Punic people
[5] Literary sources report two moments of Tyrian [citation needed] settlements in the west, the first in the 12th century BC (the cities Utica, Lixus, and Gadir) that hasn't been confirmed by archaeology, and a second at the end of the 9th century BC, documented in written references in both east and west, which culminated in the foundation of colonies in northwest Africa (the cities Auza, Carthage, and Kition)[6] and formed part of trading networks linked to Tyre, Arvad, Byblos, Berytus, Ekron, and Sidon in the Phoenician homeland.
These terms derived from the Ancient Greek word Φοῖνιξ ("Phoinix"), plural form Φοίνικες ("Phoinikes"), which was used indiscriminately to refer to both western and eastern Phoenicians.
[11]It has been argued by J.C. Quinn that this is a misreading,[12] since although this term is "applied to Levantine people" in the Hebrew Bible, "there is no other evidence for self-identification as Canaanite, and so we might suspect him of learned optimism.
(This practice has ancient roots: Hellenistic Greek authors sometimes referred to the Punic inhabitants of central northern Africa (Libya) as Liby-Phoenicians.)
They settled over Northwest Africa in what is now Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya and established some colonies in Southern Iberia, Sardinia, Sicily, Ebusus, Malta and other small islands of the western Mediterranean.
[15] Technical achievements of the Punic people of Carthage include the development of uncolored glass and the use of limestone from lakeside deposits to improve the purity of smelted iron.
At Carthage, the chief gods were Baal Hammon (purportedly "Lord of the Brazier")[16] and his consort Tanit, but other deities are attested, such as Eshmun, Melqart,[17] Ashtart, Reshef, Sakon, and Shamash.
[18] The Carthaginians also adopted the Greek goddesses Demeter and Kore in 396 BC,[19] as well as the Egyptian deities Bes, Bastet, Isis, Osiris, and Ra.
[26][27] These descriptions were compared to those found in the Hebrew Bible describing the sacrifice of children by burning to Baal and Moloch at a place called Tophet.
[31] Tunisia was among the areas settled during the first wave of Phoenician expansion into the west, with the foundation of Utica and Hippo Regius taking place around the end of the twelfth century.
[40] From the 8th century BC, Phoenicians founded several cities and strongholds on strategic points in the south and west of Sardinia, often peninsulas or islands near estuaries, easy to defend and natural harbours, such as Tharros, Bithia, Sulci, Nora and Caralis (Cagliari).
The north, the eastern coast and the interior of the island continued to be dominated by the indigenous Nuragic civilization, whose relations with the Sardo-Punic cities were mixed, including both trade and military conflict.
[43] They expanded their influence to the western and southern coast from Bosa to Caralis, consolidating the existing Phoenician settlements, administered by plenipotentiaries called Suffetes, and founding new ones such as Olbia, Cornus, and Neapolis;[44] Tharros was probably the main centre.
[51][52] From the 11th century BC, Phoenician merchants, sailors, and artisans begin to settle in western Sicily, having already started colonies on the nearby parts of North Africa.
Within a century, they established major Phoenician settlements at Soloeis (Solunto), present day Palermo and Motya (an island near present-day Marsala).
Writers in antiquity, such as Pliny the Elder,[54] dated the beginning of the colonization efforts to the 12th and 11th centuries BC, as several legends describe interactions between Phoenician colonists and famous figures from the Trojan War, such as Aeneas.
[55] Effectively establishing a monopoly on the continent's natural resources, the colonies' wealth exploded, which was compounded by an influx of Phoenician traders fleeing from increasing tributary obligations to foreign powers and trade interference.
Around this time, a distinct culture began to emerge from the admixture of local customs with Phoenician traditions, which also gave rise to a nascent sense of national identity.
In the 5th century BC, Hanno the Navigator played a significant role in exploring coastal areas of present-day Morocco and other parts of the African coast, specifically noting details of indigenous peoples, such as at Essaouira.
In the Second Punic War, an invasion of Italy by Hannibal was unsuccessful in forcing the Romans to surrender and the Carthaginians were subsequently defeated by Scipio Africanus in Spain and at the Battle of Zama in northern Africa in 202 BC, marking the end of Carthage's position as a major Mediterranean power.
[citation needed] The cult to Baal Hammon, and the consequent sacrifice of children, though banned by Rome,[64] continued openly under the guise of worshipping Saturn until at least the proconsulate of Tiberius Iulius Secundus in Africa (131–132).
[68][full citation needed] One of his more well known passages reads: It is an excellent thing that the Punic Christians call baptism itself nothing else but 'salvation', and the sacrament of Christ's body nothing else but 'life'.
The demographic and cultural characteristics of the region were thoroughly transformed by turbulent events such as the Vandals' wars with Byzantines and the population movements that followed, as well as the Muslim conquest of North Africa in the 7th century AD.
[71] After the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb, the geographer al-Bakri described a people who spoke a language which was not Berber, Latin, or Coptic,[72] living in Sirte, where spoken Punic survived well past written use.
[74] Mitochondrial analysis of 10 Punic samples from the necropolis of Tharros in Sardinia (5th – 3rd century BC) shows affinities with North African and Iberian populations.
Zalloua, P., Collins, C.J., Gosling, A. et al. in 2018 showed that Eastern Mediterranean and North African influence in the Punic population of Ibiza was primarily male dominated.
One possible explanation is that the colonial expansion of Phoenician city-states at the start of the Iron Age did not involve large amounts of population mobility, and may have been based on trade relationships rather than occupation.
