Carthage Must Be Destroyed (15 page)

Although it is impossible completely to guarantee their historical veracity, such voyages fit well with the Carthaginians’ burgeoning reputation for trade and colonization during this period. Although the reported numbers on board must be exaggerated, the account makes it clear that the establishment of emporia and workshops in the coastal regions of what is now western Morocco–an area particularly abundant in sea life and therefore a good place for the establishment of factories producing purple dye, salted fish and garum–was an important component of the voyage.
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As regards metal ores, there were sources of copper in Mauritania and of gold in Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, as well as large quantities of easily accessible tin in the Bauchi region of northern Nigeria.
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There has long been a vigorous academic debate over these accounts of Carthaginian exploration and trade out into the Atlantic. The French scholars Jean-Gabriel Demerliac and Jean Meirat have gone as far as to argue that the voyages were part of a coordinated attempt under the Magonids to control Atlantic trade.
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To prove this theory they have ‘reconstructed’ a carefully planned rotation system whereby smaller, more manoeuvrable, craft were used to carry tin, lead, amber, flax, hides and copper from the northern Atlantic coast, and gold, tin, ivory, hides, jasper, resin, rubber, purple garments and fish products from the southern, before the goods were transferred at Gades into large merchant ships for the journey on to Carthage.
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Moreover, they view Himilco’s expedition as an attempt to arrange the sea transport of tin from Gaul and Britain through an alliance with the Oestrymnians, thereby trumping attempts by the Greek colony of Massilia (Marseilles) to strengthen its own commercial networks in Gaul.
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These theories have, however, been hotly contested by other specialists, most recently Victor Bello Jiménez, who point to the lack of accurate geographical knowledge relating to these particular regions in ancient Greek geographical works (on which we are entirely reliant for these accounts, despite the reference in the Hanno text to a Punic inscription in the temple of Baal Hammon at Carthage) and the complete lacunae in archaeological evidence for Carthaginian trade on either the northern or the African Atlantic coasts.
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Others have voiced serious doubts about the veracity of these accounts, arguing that they are full of tropes and clichés commonly associated with Greek fantastical literature.
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Yet, although Jehan Desanges has rightly argued that the
Periplus
‘cannot be divested of its Greek mantle without blurring its outlines into utter pointlessness’, the Greek paradigm within which the account is expressed does not necessarily challenge its basis in actual events.
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Seemingly informed descriptions of African topography, fauna and flora cannot be explained away simply as the product of the fertile Greek imagination.

In regard to the lack of material evidence for a Carthaginian presence in West Africa and the northern Atlantic, it would be more surprising if vestiges of such a transitory presence
had
survived in coastal areas, which are likely to have endured significant topographical changes in the past two and a half millennia. However, a more serious objection lies in the powerful winds and currents that any ship would have to travel against on the way back to the Pillars of Hercules. But, although an extended period of rowing would have been required to get the ship to the Canary Islands, this would not have been an impossible feat.
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And, although by no means conclusive, there is some indication of sporadic use of the Canary Islands for shelter and resupply by sailors.
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It is also clear that West Africa was not completely terra incognita by this period. As early as the seventh century BC, the circumnavigation of the continent had been successfully accomplished by a group of Phoenician sailors, under the aegis of Necho II, pharaoh of Egypt.
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Herodotus also describes an unusual system of barter developed by the Carthaginians so that they could trade with African tribes:

Another later Greek travel writer, the anonymous Pseudo-Scylax, described how merchants would arrive at Cerne Island, one of the sites mentioned in Hanno’s expedition, from where they would take their merchandise to the mainland by canoe, to show it to the native ‘Ethiopians’.
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These were described as being extremely tall and beautiful, with beards, long hair and tattoos. They lived in a great city, where they were ruled over by the tallest among them. Their diet consisted of meat and milk, and they drank wine. In war, their forces were made up of horsemen and of javelin-throwers and archers who used firehardened tips. Their drinking bowls, bracelets and decoration for their horses were made of ivory. The Phoenicians/Carthaginians traded perfumed oil, Egyptian stone, and Attic tiles and pitchers, and in exchange received domestic animals and the skins of deer, lions and leopards, as well as hides and ivory from elephants.
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There is no good reason to discount the voyages of Hanno and Himilco as nothing more than products of the baroque fantasies of Greek writers. It nevertheless seems very unlikely that Carthaginian merchants made the long and extremely hazardous journey to West Africa on a regular basis. A more plausible scenario is that the first leg of Hanno’s expedition (which involved the setting-up of new settlements and trading stations along the Atlantic coast of what is now Morocco) was the major aim of the enterprise, whereas the latter stages of the journey, once the flotilla passed Cerne, were solely concerned with exploration and discovery.
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Indeed, these new Carthaginian settlements on the Atlantic coast of Morocco may have been the source of the large quantities of pickled and salted fish, packed in Punic amphorae from that particular region, which began to be shipped to Corinth around 460 BC, from where they were presumably distributed to other destinations in Greece.
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The establishment of these new settlements along the Atlantic coast of Morocco fits the broader pattern of Carthaginian colonization with a particular emphasis on agricultural exploitation during this period. Indeed, Aristotle emphasized the dispersal of surplus, poor inhabitants to colonies as an established method used by the Carthaginian elite to avoid potential political unrest.
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Although Carthage was not exercising any direct political control over the lands of the old Phoenician disapora in the central and western Mediterranean, this does not mean that its influence was not felt. The advent of what we call the ‘Punic’ era is notoriously difficult to define, but during the second half of the sixth century BC one witnesses the growing influence of recognizably Carthaginian cultural traits in other western Phoenician colonies.
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The most significant of these traits was the adoption of Punic, the Levantine dialect spoken in Carthage, and the replacement of cremation by burial as the favoured funerary practice.
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Furthermore, it is noticeable that the tophet became an increasingly prominent part of the religious life of those western Phoenician colonies where that tradition had previously been less strong.
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In regard to material culture, and specifically luxury goods, there was a clear change in taste away from imported eastern-Greek fineware pottery to ceramic ware from Athens (long favoured in Carthage).
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Politically, there was a growing sense of community, with elites enjoying some citizenship rights in other western Phoenician cities.
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In Carthage it appears that a minority of foreigners and freed slaves were also able to attain a status called ‘Sidonian rights’(
’š şdn
), which appears to have been a partial bestowal of some rights and privileges associated with Carthaginian citizenship.
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However, the ‘Punicization’ of the old Phoenician western diaspora was never simply the imposition of ‘top-down’ cultural conformity. Indeed, in some areas it led to greater diversification as the influence of Phoenicia waned. Thus it is noticeable that the dinner service of bowls, plates, perfume jars, pots, and trefoil- and mushroom-shaped jugs which had been the standard grave goods for generations began to disappear, to be replaced with a far more diverse set of ceramic goods.
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Moreover, the same variegation is found in other art forms, such as the designs and motifs found on the steles produced in considerable numbers across the new Punic world.
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The emergence of what we might term a ‘Punic world’ was not a linear progression from the old Phoenician one, but a complex and multifarious series of hybridizations with other indigenous and colonial cultures throughout the western Mediterranean.
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This is particularly evident on the island of Sardinia, where the large number of oil lamps left as offerings at Punic sanctuaries (following an indigenous Sardinian custom) shows a complex interaction between Punic and local traditions.
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The fact that many of these shrines were built into previous Nuragic structures may also indicate the absorption of indigenous customs into Punic religious practice, or the introduction of Punic elements into traditional native rites.
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Initially in diverse locations such as Spain, Sardinia and Sicily, these distinct micro-cultures were ‘common mutually comprehensible’ worlds inhabited by both Phoenician/Punic settlers and native populations. Initiated through commercial exchange, these communalities were often built on misperceptions of each other’s cultures. However, out of mutual incomprehension a shared understanding was born that was very particular to its participant groups but which often excluded those, even of the same ethnicity, who lived outside the particular region.
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What we refer to as ‘Punic’ culture is an umbrella term for a whole series of diffuse cultural experiences that took place all over the western and central Mediterranean. It is only really later, in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, as Carthage imposed greater political and economic control over certain areas, such as Sardinia, that one begins to witness greater, but by no means total, cultural uniformity.

At Antas, for example, an isolated inland site in the south-west of Sardinia, a temple to the Punic god Sid was established. Sid was originally a Levantine god who had made the long journey west with Phoenician traders. Although only a minor member of the Carthaginian pantheon, by the fourth century BC he appears to have been widely recognized by the Punic population of Sardinia as the divine protector of the island.
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The temple was a typical Punic design, consisting of a large walled enclosure which contained a north-facing rectangular structure with an open air altar where incinerated offerings were made to the god.
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Although it was situated in a remote valley surrounded by steep wooded hills, the temple still attracted large numbers of people, including many of high social status, from as far away as Caralis.
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Its importance lay in the rocky outcrop on which it had been situated, which had been a sacred site to the Nuragic god Babi long before the Phoenicians had arrived on the island.
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Archaeologists excavating the site found a bronze statuette of a naked warrior figure, identified as Babi, holding up his right hand in benediction and brandishing a large spear in his left, dating to sometime around the ninth and eighth centuries BC. There are striking resemblances between this warrior figure and the iconography of Sid, who was also often presented with his right hand raised and a lance in his left.
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Moreover, a connection with Babi might also explain the presence of a large number of iron arrowheads and javelins among the votive offerings left for Sid, as these were artefacts that were strongly associated with the former.
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Antas, therefore, stands as a striking example of the cultural hybridization that took place on the island during the Punic period.

Relations between Punic and Greek populations on Sicily developed along similar lines. By the early eighth century BC the Phoenicians had established colonies on the island, of which the most important were Panormus, Solus and Motya. At the island site of Motya, located in a sheltered bay just off the coast and attached to the mainland by a narrow promontory, the first buildings were warehouses and workshops, which were gradually joined by a number of dwellings and religious structures, of which the most substantial was a sanctuary now known as the Cappidazzu.
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However, the Phoenicians on Sicily soon came under increasing pressure from a deluge of Greek colonists who arrived during the last decades of the century, attracted by the island’s position on key Mediterranean trade routes and its abundance of fertile coastal land.
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