Carthage Must Be Destroyed (14 page)

We do not know how this new land was acquired–whether by alliances struck with local Libyan leaders or by aggressive military action –but during the sixth century Carthage clearly began to expand its authority over the fertile Medjerda valley and the Cap Bon peninsula through the construction of a number of forts and settlements.
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A later Greek account of Cap Bon (now north-eastern Tunisia) provides a clear explanation of the allure of the region for a city with a burgeoning population:

Over forty years ago, archaeologists had the good fortune to stumble upon one of the new Carthaginian foundations on Cap Bon. The wonder of Kerkouane is not its magnificent buildings or its exquisite material culture, but its survival. Whereas many of its counterparts lie inaccessible under Roman, Byzantine, Arab and now Tunisian settlements, Kerkouane, when it was destroyed by the Romans, was not even considered worth rebuilding. We do not even know what the Carthaginians called this small town, for ‘Kerkouane’ (a name bestowed by archaeologists) does not appear in the surviving historical accounts from the ancient world. Kerkouane nevertheless provides a rare window into small-town life in Punic North Africa.
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Life for most of the inhabitants of Punic North Africa would have been a gruelling struggle for subsistence, and it is this world that Kerkouane represents. Its water, though plentiful, is rather brackish, and the land around it too thin for extensive agriculture. What is more, although it lies on the water’s edge, Kerkouane has no natural harbour. Kerkouane is the town that history forgot, lying under the dunes for over two millennia, waiting to be rediscovered.

Although much of what remains of the town dates to the early third century BC (just before it was finally destroyed), Kerkouane still gives us a full picture of a small Punic town in North Africa.
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It is unlikely that its population was ever more than 1,200 people, who made their living as fishermen and craftsmen. The main industries of the settlement seem to have been salt-making, the manufacture of purple dye (many murex shells have been found on the site), and the production of garum.

Despite its modest size, the town was planned on a loose grid system, with buildings lining a series of wide streets interspersed with public squares. The most prominent public building in the city was the temple, and it must have been a fine sight. The handsome entrance was flanked with pilasters and contained a vestibule which led into a large courtyard, divided into two distinct spaces by an altar and a podium. The sacrificial altar was located in the front part, and behind was an area for ritual banquets. Although archaeologists do not know for sure which deities were worshipped at the temple, artefacts found at the site (including a votive arrowhead) hint at an emphasis on Melqart, his son Sid and Tanit–perhaps an indication of Kerkouane’s original status as a ‘colonial’ foundation on foreign land. Two male terracotta heads of an older bearded deity and a younger clean-shaven one, both wearing rounded-off conical hats, bear a striking resemblance to the iconography of Sid and Melqart at the temple of Antas in Sardinia.
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Undoubtedly the most impressive features of Kerkouane were some of the private residences that lined its generous avenues. The walls were built in the traditional Punic way, with rubble fill strengthened at regular intervals by large and upright rectangular stones. Most of these houses consisted of a series of rooms, including living and storage spaces, built around a central courtyard. The finest of them had inbuilt cupboards and chests, and some contained built-in bread ovens (similar to the
tabourna
ovens still found in Tunisia today). Many had an upper storey with rooms and a terrace.

However, what really surprised the archaeologists who excavated Kerkouane was the sheer number of bathrooms, and their technical ingenuity. Unlike in Carthage, where the hip baths were free-standing, many of those in Kerkouane were built into the room, with the most elaborate having a stepped seat, arm rests and a basin, all of which were covered in water-resistant render. Some bathrooms were split between changing and washing facilities. Whereas in many Greek houses the bathroom was connected to the kitchen area, in Kerkouane many were situated off the entrance vestibule or passageway leading from the street into the house. Although there were pragmatic reasons for such a location, such as the availability of drainage and water, the choice also suggests that in the Punic world the washing of the body was seen as an important ritual act of purification that marked the transition from the public sphere outside the house to the private space of the family.
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The town also provides invaluable clues about the interaction between the Carthaginian and the indigenous Libyan peoples.
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Although the religious practices and architecture of the town show a strong Carthaginian blueprint, and the written language used was Punic, strong native Libyan elements are still evident. This is particularly marked in certain funerary practices. In the tomb of Zybac, a metal-smelter, the burial arrangements correlate with the Libyan name of its occupant, for Zybac was buried in the foetal position (as was Libyan custom). His tomb also showed traces of the red ochre used in native Libyan burial practices.

The inhabitants of this little town were also connected into the wider Mediterranean world. An Attic black-figure wine jug depicting the Homeric hero Odysseus escaping from the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus has been found with an Ionian cup in a tomb dating to the sixth century BC. Greek architectural features such as Ionic capitals were also widely used, and a number of the more impressive private dwellings show significant Greek influence, such as peristyle courtyards and the use of ornate stucco plaster. Even outside the territory beyond its direct control, Carthaginian influence over wider areas of North Africa increased in the sixth century as new emporia were established along the coast through compacts with local indigenous leaders, while its commercial relations with the older Phoenician colonies such as Lixus continued.
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The fifth century saw further Carthaginian expansion into Africa, with the fertile regions of the Sahel (the area around the modern Tunisian towns of Sousse and Sfax) and Syrtis Major (modern north-west Libya) being added to the Carthaginian dominion.
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It was during this period that Carthage became as celebrated an agricultural producer as it was a mercantile power. Recent studies of the amphorae used to convey foodstuffs into the city clearly show that, even by the last decades of the sixth century BC, the vast majority of those foodstuffs originated from Carthage’s own hinterland.
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A land survey has also shown that in the fifth and fourth centuries new farms and agricultural centres began to appear on Carthage’s near hinterland, including on the peninsula itself.
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These included one particularly fine villa estate at Gammarth, in the north of the Carthage peninsula, which possessed a substantial olive-pressing operation.
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A name strongly associated with the Carthaginian agricultural revolution is Mago, an expert whose advice on trees, fruits and viticulture, as well as animal husbandry, was often cited by both Greek and Roman authors.
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Mago was particularly deferred to in regard to trees, fruits and viticulture, as well as being one of the first advocates of fertilizers and the need for regular pruning. Archaeologists working in the area of the commercial ports in Carthage found physical evidence of this expertise through the existence in a water channel (silted up sometime in the mid fourth century BC) of numerous seeds of fruits such as grapes, olives, peaches, plums and melons, as well as almonds, filberts and pistachios, a number of which require the use of complex horticultural techniques such as grafting.
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Wine was also produced in considerable quantities.
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Of particular fame was a sweet wine made from sun-dried grapes (rather like the
passito
which is still drunk in Italy today). Large numbers of Carthaginian transport amphorae have been found all over the western Mediterranean, and probably contained either wine or olive oil, also produced in large quantities in North Africa. The region was also famous for both figs and the pomegranate, the latter known by the Romans as the
malum Punicum
or ‘Punic apple’. The Carthaginians were also celebrated for certain technological advances in agriculture, such as the
tribulum plostellum Punicum
or Punic cart, a primitive but highly effective threshing machine.
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Intriguing stories exist that suggest Carthaginian activities in far more distant parts of Africa too. Greek and Roman authors reported that, over a century before the first recorded Greek voyage into the Atlantic Ocean by Pytheas of Massilia in the second half of the fourth century BC,
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two contemporaneous state-sanctioned Carthaginian expeditions set out to explore its African and European coastlines.
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So little was known about the Atlantic in antiquity that it was generally believed it was part of a giant river that encircled the whole earth.
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The first of these Carthaginian Atlantic ventures, involving a single ship captained by a senior Carthaginian commander named Himilco, is found in a poetical work of geographical instruction written in the fourth century AD by a Roman nobleman, Festus Rufus Avienus, for a young relative. Although it is unlikely that Avienus had read an original Punic text, he probably picked up the information from an earlier Greek account of Himilco’s adventures.
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Avienus recounts that, after passing through the Pillars of Hercules, Himilco’s ship turned north along the western coastlines of the Iberian peninsula and Gaul (modern France). The voyage took four long months, owing apparently to the shallow becalmed seas, vast areas of seaweed, and huge marine monsters which they encountered along the way.
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Eventually the party arrived in what is now Brittany, where lived the Oestrymnians, a trading people who ventured out on to the ocean in their hidebound boats. The Oestrymnians were renowned for their special relationship with the inhabitants of the mysterious tin- and lead-producing Cassiterides islands (variously identified as islands off Spain or in the Gulf of Morbihan, the Scilly Isles or Cornwall).
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Afterwards the party travelled further north, with Himilco visiting both Ireland and Britain before making the return journey to Carthage.

Like the account of Himilco’s northern mission, the second of these reported Carthaginian Atlantic expeditions is found not in a Punic text, but in this case in an anonymous Greek work called the
Periplus
(voyage) of Hanno, most recently dated to the fifth century BC, but purporting to be a faithful copy of an inscription put up in the temple of Baal Hammon in Carthage itself.
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This expedition was a more substantial affair. A flotilla of sixty-five oared ships with 30,000 men and women, food and other equipment set sail from Carthage under the command of a certain Hanno, and headed west into the Atlantic. First the fleet followed the coast of what is now Morocco and Mauritania, establishing a number of new settlements along the way, before sailing further south along the coast and past a great river, thought to be the river Senegal, where they sometimes met resistance from natives who prevented them from disembarking by throwing stones (while on other occasions they merely ran off and hid).
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Eventually, the author of the
Periplus
recounts, after twelve days from Carthage the Carthaginians anchored close to a series of large mountains covered with aromatic, colourful trees–most probably the Fouta-Djalon massif in Guinea-Bissau.
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When, a number of days later, they camped in what has been identified as the Niger delta, the crews became very afraid when the evening gloom was lit up by camp fires and the silence broken by the sound of music, the beat of drums and loud shouts in the dark jungle around them.
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After witnessing the strange sight of large torrents of fire emptying directly into the sea (thought to be lava flow from an active volcano), the expedition eventually came to a very high mountain called the ‘Chariot of the Gods’ (identified as Mount Cameroun), where they witnessed yet more volcanic activity, with flames seeming to rise to the stars at night. Later, in the forests of perhaps Gabon, they would come across a large number of what were described as ‘hair-covered savages’ (in reality probably chimpanzees).
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The Carthaginians were unable to capture any male specimens, because of their climbing ability and the ferocity with which they defended themselves; however, they managed to seize three females, whom they were forced to kill owing to their fierce resistance –a later Roman source claimed that their flayed hides were exhibited in the temple of Tanit at Carthage, until the destruction of the city.
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It was now that Hanno was forced to turn back, for lack of supplies, although there is no account of the return journey: the
Periplus
ends abruptly at this point.
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