Talk:Carthage

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To-do list for Carthage:

edit · history · watch · refresh

Expand section on religion All points to be well cited and referenced. Perhaps the section on the "historical controversy" can be in its own section, seperate from the description of Punic religion. Locate and add sources to the article Add inline citations to all points, or if they cannot be found, remove points. Re-add sections on depictions of Carthaginian civilizations by other cultures Re-add the section of the fate of Carthaginian territory after Carthage was destroyed (what happened to the people?). Check NO wiki (the FA one) for useful content. Check NL & GE wikis for same (User:Bridesmill can start this) Cleanup and Revise the page to a more suitable and accepted format to all parties

Archives
Talk:Carthage/Human Sacrifice Talk:Carthage/Archive 1 Talk:Carthage/Archive 2

Contents 1 Split article 2 Carthage's skilled sailors could have reached the Americas 3 Archives of this page 4 Settlement section -- vandalism? 5 Trivia Section 6 move child sacrifce to a different article 7 State question 8 a problematic claim 9 "The Punic Wars" section 10 Ancient Phoenicians 11 Overkill 12 Carthage for Dummies 13 No Map 14 Child sacrifice section 15 Hebrew transcription

[edit] Split article

Don't you think this article should be split into two articles? One representing the historical empire/civilization and another for the archaelogical/world heritage site. --Yenemus 09:38, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

One article should be about the political history of Carthage's empire and one about the archeologic remains, world heritage, of the different settlements and the current settlement. Wandalstouring 10:49, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree. And for the political history article, an infobox would be appropriate and it should be added to the Former Countries WikiProject. --Yenemus 13:11, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Since none voices opposition go ahead with your suggestions (my wikitime is too limited yet). Wandalstouring 14:51, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Carthage's skilled sailors could have reached the Americas

Very vague statement.

The sailors might have reached the Americas if they wanted to

-or-

actually reached and saw the Americas?

-G

[edit] Archives of this page

A long and heated discussion of whether child sacrifice should be mentioned in this article has been archived to Talk:Carthage/Human Sacrifice. All new comments about the Carthage article should be entered at the bottom of this page, not on any of the archive pages. From time to time, comments will be moved from here to archival pages as appropriate.

Richard 02:57, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Entries posted to this page from 2003 thru 2005 have been archived to Talk:Carthage/Archive 1.

Entried posted to this page in 2006 have been archived to Talk:Carthage/Archive 2

--Richard 17:18, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Settlement section -- vandalism?

I am just here reading, not as any kind of knowledgable person. But the following sentence in the Settlement section up top seems pretty odd to me: "These losses led to a decline in Carthage's political and economic strength, mostly due to the harsh penalties imposed on Carthage by Rome as conditions of the Wee Wee Pee Pee of hostilities." What is that? Soupyx 02:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia Section

I think that somebody should find a way to incorporate the facts in the trivia section into other sections of the article--Tabun1015 03:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] move child sacrifce to a different article

I suggest to move the whole child sacrifice discussion to a different article on the Punic culture or to the existing article on the Punics. Any objections? I think it is like discussing homicide in the article Tokyo. Wandalstouring 10:16, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see the analogy ("like discussing homicide in the article Tokyo"). This article has not just been about the town of Carthage, but about the Carthaginians in general. If you are saying that it should only be about the town then we need to decide that. Note that the subject is already discussed in a separate article - Religion in Carthage. Paul B 10:45, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The article "Punic" to which you refer, stated life as a simple definition of the word and its later connotation of "treacherous". Carthaginians, which redirects here, is a far more common usage in English. Yes, we use the term "Punic wars", but it's not typically asserted in English that the Romans fought the "Punics", usually it's "the Romans fought the Carthaginians". Paul B 10:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

"Carthage (Greek: Καρχηδών: Karchedon, from the Phoenician Kart-hadasht meaning new town, Arabic: قرطاج also قرطاجة, Latin: Carthago) refers both to an ancient city in North Africa located in modern day Tunis and to the civilization that developed within the city's sphere of influence. The city of Carthage was located on the eastern side of Lake Tunis across from the center of modern Tunis in Tunisia."

This is the intro of the article. It clearly defines the scope as the city of Carthage. Any questions? Your suggestion religion in Carthage sounds OK. Wandalstouring 11:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

You seem to have missed "and to the civilization that developed within the city's sphere of influence." How does that differ from Punics unless Punics is a synonym for Phoenecians, who already have an article? Paul B 11:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The issue raised by Wandalstouring is partly one of language and partly one of article scope. The language problem is that, in theory, you have "Carthage the City" and "the Punic empire/civilization" or the "Carthaginian empire". Thus, the proposal to move discussion of child sacrifice to Punic culture on the "Carthage" vs. "Punic" distinction would require that most of this article be moved to other articles since most of this article is not about Carthage per se but about the Punic civilization as a whole.

Now, we don't have the same approach with Rome. The Rome article covers the city of Rome and there are many subsidiary articles covering the rich History of Rome.

Perhaps we should consider a similar approach with Carthage. Based on the preceding discussion, I think the consensus is against such a wholesale move of content. Perhaps this consensus will change. However, the point I am making is that we should not move just "child sacrifice" to Punic culture.

Now, moving on to the question of article scope, the question we should ask is whether child sacrifice is such a signal attribute of Punic culture as to warrant significant coverage in this main article about Carthage. Wandalstouring crafted a poor analogy when he suggested that it was like "discussing homicide in the Tokyo article". It's more like discussing suicide in the Japan article. Or like discussing human sacrifice in the Aztec article. Now, it should be obvious that all of these are aspects of the culture or religion and do not warrant a lengthy discussion in the main article. I think these should be mentioned in the main article as notable and widely-known understandings or misunderstandings of the culture but comprehensive treatment should be left for a subsidiary article.

In fact, in April of last year we had a huge debate on this Talk Page about whether or not to even mention child sacrifice in this article. Partly as a result of that debate, I created the Religion in Carthage article as a place to describe the practice of child sacrifice. My intent was that the coverage of child sacrifice in this article could be reduced to a brief summary while the more detailed discussion could be placed in the subsidiary article Religion in Carthage. It appears that, although I created the Religion in Carthage article, I never fully executed this second half of the plan i.e. reducing the coverage in this article to a short summary. I haven't been watching the edits to this article closely. It appears that the coverage of child sacrifice in this article has been promoted to a more prominent emphasis since last April. If this is so, I would suggest that it be trimmed back to a one paragraph subsection of the "Religion" section with detail to be covered in the Religion in Carthage article.

--Richard 15:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

As you say, there are really two quite separate questions:

1. What should we have as the title of the main article on the Carthaginians? (Carthage; Carthaginians; Punics etc)

2. How much prominence should be given to child sacrifice in the main article, whatever it may be named?

The prominence here is largely due to the edit warring - both sides wanted their POV to be fully and clearly represented. The fear of changing it is also a left-over from anxieties that any changes would restart the war.

I assume that the difference between this article and the Rome related ones partly arises from the simply fact that there is much more material about and interest in Rome and the Roman empire than there is in Carthage. There is also the fact that the city of Rome has prominence for other reasons (Capital of modern Italy; the centre of the RC church). Carthage is almost - but not quite - solely notable for the Carthaginan empire. Paul B 17:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I have to look it up, but without doubt the "Carthaginian Empire" existed during a rather short period from during the mercenary war until Hamilcar starts his conquest in Spain. Before the official state name according to inscriptions from Athens was "Carthage and Utica" (the new and the old city) and for Barcid Iberia it is supported by several scholars that Carthage had an independent junior partner, Gades. Quality literature on the subject does make a difference between the Punic culture with its most important, but not only, center at Carthage in Africa (there was also a Carthage in Sardinia and later the more famous one on the Iberian peninsula). To say Punics are Phoenicians is like mixing up USA and UK (and making George W Tony's poodle). Wandalstouring 22:00, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

If you can demonstrate that "Punics" or "Punic culture" is preferred by scholars to "Carthaginian(s)" then a case can be made for moving redirects, but a case has to be made, and the fact remains that "Punics" remains a rare usage in English. Of course Pheonicians should be treated separately, but even that distinction is hardly clear-cut (the USA UK analogy doesn't really work because of modern ideas of nationhood). "Carthaginan empire" is perhaps an imprecise term, but it is a familiar usage. Paul B

So the deal is if the term Punic and not Carthaginian is prefered for the culture, while Carthaginian for the hegemony and the location, we move this stuff to Punic culture and link there from a description of the tombs and buildings in the article on the city of Carthage? Does everyone agree? Wandalstouring 17:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The deal is Wikipedia policy about most common usage. There are a lot of grey areas. For example there has been on-off dispute about whether the Zoroaster article should be renamed Zarathustra or even Zarathushtra. The last is the preferred scholarly version; the second is probably the best known version (but only because of Nietzsche and Strauss), but the first is the traditional version in English (still used by the EB). At the moment we stick with Zoroaster. Anyway your "if" remains just that. Please provide evidence for its widespread use in preference to Carthaginian. 15:06, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to butt in on your "debate", however until we can come to some sort of agreement on what the Punics or Carthogianians (don't think I spelled that right) should be called and what their culture should be called, and how the two (city and culture) should be separated article-wise, can we at least reorder the section in some way so that it sounds less like an episode of cross fire? Seriousely, I'm reading it and it's like "...oh we don't know if they really sacrificed kids...but actually they did...but really they didn't..." and it makes the whole section sound unintelligent and inconclusive. I say, let's rearrange the section into two parts, one reflecting the view that they didn't sacrifice kids, and the other that they did. Then, lets add that there has not come foreward enough conclusive evidence and that the situation is still under investigation by archeologist an historians alike. I really like the part where it says,

"...The correlation could be because bad times inspired the Carthaginians to pray for divine intervention (via child sacrifice), or because bad times increased child mortality, leading to more child burials (via cremation)."

This really sums up the arguement nicely, clearly, and effectively. 67.170.180.215 06:28, 14 July 2007 (UTC)Ralis

I think it would be more encyclopedic to move the whole child sacrifice to a seperate article where we discuss the phenomen in the whole Meditarranean. Wandalstouring 10:47, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Just FYI, everybody, the "hard to tell if human sacrifice"? I've heard the coprolites have distinctive markers in them if human flesh was, in fact, digested. Or is that not the issue here, as it has been elsewhere? Trekphiler (talk) 09:44, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] State question

Was Carthage merely a colony of a greater Phoenician maritime empire or an independent state with Phoenician roots. I need to know before i link this baby within the States of Ancient African category. That category covers all African states regardless of origin, but it should only include independent civs. Somebody please give me a shout. Scott Free 15:40, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

It was an independent city-state/empire. Paul B 15:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] a problematic claim

After the battle of Himera

"The loss severely weakened Carthage, and the old government of entrenched nobility was ousted, replaced by the Carthaginian Republic."

Aristotle says the Carthaginian constitution has never suffered a revolution. Herodotus mentions no revolution in his account of the First Sicilian War. Finally, a "government of entrenched nobility" is not the opposite of a "Republic"; indeed, a pre-modern republic will often be precisely that. --91.148.159.4 15:57, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

There were some changes since Carthage was originally a monarchy and some people wanted to make themselves monarchs, like Magon. Wandalstouring 20:37, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "The Punic Wars" section

Very bad, I just don't have the nerve and patience to reorganize it. First - tons of absurdly detailed info on the circumstances surrounding the Mamertine incident that served as a pretext for the First Punic War; then - just a few brief sentences on the Punic Wars themselves, which on top of it all include a lot of debatable lofty generalizations about "determining the course of Western civilization" and "nearly preventing the rise of the Roman Empire". Finally - some info about what happened between the First and the Second Punic War: extremely confusing from a chronological point of view, because the Second Punic War itself has been treated before that paragraph. As so often elsewhere on Wikipedia, people seem to forget that the purpose of the articles is actually to be read by someone, not just to be written by Wikipedia editors.--91.148.159.4 18:11, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it is bad and the reason is that few wikipedia editors can't keep all articles in shape. Wandalstouring 20:36, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be worth moving the whole section to Carthaginian empire or hegemony and making this article focus on the city. Wandalstouring 20:39, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ancient Phoenicians

I have been looking for more infomration about the roots of Carthage? Was it part of the places settled by the Phoenicians? Were they part of a seafaring group that came from Atlantis? Could ties be made between these Phoenicians/Cathageans and the New World or is this just conjecture? - 71.209.191.157 Juli

From the aticle

Originally founded by Phoenician colonists, Carthage grew into a vast economic and political power...

As Atlantis is fictional/legendary (possibly being Plato's semi-legendary recollections of the explosion of the island of Thera), and since — save for possible Viking (see Viking - North_America) and Chinese (see Zheng He) explorers reaching the New World in antiquity — there seems to be little interaction between the New and Ancient worlds prior to European contact, ties between "Atlantis" or the "New World" and Carthage seem unlikely, at best. Such speculation/conjecture has the academic/factual relation to History as UFOs have to Astronomy (i.e. very little to none).

The Phoenicians also originate from the opposite direction, in the far eastern Mediterranean in Canaan (modern day Lebanon, Syria and northern Israel), or the area known as the Levant. - Vedexent (talk) - 18:59, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

There are also disputes whether the Mali Empire possibly reached the Carribean a few years before the Spanish, but as far as we know the Punic sailors went just as far west as the Azores and Canaries(extremely difficult to reach from the east) and that is a task none was able to do for several hundred years. Wandalstouring 08:17, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Overkill

Way too many "citation needed" tags. Way too many. I expect one on every word at this point. Stop. 74.212.17.148 04:16, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

If you don't like them, maybe it would be better to find references for the points in question, or rewriting sections to keep the basic ideas/information without inclusion of contentious points (the point most heavily cite-requested is a capsule summary of the events and effects of the punic wars - you could, for example, write a better version). You know, constructive contribution rather than pointless complaining? - Vedexent (talk) - 05:53, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I tried to use as few as possibly and to tag every dubious statement. It's not a summary of "events". Wandalstouring 08:09, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Again it isn't a summary of historical events. One really has to wonder why you object to a capsule summary of Cathage's entire history in the introduction (as you include nothing other than beginning and end points for both Punic and Roman Carthage), but you don't seem to want to include it. - Vedexent (talk) - 08:24, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Simply because there is not a source about it being an economic power for example. Large and rich can be sourced economic power not. Wandalstouring 10:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Carthage for Dummies

No offense to the book/computer/stuff series or others reading this, but maybe there could be an easier to read and understand version of each article so that us dumb people (a.k.a. me and Kenz, don't ask) can read it and actually be able to keep track of what we're reading? That would be awesome! Snick! 01:14, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

There is an ongoing discussion about restructuring the article. Wandalstouring 14:50, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw that, but I was thinking more along the lines of creating a new article on Carthage for dummies (i.e. me) and maybe placing a link on the regular page so that the dummies (i.e. me and Abbie, please don't ask) can get to an easy-to-read-and-understand article based on the first one that puts the article into simple terms.Snick! 23:28, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

We have a Simple English Wikipedia, which I guess might be used by "dummies". There's already a Carthage article there [1] which could be expanded. Otherwise, perhaps you could say what you find too difficult or confusing. Paul B 23:45, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No Map

I came to this article to find out *where* Carthage is.. I figured it out only because I know where Tunis is, because there is not a map pointing out Carthage. Maybe this is because this article is considered historical rather than geographic -- but it definitely needs a map, of the same kind that Wikipedia has for most articles referring to geographic locations. I'm not "bold" nor do I know how to imbed images, hence my whining here :) hopefully someone can come up with a map eventually. This is a good article, it's just missing a few things, and a map is one of them. Mr0t1633 (talk) 13:51, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

There are several maps and city plans. The geographical location of the city is marked on "Image:CarthageMap.png". Paul B (talk) 14:07, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Child sacrifice section

Way above, a poster commented last year:

can we at least reorder the section in some way so that it sounds less like an episode of cross fire? Seriously, I'm reading it and it's like "...oh we don't know if they really sacrificed kids...but actually they did...but really they didn't..." and it makes the whole section sound unintelligent and inconclusive [...] 67.170.180.215 06:28, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

The Child sacrifice section do indeed sounds unintelligent and inconclusive. I have been surfing the net about the debate and found a scholarly article on the subject: Brian K. Garnand: "From infant sacrifice to the ABC’S: ancient Phoenicians and modern identities (University of Chicago) earlier version presented in Standford Colloquium "Past Narratives / Narratives Pasts". Although it is a pdf document, I took the trouble to type some of his paragraphs that I believe merit consideration for the improvement of that section:

What I have summarized here is but a brief survey of current scholarship. Elsewhere I analyze the Classical, Biblical and archaeological evidence for infant sacrifice, and examine closely a broader range of current research (Garnand 2002). My working thesis is that this ridimensionamento [i.e., the revisionism that denies that Carthage sacrifice took place] follows on a so-called reflexive turn [bold in the original] in ethnography and literary criticism. In anthropology, scholars made a problem out of what once had been unproblematic: the subjective role of the fieldworker. [...]
In our case, the hostile Greek or Roman and the modern archeologist or philologist can be easily dismissed as biased, without a need to call on any new archaeological evidence or any newly discovered literary sources to overturn their arguments. [...]
Although I am sympathetic to Bernal and Said, I do not consider that the products of Near Eastern and Classical Studies are merely corrupted literary excursions disguised as scientific inquiry.

At the end of this very long paper, Garnand concluded: "The distinguished scholars of the ridimensionamento have not proven their case."

I do not intend to say that Garnand's views are the ultimate source. Like 67.170.180.215, I am merely concerned about the section which reads "like an episode of cross fire". I am busy for the moment but I hope that other editors will fix the problem.

—Cesar Tort 05:26, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

It is a general problem in archaeology that it is extremely hard to prove human sacrifice, even more so if it is done without shattering the bones. It is pointless to discuss how much trust or distrust towards the written sources exists. Other approaches would be to find out whether the deaths did increase or decrease over time and how they correlate with the total population. What lacks in this view is that even the Greek did not raise all of their children and that not raising all children(written sources, but no remains) was likely a common characteristic of the Mediterranean cultures and even in Europe's medieval culture there were tricks in use to get rid of unwanted children (himmeln in German). Another point is that Livy states at least one sacrifice of a Roman child that was too large(the Romans did participate euthanasia of anything considered misfits), a fact that gets usually ignored. And he also provides more sources for other human sacrifices in Rome. I'm not opposed to the theory that there were possibly sacrifices of children in Carthage, but I'm quite aware that our ancient literature is full of topoi. Burnt bones of little ones aren't enough proof for a solid theory of massive sacrifice. Sacrifice did likely exist, but how do we know what is sacrifice and what a usual burial because child mortality was high? Wandalstouring (talk) 14:47, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't claim any expertise in Carthage but the Biblical texts strike me as persuasive: some ancient Hebrews were relapsing to the sacrificial customs of their neighbors.[2] Garnand's paper ought to be required reading to understand the revisionism that started in the late 1980s on the subject of Carthage sacrifice, and I'll try to get his PhD as well. Also, scholarly books have been published recently on the subject of Moloch. However, I have studied more closely child sacrifice as used to be practiced here, in my own town. Take a look at Child sacrifice in pre-Columbian cultures or to Human sacrifice in Aztec culture. There's overwhelming scholarly consensus that child sacrifice was indeed practiced in the Americas. —Cesar Tort 17:15, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hebrew transcription

Regarding this, says who? Why not any of the other descendants of the Phoenician alphabet? ·ΚΕΚΡΩΨ· (talk) 07:54, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Because that is the international standard. Latin alphabet is only used if in print Hebrew isn't available. Wandalstouring (talk) 07:59, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

The international standard according to whom? Sources, please. ·ΚΕΚΡΩΨ· (talk) 08:01, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Not today. I was emailing with Schmitz from Michigan a while ago, but I can't name the books out of my head I read about inscriptions. Wandalstouring (talk) 08:07, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think your source is valid because it's a self promotion, however I don't have time to counter you with sources. Wandalstouring (talk) 09:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)