Punic religion
The Punic religion, Carthaginian religion, or Western Phoenician religion in the western Mediterranean was a direct continuation of the Phoenician variety of the polytheistic ancient Canaanite religion. However, significant local differences developed over the centuries following the foundation of Carthage and other Punic communities elsewhere in North Africa, southern Spain, Sardinia, western Sicily, and Malta from the ninth century BC onward. After the conquest of these regions by the Roman Republic in the third and second centuries BC, Punic religious practices continued, surviving until the fourth century AD in some cases. As with most cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, Punic religion suffused their society and there was no stark distinction between religious and secular spheres. Sources on Punic religion are poor. There are no surviving literary sources and Punic religion is primarily reconstructed from inscriptions and archaeological evidence. An important sacred space in Punic religion appears to have been the large open air sanctuaries known as tophets in modern scholarship, in which urns containing the cremated bones of infants and animals were buried. There is a long-running scholarly debate about whether child sacrifice occurred at these locations, as suggested by Greco-Roman and biblical sources.
Pantheon
The Punics derived the original core of their religion from Phoenicia, but also developed their own pantheons. The poor quality of the evidence means that conclusions about these gods must be tentative. There are no surviving hymns, prayers, or lists of gods and while there are many inscriptions, these are very formulaic and generally only mention the names of gods. The names of gods were also often incorporated into theophoric personal names and some gods are known primarily from this onomastic evidence.It is difficult to reconstruct a hierarchy of the Carthaginian gods. It was common for the pantheons of Phoenician cities to be headed by a divine couple, entitled Baal and "Baalat". At Carthage, this divine couple appears to have consisted of the god Baal Hammon and the goddess Tanit, who appear frequently in inscriptions from the tophet of Salammbô, with which they seem to have been especially associated. From the fifth century BC, Tanit begins to be mentioned before Baal Hammon in inscriptions and bears the title "Face of Baal", perhaps indicating that she was seen as mediating between the worshipper and Baal Hammon. An anthropomorphic symbol, composed of a circular "head", horizontal "arms", and a triangular "body," which is frequently found on Carthaginian stelae, is known by modern scholars as the sign of Tanit, but it is not clear whether the Carthaginians themselves associated it with Tanit. The connections of Baal Hammon and Tanit to the Phoenician pantheon are debated: Tanit may have a Libyan origin, but some scholars connect her to the Phoenician goddesses Anat, Astarte or Asherah; Baal Hammon is sometimes connected to Melqart or El. The gods Eshmun and Melqart also had their own temples in Carthage. The priests of other gods are known from epigraphic evidence, include Ashtart, Reshef, Sakon, and Shamash.
Different Punic centres had their own distinct pantheons. In Punic Sardinia, Sid or Sid Babi received worship as the son of Melqart and was particularly associated with the island. At Maktar, to the southwest of Carthage, an important god was Hoter Miskar. At Leptis Magna, a number of unique gods are attested, many of them in Punic-Latin bilingual inscriptions, such as El-qone-eres, Milkashtart, and Shadrafa. Inscriptions in the tophet at Motya in western Sicily, as in Carthage, frequently refer to Baal Hammon, but do not refer to Tanit at all.
Following the common practice of interpretatio graeca, Greco-Roman sources consistently use Greek and Latin names, rather than Punic ones, to refer to Punic deities. They typically identify Baal Hammon with Cronus/Saturn, Tanit with Hera/Juno Caelestis, Melqart with Hercules, and Astarte with Venus/Aphrodite, although the Etruscan-Punic bilingual Pyrgi Tablets produced around 500 BCE identify her with the Etruscan goddess Uni. Both Reshef and Eshmun could be Apollo, but Eshmun was also identified with Asclepius. Many of these Roman gods, especially Saturn, Caelestis, Hercules, and Asclepius remained very popular in North Africa after the Roman conquest and probably represent an adaptation and continuation of the Punic deities.
An important source on the Carthaginian pantheon is a treaty between Hamilcar of Carthage and Philip III of Macedon preserved by the second-century BC Greek historian Polybius which lists the Carthaginian gods under Greek names, in a set of three triads. Shared formulas and phrasing show it belongs to a Near Eastern treaty tradition, with parallels attested in Hittite, Akkadian, and Aramaic. Given the inconsistencies in identifications by Greco-Roman authors, it is not clear which Carthaginian gods are to be interpreted. Paolo Xella and Michael Barré have put forward different identifications. Barré has also connected his identifications with Tyrian and Ugaritic predecessors.
The Carthaginians also adopted the Greek cults of Persephone and Demeter in 396 BCE as a result of a plague that was seen as divine retribution for the Carthaginian desecration of these goddesses' shrines at Syracuse. Nevertheless, Carthaginian religion did not undergo any significant Hellenization. The Egyptian deities Bes, Bastet, Isis, Osiris and Ra were also worshiped.
There is very little evidence for a Punic mythology, but some scholars have seen an original Carthaginian myth behind the story of the foundation of Carthage that is reported by Greek and Latin sources, especially Josephus and Vergil. In this story, Elissa flees Tyre after her brother, king Pygmalion murders her husband, a priest of Melqart, and establishes the city of Carthage. Eventually, Elissa/Dido burns herself on a pyre. Some scholars connect this and other instances of self-immolation in historical accounts of Carthaginian generals with tophet rituals. Josephine Crawley Quinn has proposed that myth of the Philaeni brothers in Libya had its roots in Punic myth and Carolina López-Ruiz has made similar arguments for the story of Gargoris and Habis in Tartessus.
Practices
Priesthood
The Carthaginians appear to have had both part-time and full-time priests, the latter called khnm, led by high priests called rb khnm. Lower-ranking religious officials, attached to specific sanctuaries, included the "chief of the gatekeepers," people called "servants" or "slaves" of the sanctuary, and functionaries like cooks, butchers, singers, and barbers. Goddesses may have been worshiped together and shared the same priests. A class of cultic officials known as the mqm ˤlm was responsible for ensuring that the dying-and-rising god Melqart returned to watch over the city each year. Sanctuaries had associations, referred to as mrzḥ in Punic and Neo-Punic inscriptions, who held ritual banquets. M'Hamed Hassine Fantar proposes that the part-time priests, appointed in some way by the civil authorities, were in control of religious affairs, while the full-time priests were primarily responsible for rites and the interpretation of myth. At Carthage, for example, there was a thirty-person council that regulated sacrifices. Some Phoenician communities practiced sacred prostitution; in the Punic sphere this is attested at Sicca Veneria in western Tunisia and the sanctuary of Venus Erycina at Eryx in western Sicily.Funerary practices
The funerary practices of the Carthaginians were very similar to those of Phoenicians located in Levant. They include the rituals surrounding the disposal of the remains, funerary feasts, and ancestor worship. A variety of grave goods are found in the tombs, which indicate a belief in life after death.Cemeteries were located outside settlements. They were often symbolically separated from them by geographic features like rivers or valleys. A short papyrus found in a tomb at Tal-Virtù in Malta suggests a belief that the dead had to cross a body of water to enter the afterlife. Tombs could take the form of fossae, pozzi, and hypogea. There are some built tombs, all from before the sixth century BC. Tombs are often surmounted by small funerary stelae and baetyls.
At different times, Punic people practiced both cremation and inhumation. Until the sixth century BCE, cremation was the normal means of disposing of the dead. In the sixth century BCE, cremation was almost entirely superseded by inhumation. Thereafter, cremation was largely restricted to infant burials. This change is sometimes associated with the expansion of Carthaginian influence in the western Mediterranean, but exactly how and why this change occurred is unclear. Around 300 BC, cremation once again became the norm, especially in Sardinia and Ibiza. Cremation pits have been identified at Gades in Spain and Monte Sirai in Sardinia. After cremation, the bones were cleaned and separated from the ashes and then placed carefully in urns before burial. At Hoya de los Rastros, near Ayamonte in Spain, for example, the bones were arranged in order in their urns so that the feet were at the bottom and the skull at the top. Cremated and inhumed remains could be placed in wooden coffins or stone sarcophagi. Examples are known from Tharros and Sulci in Sardinia, Lilybaeum in Sicily, Casa del Obispo at Gades in Spain, and Carthage and Kerkouane in Tunisia. Before burial, the deceased was anointed with perfumed resin, coloured red with ochre or cinnabar, traces of which have been recovered archaeologically.
The funeral was accompanied by a feast in the cemetery. This banquet, called a mrz, is attested in inscriptions of the fourth and third centuries BC, but is known in the Levant in earlier periods. The attendees decorated an altar and sacrificed an animal which they then ate. The feasts included the consumption of wine, which may have had symbolic links to blood, the fertility of the Earth, and new life, as it did for other Mediterranean peoples. At the end of the feast, the crockery was smashed or buried in order to ritually kill it. Cemeteries included spaces and equipment for food preparation. The feast may have played a role in determining inheritance and could have symbolised the enduring bond between the deceased and their survivors. These funerary feasts were repeated at regular intervals as part of a cult of the ancestors. In Neo-Punic texts, the rpʼm are equated with the Latin Manes. At Monte Sirai in Sardinia, tombs included amphorae to channel libations offered on these occasions down into the tomb. The funerary stelae and baetyls erected on top of tombs, which are often inscribed with the name of the deceased and anthropomorphised, may have been intended as the focus for worship of the deceased within the context of this ancestor cult. Small stone altars were found in the cemeteries at Palermo and Lilybaeum in Sicily and are depicted on funerary stelae in Sardinia and Sicily. It appears that fires were lit on top of them as part of purification rites.
A range of grave goods are found deposited with the deceased, which seem to have been intended to provide the deceased with protection and symbolic nourishment. These do not differ significantly based on the gender or age of the deceased. Grave offerings could include carved masks and amulets, especially the eye of Horus and small glass apotropaic heads, which were intended to protect the deceased. Offerings of food and drink were probably intended to nourish the deceased in the afterlife. They were often accompanied by a standardised set of feasting equipment for the deceased, consisting of two jugs, a drinking bowl, and an oil lamp. Oil and perfume may have been intended to provide the deceased with heat and light. Chickens and their eggs were particularly frequent offerings and may have represented the soul's resurrection or transition to the afterlife in Punic thought. Razors, left next to the head of the deceased, may indicate that the corpse was shaved before burial or an expectation that priests would continue to shave in death as they had in life. Bronze cymbals and bells found in some tombs may derive from songs and music played at the funeral of the deceased - perhaps intended to ward off evil spirits. Terracotta figurines of musicians are found in graves, and depictions of them were carved on funerary stelae and on razors deposited in the grave. Almost all these musicians are female, suggesting that women had a particular role in this part of the funeral; most play the drums, kithara, or aulos.