetes, annually elected magistrates (the word is related to the Hebrew shophet, “judge”).
An inscription from the late sixth century BCE already counts time “in the twentieth year of the rule of the sufetes in Carthage.” Power was now shared between two magistrates chosen from the aristocratic elite, backed by a kind of senate.
The family that rose after Malchus, the Magonids, would dominate Carthaginian politics and military command for the next hundred years.
So the second Carthaginian we can name is not a polished founder-hero. He is a warlord who stormed his own capital, killed his priest-son, and helped force the city from monarchy into oligarchy.
So it's no secret that Rome relied mainly on Greek physicians for all their medical needs, especially in the army where they often had to perform field surgeries on soldiers. Most of them joined the Army's Medical Corps for Roman citizenship, tax exemptions, and the retirement pensions.
But what about Carthage? Did they have their own version of an Army Medical Corps? If yes, was it also composed of mostly foreigners, namely Greeks, who came for the financial benefits? Or was it mostly composed of Carthaginian healers?
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