IVÁN FUMADÓ ORTEGA
COLONIAL REPRESENTATIONS AND CARTHAGINIAN
ARCHAEOLOGY
Summary. In spite of the interest generated by Phoenician-Punic
Archaeology, this area of study has always been underestimated by comparison
with Classical Archaeology. One of the main reasons for this is the persistence
of a colonial representation of the ancient Mediterranean which assumes Greek
culture to be the supreme expression of civilization. Other groups may imitate
it through an acculturation process: Hellenization. As we shall see, this
representation pervades even the Phoenician-Punic history and archaeology
university textbooks. Starting with the various reasons leading to this situation,
I aim to focus on the interpretation given to the ancient excavations at
Carthage and, specifically, to its architectural and urban record, since this was
the area of study where the prejudices about the Phoenician-Punic culture
found an (albeit misunderstood) archaeological proof. I shall argue that
the misinterpretation of these excavations is the key to understanding
later developments and the general underestimation of Phoenician-Punic
Archaeology.
INTRODUCTION
Phoenician-Punic Archaeology remains at the beginning of the twenty-first century in a
position of academic inferiority in comparison with Classical Archaeology. This dramatically
affects the number of academic posts dedicated to Phoenician-Punic Archaeology in Europe and
North America. I shall use two examples: in Germany only one post, of recent creation, exists,
whereas none can be found in the United Kingdom. There are, in contrast, hundreds of posts
dedicated to Classical Archaeology. The paradox becomes apparent if this is compared with the
number of papers presented at the last Congresso Internazionale di Archeologia Classica,
celebrated in Rome in 2008. There, at least one out of every six papers was directly or indirectly
related to Phoenician-Punic Archaeology. Thus, it is clearly shown that, despite its academically
marginal position, this area of study arouses significant scientific interest.
The reasons behind this situation vary depending on the academic tradition of the
country in question. There is, however, a feature common to all, which is the persistence of a
collectively perceived inferiority of Phoenician-Punic societies compared with Greek culture.
This perception of antiquity is a paradigm inherited from the recent colonial past and is even
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reflected in the academic policies set forth for the study of Phoenician-Punic Archaeology. The
approach taken by textbooks regarding cultural contacts and the Hellenization of PhoenicianPunic societies is a clear example of this.
The revision of this paradigm, a task beyond the scope of a single article, remains to be
done. My aim is to show that architectural and urban studies have been a major factor in the
construction of this paradigm, and must also play a key role in dismantling it. In order to explore
the persistence of colonial paradigms in Carthaginian history textbooks, I shall review how this
representation of Phoenician-Punic Archaeology came to be; then I shall underline how the
excavations carried out in Carthage between 1859 and 1884 and, more specifically, the
interpretation of the architectural and urban record were presented as confirmation of such
representation. I shall then briefly discuss the direction followed by Phoenician-Punic
Archaeology as a consequence of these (mis-)interpretations and the colonial undertone still
prevailing in the study of Mediterranean ancient history. Finally, I shall review what current
university textbooks say about certain issues such as cultural contact and Hellenization in the
light of this archaeological trajectory.
ON THE FORMATION OF A COLONIAL REPRESENTATION OF PHOENICIAN-PUNIC SOCIETIES. . .
Until the beginning of the earliest archaeological excavations at Carthage (Fumadó
Ortega 2009, 57–66), the study of Phoenician, Punic and Carthaginian1 history mostly depended
on Greek and Latin texts (Dubuisson 1983, 159–67; Mazza et al. 1988; Teixidor 1994, 131–9;
Bernardini 2003, 29–40) and only marginally on cuneiform (Xella 1995a, 39–56), Egyptian
(Scandone 1995, 57–63) and Biblical texts (Xella 1995b, 64–72). First-hand Phoenician or Punic
sources were, therefore, limited to a few inscriptions. These non-Phoenician sources offered a
heterogeneous image (Gruen 2011, 116–22). They show admiration for Phoenician dexterity in
some of the most important skills of the ancient world, for example navigation (Hom., Od.
13.271–84; 14.285–97; 15.415), ceramic and metal craftwork (Hom., Il. 6.288–95; 23.740–3;
Od. 4.614–19; Hdt. 7.23) and the development of the alphabet (Hdt. 5.57–9). Certain later
passages also vindicate their mythological and historical traditions in connection with the social
self-representation of some intellectuals living in the Roman Empire, such as Pomponius Mela
or Philo of Byblos (Álvarez Martí-Aguilar in press; Ferrer Albelda in press). Finally, we must not
forget the praises given to the Carthaginian constitution and political system (Isocr., Nic. 24;
Arist., Pol. 1272b; Plb. 6.47.9; 6.51–2; 6.56.1–5; Str. 1.4.9).
On the other hand, many other texts were written in a context of war against Carthage.
We must not, therefore, be too surprised at the anti-Phoenician and, more specifically, antiCarthaginian propaganda inherent in some of these works: although some of these elements were
already present in Homer (Od. 13.271; 14.287–97; 15.415), they were fully developed and
1
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In the present article I shall use the term ‘Phoenician’ loosely to refer to the inhabitants of the Phoenician-speaking
city-states in the Levant from the Iron Age to the conquests of Alexander the Great, and, as well, to the first
generations of colonists spreading from them into the western and central Mediterranean between the ninth and
fourth centuries BC. With the term ‘Punic’ I shall refer to later generations of ‘colonists’, including the
‘Carthaginians’, a term that will only be used to refer to the inhabitants of Carthage down to 146 BC. ‘PhoenicianPunic’ is a more ambiguous term which I shall nevertheless use to make a general reference to all of the
aforementioned peoples. For a lengthier discussion on the limits and problems regarding the use of this
terminology, see Prag (2006).
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circulated during the wars between Carthage and Syracuse. After the battle of Himera in 480 BC,
anti-Carthaginian discourse became common rhetorical stock for Sicilian tyrants down to the
First Punic War (Prag 2010, 51–71). In this regard, the harangues penned by Timaeus of
Taormine in the fourth and third centuries were particularly popular. In the Latin world, during
the Punic Wars, Fabius Pictor offered a description of Phoenician and Carthaginian character
which laid special stress on their cruelty and greed (cf. Huss 1985, 53–5). A few decades after the
destruction of Carthage, and from the Augustan age in particular (Gruen 2011, 122–37), the idea
of the fides punica (Plb. 3.78; D.S. 30.7.1; Sall., Iug. 108; Plaut., Poen. 112–13, 1032–4) was set
forth as the most significant psychological feature of the inhabitants of the destroyed city (Verg.,
Aen. 1.661; Liv. 21.4.9; 22.6.12; 30.22.6; 30.30.27; 34.31.3; Hor., Carm. 3.5.33; 4.4.49; App.,
Pun. 53; 59; 60; 62–4; 88), in addition to the violence inherent in the late accounts of tofet
sacrifices (D.S. 20.14.4–6; Plut., Mor. 171c–d), and the military feats of Hannibal (Plb. 3.47–8;
3.81; 3.93–4; 9.22; 15.13–16; Liv. 21.4.1–8; 22.1; 22.16–17; 22.43; 27.28; 28.12; 30.34; Plut.,
Fab. 19.5–6; Nepos., Hann. 1).
All these later elements were accepted by the earliest scholars who, like Jean-Jacques
Barthélémy, Arnold Heeren and Charles Movers, focused on Phoenician and Carthaginian
history during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (cf. Gras et al. 1991, 17–31) with
undisputable scientific concern but with poor critical spirit. For this reason they can be included
in the so-called ‘academic orientalism’ defined by Edward Saïd (2003, 3) as a corpus of
knowledge, academics and institutions intended to manage the dominion of the West over
Muslim and/or Asian countries. This complex system of cultural representation – understood as
a power discourse in Foucault’s sense – reached in the nineteenth century a latent hegemonic
position in the West (Saïd 2003, 206–9).2 The discourse homogenized Muslim and Asian
societies with disregard to their geographical, chronological and cultural characteristics. These
nations were grouped under a series of common features, such as their alleged weakness,
irrationality, exoticism, exuberance, fanaticism and sensuality. Some of these prejudices had
already been established in antiquity, most particularly with regard to the Carthaginian case.
Transmitted down the centuries through different written and iconographical media, their
political message was adapted over time to serve the interests of the dominant power. For
example, the early Christians underlined the moral message contained in the Aeneid, most
notably in the exemplary attitude shown by Dido, who preferred death to dishonour (Balmelle
and Rebourg 1995, 60–7; De los Llanos 1995, 68–83), while Charles I wished to draw on the
martial prowess of Carthage to magnify the value of the conquest of La Goulette and Tunis in
1535 (Fumadó Ortega 2009, 44–55). The history and myth of Carthage are polysemous, and the
multiple possible interpretations have unceasingly interacted in the artistic and historical sense
down to the modern era (Siebenmorgen et al. 2004, 362–79) and the Second World War (Fumadó
Ortega 2008, 99–104).
The reinvention of the origins of Europe, based on a mythology which permitted
industrial nations to present themselves as the direct heirs of Greece and Rome, was developed
2
In Gramci’s sense of the term, according to which a certain world view ceases to be perceived as an ideology once
assumed and interiorized by the collective. This ideology abandons thereafter the political debate which is still
perceived as susceptible to subjective interpretations closely related to party interests. On the other hand,
according to van Dommelen (1998, 28; 2006, 106) the difference between a hegemonic and an ideological
discourse rests neither on their varying degrees of subjectivity nor on their ability to explain the world, but on how
clearly the discourse is perceived by society as such.
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in close connection with this perspective on orientalism. This modern Western mythology, the
earliest manifestation of which is the invention of the concept of the Renaissance in the sixteenth
century (Heers 2000), was finally developed and institutionalized during the nineteenth century
with a duel aim: first, to stand as the basis of the intellectual difference between the higher class
and the middle and lower classes within each nation (Auslander 1996; cf. Bourdieu 1991); and
second, to maintain a colonial discourse in justification of imperialist international policies
(Dietler 2005, 36–7). It is a mythology supported by the ideological nucleus of classicism,
mostly developed from the early nineteenth century (cf. Clair 1972; Marchand 1996, 24–35).
Under this classicist and evolutionist perspective ancient Greece was seen as the highest
expression of human virtues (Marchand 1996, 1–23). The enormous cultural influence acquired
by this perspective on antiquity soon spread throughout Germany, England and France, and it
reached such extremes that a definition of the phenomenon as ‘grecolatry’ would be fully
justified (cf. Dietler 2005, 37–9). This affected the representation of the Mediterranean, both in
geopolitics and in archaeology, in deep and complex ways.
It is important to remember up to what point these two factors had an influence on one
another. In this regard, it has been said that ‘the discoursive foundations of modern European
identity and colonialist ideology and practice were largely grounded in selective interpretations
and interpolations of the text of two ancient colonial powers: Greece and Rome’ (Dietler 2005,
34). On the other hand, while archaeology grew as a scientific discipline it was also used as a
means to support the cultural domination of industrial powers (Cañete Jiménez 2010). This
instrumentalization pursued several aims. Among the most relevant are not only the scientific
validation of the power discourses set forth to justify the political control of conquered societies
(Dietler 2005, 48–9; 2009) but also its moral justification through the stress of the Western
civilizing duty. The management of national identification with past cultures developed cultural
nationalisms and sustained aspirations of sovereignty that were sometimes contradictory with
each other (Laroui 1995; Marchand 1996; Díaz-Andreu and Champion 1996, 1–23; Hamilakis
2007). In this context, the archaeology of the Mediterranean past (Mattingly 1996; Webster
1996; van Dommelen 1997, 305–8) and, specifically, Phoenician-Punic Archaeology (van
Dommelen in press) were systematically instrumentalized.
In the meantime, archaeology was not a passive subject but actively contributed to this
intellectual and political environment. By highlighting the subtle, ambivalent and deep
relationship between modern and ancient colonialism, I do not aim to draw a simplistic and
mechanical causal identification. Indeed, quite the opposite; I want to stress the multiple national
and chronological subtleties that shaped very different intellectual contexts. The recognition of
these differences (van Dommelen 2006) demands an investigation into the specific conditions
which favoured the acceptance of the paradigm of inferiority in Phoenician-Punic studies in the
late nineteenth century (Liverani 1998, 5–11) and, more specifically, of a logical-spatial
prejudice (Fumadó Ortega 2010, 10–11), with significant consequences in the interpretation of
Mediterranean ancient history. According to this prejudice, Phoenicians and Carthaginians, as
Oriental and Semitic peoples, lacked the capacity for abstract thought needed for the
development of complex political systems (cf. Burkert 1991, 160–3; Günther 1996, 790),
philosophical thought and a rational management of urban space. This helped to convert ancient
history into a moralizing tale in which the admirable Greeks and Romans represented the
ancestor of the industrial nations while Phoenicians and Punics appeared as the forebears of the
modern ‘Orientals’ under the political control of colonial Western powers. This and other
prejudices brought about the ‘colonization’ of the collective ideal, including public and largely
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also academic opinion, with a hegemonic discourse supported by various degrees by orientalism,
classicism and nationalism, but also by evolutionism and anti-Semitism (Bernal 1987, 337–40).
In combination, anti-Semitism and evolutionism categorized cultures and races
according to pre-established ideals of perfection. In parallel, ancient cultures were also
categorized, and the peoples of antiquity grosso modo grouped by race. Racism and antiSemitism had an increasing impact on Phoenician-Punic studies, even among the highest
academic authorities: Ernest Renan defined Semitic languages as a morally and biologically
degraded form of Indo-European languages (Saïd 2003, 140–3). As a consequence, around the
turn of the twentieth century, Phoenician influence on the development of Greek culture and the
emergence of civilization in the Mediterranean progressively disappeared from textbooks, with
some exceptions, such as the French Jesuit school and the Maronite elites with which they
collaborated (Kaufman 2004, 30–48).3 The most extreme positions were defended by Karl Julius
Beloch (1913, 65–75), for whom Phoenicians were not capable of sailing the Aegean until the
seventh century BC and whose influence on Greek language and culture would therefore be
negligible. Other such radical examples are not hard to find: Nobel Prize winner Theodor
Mommsen described the probable military victory of Carthage over Syracuse as ‘the annihilation
of freedom and civilisation in the ancient Mediterranean’.4 Rhys Carpenter’s attempts, during the
1980s, to locate the contact between Greek culture and the Phoenician alphabet in the late eighth
century in the allegedly Greek colony of Al-Mina, in the mouth of the Orontes river, may be
included in this trend (cf. Bernal 1987, 393–9; Vella 1996, 246).
. . .AND ITS ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONFIRMATION
The archaeological excavations carried out at the major Phoenician and Punic cities
between 1859 and 1884, and, more specifically, the conclusions drawn from their architecture
and urbanism, played an essential, and heretofore overlooked, role in the so-called ‘fall of the
Phoenicians’ (Bernal 1987, 337–99). The result of these expeditions was unanimously judged
poor, even mediocre. We must bear in mind that by then there were spectacular archaeological
remains for all to admire at Pompeii, Rome and the Athenian Acropolis, among other places. In
contrast, the expeditions of Charles Ernest Beulé (1861) to Carthage in 1859 (Fumadó Ortega
2009, 69–72), of Nathan Davis in 1859–60 and Daux in 1868 to Carthage and Utica, and Ernest
Renan (1864–1874) to Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, Amrit and Arwad in 1860–1 (Gran-Aymerich 2000,
82–7; Stucky 2010, 69–76), culminating in the Carthaginian excavations of Salomon Reinach
and Ernest Babelon (1886) in 1884 (Fumadó Ortega in press a), were prima facie received in
Europe with disappointment. Historiography, however, has blamed the works of Ernest Renan
3
4
These political and religious circles were favourable to a representation of the Phoenicians as the first Western
nation, and therefore different from their Babylonian, Assyrian and Egyptian neighbours. Similarly, the Maronites,
with the support of the French Jesuits in operation in the region from the second half of the nineteenth century,
portrayed themselves as the French of the Levant, increasingly rejecting their Ottoman, Syrian and Arabic
neighbours (Kaufman 2004, 22–30). This context guaranteed a good reception to Vitor Bèrard’s studies on the
Odyssey, in which Phoenician influence was overrepresented. They would be roundly rejected soon after.
This remark still appears without commentary or qualification in the revised and updated 1977 edition of Hermann
Bengston’s Griechische Geschichte, first published in 1950 (1986, 30). The research for this work was probably
carried out during Bengston’s time in the Nazi Party and the SA, in the late 1930s, and at the Russian front, in the
early 1940s. This textbook remains popular among publishers; it has been recently re-edited in English (1988),
Italian (1989), Spanish (1996) and German (2009).
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for this collective disillusionment (Rouillard 2007, 27–8), forgetting the role played by the
excavations conducted at Carthage. It is true that Ernest Renan occupied a preferential space in
the bibliography with his monumental Mission de Phénicie. In this work, Phoenician architecture
was labelled as inelegant and unoriginal troglodytic art, and its decoration as mere imitation
(Renan 1864–1874, 822–5). Although less ambitious on the editorial side, the excavators of
Carthage were no softer in their judgments of Carthaginian art, defined as decadent and
wallowing in its own mediocrity (Reinach and Babelon 1886, 27). It is possible that the fact that
their expedition was not reflected in a major publication such as Renan’s may also have had a
very negative impact on the development of Phoenician-Punic Archaeology, as we shall see
below.5
Before Salomon Reinach and Ernest Babelon intervened, however, Carthage remained
the only hope of finding Carthaginian monumental architecture anywhere, especially after the
publication of Mission de Phénicie. The monuments imagined by William Turner in his two
paintings about the foundation and fall of the Carthaginian Empire,6 the marvellous palaces
described by Gustav Flaubert,7 and the formidable and unconquerable wall mentioned in the
sources (Plb. 1.18.8; 38.7; D.S. 23.8.1; Str. 2.5.33; 6.4.2; 12.8.11; App., Pun. 95) had captured
the collective imagination.
The wall was the main target of two of the first scholars interested in the site, Charles
Ernest Beulé and Charles Tissot. The former, famous for his successful reconstruction of the
Athenian Propylaea, excavated the summit of Byrsa hill, at the time known as Saint Louis, in
search of similar structures. He mistook the apses of a large retaining wall built in the Augustan
age (Gros 1985) for the wall of a supposed Punic acropolis (Beulé 1861, 45–66). Since then,
these apses, preserved in the Musée de Carthage, are known as the Absides de Beulé (Fig. 1.1).
Charles Tissot (1884, I, 587–8) reviewed this conclusion, but could not resist the temptation to
present a fabulous and romantic hypothesis about the Carthaginian walls (Tissot 1884, I, pl. V).
After several years of study, and following the eccentric views of the engineer Daux, Charles
Tissot drafted a detailed programme of excavation in order to find Punic Carthage’s defensive
system. His health thwarted the project, which was then undertaken by Salomon Reinach and
Ernest Babelon who, nevertheless, defined Daux’s work as a ‘topographic novel’ (Reinach and
Babelon 1886, 34).
With a crew of nearly 40 workmen, these savants excavated an area of around
1300 sq m, shifting almost 5000 cubic m of earth, still one of the most substantial excavations
ever carried out on the site. The results of this excavation, which was in itself highly relevant,
have languished practically forgotten for decades as a result of the original interpretation.
5
6
7
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Surprisingly, in the monograph published soon afterwards, Ernest Babelon (1896) did not even mention his 1884
excavations.
In 1815 and 1817, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) produced two paintings in which the birth and fall
of the Carthaginian Empire were represented. The paintings portray two magnificent urban landscapes, reflecting
the ideal architecture defined by Claude Lorrain (1600–82), which bore such little resemblance to the African
reality of Carthage. Artistic licence is also shown by the absence of architectural differences between the two
paintings, regardless of the centuries that elapsed between both episodes.
The epic novel Salammbô (2002 [1862]) sublimates the oriental city according to the romantic ideal of the
mid-nineteenth century. The success of this work was reflected in the production of operas and other plays. Soon,
the story had become the wider public’s main Carthaginian reference (Daguerre de Hureaux 1995, 128–37;
Pelletier-Hornby 1995, 138–47).
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Figure 1
Location plan of pre-Roman features in Carthage. The numbers refer to the following areas of the site.
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Salomon Reinach and Ernest Babelon started their campaign in March 1884 in three
separate locations. The earliest soundings were opened to the south-east of the circus, in the
area labelled on Bordy’s map (1898) as El Goulla (Fig. 1.2); after a month of excavation, this
trench – 42 m in length, 5 m in width and approximately 5 m deep – was abandoned without
any drawings or plans being made, after yielding ‘nothing but’ monumental Roman sculpture
and architecture (Reinach and Babelon 1886, 36–7). The second area (Fig. 1.3), opened in
April, was located near to the then-recent excavations by Évariste de Sainte-Marie in the area
known as Feddan-el-Behim (1884) (Fig. 1.5), in which over 2000 Punic stelae had been found.
The structures found in this trench – 54 m in length, 5 m in width and up to 8 m deep – seem
to correspond to Punic houses, the first to be unearthed by archaeology. The third and largest
trench was opened in the area between the wells labelled as Bir ez-Zrig and Bir Messaouda
(Fig. 1.4). It was 135 m in length, between 5 and 7 m in width and had a maximum depth of
6 m. The information that the second and third trenches potentially offered is comparable to
that of the recent excavations published by the University of Hamburg (Niemeyer et al. 2007),
focused on the junction between cardo x east and the decumanus maximus (Fig. 1.6), and
showing, underneath them, a superposition of pre-Roman dwellings running from the earliest
phases to the destruction of the city in 146 BC. In the earliest excavations, however, the zeal
of the diggers, shifting around 70 cubic m per day, only respected the deepest and sturdiest
structures, in most cases just cisterns: ‘. . . les puits de la ville punique sont en général bien
conservés; par contre, il ne subsiste que les fondations des maisons, bien qu’on distingue
clairement la direction des ruelles le long desquelles elles étaient bâties’ (Reinach and
Babelon 1886, 34).8
The drawings provided (Fig. 2)9 show several walls, cisterns and wells. Beyond the
initial, somewhat confusing, impression, we may appreciate that all structures are aligned with
only three orientations (Fumadó Ortega in press b): the first corresponds to the structures located
in the deepest strata, which are aligned with the junction between the decumanus maximus and
the cardo x east (Niemeyer et al. 2007);10 the second corresponds to the middle strata, aligned
with the structures found in the so-called ‘Quartier Hannibal’ (Fig. 1.7) (Lancel 1982);11 the
third and closest to the surface is aligned with the structures found in the ‘Quartier Magon’
(Fig. 1.8–9) and the Colonia Iulia (Rakob 1991).12 Despite the enormous interest of such a
sequence, provided it is followed by a proper interpretation, the lack of monumentality of the
remains which managed to survive the none-too-subtle nineteenth century excavation techniques
was a disappointment for these palace-hunters.
8
9
10
11
12
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Only the recent international campaigns launched by UNESCO have managed to identify the most pervasive
feature of Carthaginian archaeology, the ‘robber trench’ (cf. Ennabli 1992). The repeated episodes of looting and
quarrying of building materials to which Carthage has been exposed since the Middle Ages explain why in most
cases the only traces of walls found in excavations are the trenches opened by looters and subsequently refilled
with Islamic and medieval material.
The structures were masterfully drawn by Teissié and Canasi at a scale of 1:100 (Reinach and Babelon 1886,
pl. IV).
Forming straight angles, 45° towards the north-east and 45° towards the north-west.
Walls oriented 63° towards the north-east and 27° towards the north-west.
Walls oriented 30° towards the north-east and 60° towards the north-west.
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Figure 2
Plans and sections published by Salomon Reinach and Ernest Babelon, and digital image of the large trench dug between Bir ez-Zrig and Bir
Massouda (Fig. 1.4). The various tones of grey indicate the three different alignments identified: dark grey is used to indicate the deepest strata and
light grey the most superficial ones.
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CONSOLIDATION OF THE LOGICAL-SPATIAL PREJUDICE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR THE
DEVELOPMENT OF CARTHAGINIAN AND PHOENICIAN-PUNIC ARCHAEOLOGIES
The inferiority of Phoenician-Punic societies in their capacity for abstract thought was
often supported by arguments ex silentio.13 Nevertheless, the remains documented by Salomon
Reinach and Ernest Babelon in Carthage were perceived as the scientific validation of these
prejudices, at least with regard to architecture and urbanism. This was an increasingly popular
field of study both within and outside academia, as a consequence of the enormous urban
development which industrial nations were undergoing at the time (Laurence 1994a). One of the
main specialists in the field, Francis Haverfield, thought that the grid plan followed by most
modern cities, the origin of which was traced back to the Roman colonies, was the most perfect
of urban designs. Urban layouts were even considered the reflection of psychological attitudes,
for example: ‘The square and the straight line are indeed the simplest marks which divide
civilised man from the barbarian’ (Haverfield 1910, quoted by Laurence 1994b, 15); and ‘The
savage, inconsistent in his moral life, is equally inconsistent, equally unable to “keep straight”,
in his house-building and his road-making’ (Haverfield 1913, 14). This connection between the
inability to adapt urban spaces to grid plans and the inability to develop logical thinking probably
aimed at stressing the intellectual superiority of the colonial bourgeoisie, inhabiting straightlined newly built areas in the suburbs of Berlin or Paris, against the inhabitants of chaotic and
overpopulated Muslim medinas.14
The logical-spatial prejudice thus became the prevailing paradigm, and excessive credit
was given to the tale of Carthage’s total destruction at the hands of the Roman legions, which,
according to the text, even spread salt over the remains to prevent anything ever growing back
again (App., Pun. 134). All hopes of finding a large city at Carthage were therefore abandoned,
and complete acceptance of René Cagnat’s (1909, 9) ill-chosen sentence – ‘la vérité es qu⬘il ne
reste à peu près rien de la cité punique’ – was repeated as a mantra until the 1970s (Cintas
1970–1976, 124; Tlatli 1978, 57). Any architectural remains found at Carthage thereafter were
the consequence of sporadic and badly documented undertakings, and were often erroneously
dated to the Roman period. One of the most eloquent examples of this is ‘Quartier Hannibal’,
the regularity and symmetry of which veered the excavators towards a Roman chronology. This
dominant paradigm, which saw Phoenician-Punic urbanism as ‘typically oriental’ – that is,
chaotic and irregular – remained unchallenged until the results of the stratigraphic excavations
promoted by UNESCO’s international campaign started to come to public light (Lancel 1979,
94–6).
As previously noted, another important consequence of the ill-starred interpretation
given to the Carthaginian remains by Salomon Reinach and Ernest Babelon was the
disproportionate attention paid to cemeteries thereafter (Vernaz 1887; Delattre 1890; 1896;
1898; 1905; Drappier 1911; Gauckler 1915; Merlin 1918). Cemeteries at least, thanks to their
funerary goods, offered safe and museum-worthy recompense (Bénichou-Safar 1976; 1982).
13
14
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According to Ernest Renan, Semites never produced mythology, art, commerce or civilization; they were nothing
but a lower manifestation of human nature (Renan 1855, 145–6, quoted by Saïd 2003, 142). Their rudimentary
language would explain their inability to produce speculative writings and their political backwardness.
‘. . . The mind of the Oriental, (. . .) like his picturesque streets, is eminently wanting in symmetry’ (Lord Cromer
1908, quoted by Saïd 2003, 38). The contrast was apparent and intentional in city planning in the colonies, for
example between Delhi and New Delhi but also in Maghrebian cities like Tunis or Rabat.
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This ‘necrocentrism’ spread throughout the Mediterranean over the following decades,15 and has
in fact prevailed at some sites until the twenty-first century. Most Punic settlements in the central
and western Mediterranean have since been interpreted according to a model of the oriental city,
without well-structured spaces and following a natural, unregulated growth pattern; an ideal
model based on Phoenician Carthage, a mixture of Bronze Age cities in the Levant and modern
Muslim medinas. Furthermore, the interpretation of Byrsa as a central tell (Cintas 1970–1976,
124–6; Lancel 1994, 134–40) is allegedly supported by a series of written references to the fourth
century at the earliest (Str. 17.3.14–15; Serv., In Aen. 1.421; alib. 130) and by an archaeological
record no earlier than the third (Ladjimi Sebaï 2003). The evidence, in fact, points towards the
hill’s marginality between the eighth and third centuries BC (Fumadó Ortega 2010, 12–20).
Despite this, the hypothesis of a typically oriental Carthage stood as the model for the
interpretation, and sometimes supposition, of the morphology of other Punic cities in the western
and central Mediterranean. By focusing attention on cemeteries, the urban evolution of
settlements was largely overlooked.16 The comparison of the model of the typically oriental city
with the monumental architecture of Hellenistic Greek cities and imperial Rome perpetuates,
with great iconographical emphasis, Hellenocentrism. Hellenization is still seen as a one-way
acculturation process, which fundamentally maintains the colonial perspective on Mediterranean
ancient history. Hellenization also pervades the way the history of Carthage is portrayed in
university textbooks.
HISTORIES OF CARTHAGE: CULTURAL CONTACT AND HELLENIZATION IN
UNIVERSITY TEXTBOOKS
During the central decades of the twentieth century, Phoenician-Punic Archaeology
went through a period of stagnation, in sharp contrast with the enormous development of
Classical Archaeology in the same period (Moscati 1974, 15; cf. Morris 1994). Within this
framework, the considerable focus on Greek colonialism and Roman imperialism cornered
Phoenician-Punic societies into providing an alternative model, a contrast and complement to
Greco-Roman history (van Dommelen 1998, 17–18). This explains the marked chronological
polarity shown by academia even today. Attention oscillates between the earliest, most archaic
period (cf. Arruda 2000; Aubet Semmler 2009) and the Punic Wars (Le Bohec 1996;
Goldsworthy 2008; Hoyos 2008, among others), the period in between being largely ignored. In
short, despite the crucial role played by Phoenician-Punic-speaking communities in the ancient
Mediterranean, our knowledge about them is still very limited in comparison with that of Greece
and Rome.17 Not for nothing have they been called the ‘forgotten ones’ in Mediterranean ancient
history (Vella 1996, 245).
In spite of this, the discipline has experienced some revival from the last quarter of the
twentieth century, once again as a consequence of new, large-scale excavations at Carthage
15
16
17
The term ‘necrocentrism’ was coined by Ramón Torres to refer to the history of archaeological research in Ibiza
during the late nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, but I believe it to be equally adequate to describe
the excavations carried out at sites such as Baria, Tharros, Sulky, Mozia and Utica, among others.
A trend that was not seriously challenged until the publication of Benedikt Isserlin’s article (1973).
The exiguous role played by Phoenician-Punic Archaeology in European and North American universities is
remarkable, with regard to their weight in academic curricula and also to research projects. Spain, Italy and Tunis
are simply timid exceptions to the general rule.
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(Ennabli 1992). This is demonstrated by several publications (Huss 1985; Lancel 1994; Lipiński
1992; Fantar 1993; Krings 1995; Moscati 1995) that, at long last, aim at offering the
comprehensive overview long overdue since the monumental attempt by Stephan Gsell (1913–
1927), which Pierre Cintas (1970–1976) had tried to bring up to date. These publications, however,
still carry the weight of colonial insight into Mediterranean ancient history, the key features of
which can be summarized as an overrepresentation of the colonizing, allegedly civilizing element
which minimizes the agency of the indigenous populations with which Phoenicians and Punics
interacted, and the spurious division of colonial contexts into well- defined Phoenician and Punic
groups and equally well-outlined indigenous communities, both of which groups show solid and
fully coherent collective identities (cf. van Dommelen 1998, 17–22).
In the present article I will focus on just three of the above-mentioned works, more
specifically those which were conceived as university textbooks on the history of Carthage.18 In
these, the approach towards such a crucial factor as cultural contact ranges from total disregard
in the first, a negative interpretation in the second, and an attempt at subversion in the third.
Although these three referential works tried to depurate the exclusively negative views on
Carthaginian history which had been taught uncontested until the Second World War (cf. Bonnet
2006, 365–6), they have not fully shaken off the colonial undertone prevalent in the study of
Mediterranean ancient history.
The first of these works is Werner Huss’ encyclopaedic and profusely documented
attempt to cover the entire history of Carthage. From the current perspective, the absence of any
reference to cultural contact from such an otherwise comprehensive account is to say the least
remarkable. Most of the 39 chapters into which the work is divided are dedicated to the narration
of Carthage’s wars and the detailed analysis of diplomatic agreements. The author has not
dedicated a single chapter to the way Carthaginian societies interacted with other communities,
probably in the belief that cultural contact and cultural change play a negligible role in the issues
in which he is interested. The presence of a chapter on the Carthaginian Volkstum and
Volkscharakter is also significant (Huss 1985, 52–6): this involves the implicit assumption of such
unhistorical concepts. The selection of contents, therefore, suggests that while avoiding subjective
comparisons between Carthaginians, Romans and Greeks, the author does not consider the
relevance, perhaps not even the possibility, of social transformation through cultural interaction
between different groups. Carthaginian society is as a consequence shown as a stable and fixed
reality, a concept of culture borrowed from cultural nationalism (cf. Díaz-Andreu and Champion
1996; Jones 1996; 1997). The application of this theoretical perspective perpetuates the validity of
hermetic classifications of human groups and the colonial approach to Mediterranean ancient
history imposed by industrial nations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Cultural contact is indeed analysed in the other two textbooks, but it is at the same
time given a negative undertone. Serge Lancel’s notion that the coexistence of different
communities in the same city or territory does not necessarily imply cultural contact, provided
that the identities of the groups involved are sufficiently strong, is today very popular among
European conservative politicians. According to this idea the Phoenicians coexisted for
centuries with African peoples, but that does not mean that Carthaginian society was African
(Lancel 1994, 239), nor similarly in the Roman case afterwards (Lancel 1994, 251).
Nevertheless, according to Lancel (1994, 281–90), one of the sides, in this case the
18
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A critical review of the rest can be found in Bonnet and Krings (2006, 37–9).
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Carthaginian in the last few centuries of its history, can lose cohesion over time and/or show
some ambiguity. Then, and only then, does cultural contact take place, which is inevitably
defined by the loss of identity of the weakened society. According to Lancel, this argument
finds support in Carthaginian domestic (Lancel 1994, 146–64) and religious architecture
(Lancel 1994, 198–202), in religious decoration (Lancel 1994, 282–94), and in the plastic arts
in general. In these areas, Greek-based motifs and objects became increasingly popular in
Carthaginian material culture. The growing assimilation of Greco-Sicilian features
progressively displaced the oriental traits in a trend that became particularly acute on the eve
of the Punic Wars.19 This suggests a loss of cohesion and authenticity, which ultimately
became the weak spot of the Punic metropolis. In short, what Lancel suggests is that the final
outcome of the war was caused by certain differences in the quality of the collective identity
of both groups (Lancel 1994, 281–2): strong and cohesive on the Roman side, but weak and
ambiguous on the Carthaginian (cf. Bonnet and Krings 2006, 40).
The last of the textbooks we want to focus on is that of M′hammed Hassine Fantar. His
overview of Punic Archaeology in the central and western Mediterranean assumes a full
correlation between material culture and cultural identity, thus placing all Punic material culture
under the umbrella of an unequivocal and homogeneous Carthaginian cultural identity (Fantar
1993, II, 13–76). This pan-Carthaginian perspective neutralizes the historical role of local Punic
and indigenous communities which, as the latest research is showing clearly enough (Ruíz
Rodríguez and Molinos 2002; Arteaga Matute 2004; Grau 2005; Aranegui Gascó 2005; 2010;
López Castro 2006; Kallala et al. 2010, among others), followed their own pathways of socioeconomic development and had their own independent political trajectories. The panCarthaginian approach, also shared by Lancel (1994, 87–108) among others, is based on an
ethnic interpretation of material culture, most particularly once more with regard to funerary and
military architecture (Ferchiou 1987; 1990; 1994). But a different perspective could well see the
same evidence as a trace of self-representation by local elites beyond Carthaginian control. In
fact, we still need a review of the North African material record free from ethnic or cultural
nationalist approaches (Quinn 2003, 19–26). In his attempt to ‘give Carthage its due’ (Fantar
1993, I, 10), Fantar underlines its cultural independence and its oriental, non-Greek roots,
especially in relation to urbanism and architecture (Fantar 1993, II, 174–8) but also to sculpture
and other plastic arts. Fantar attributes a hegemonic identity to Carthage similar to that
traditionally associated with Rome the presence of which tends to minimize the impact of
external influences (cf. Bonnet 2006, 370). By proposing a Carthaginian identity to match the
Roman, however, this author turns the original paradigm around without transforming it. In this
way, the paradigm emerges reinforced.
19
This Carthaginian assimilation of Greco-Sicilian elements was, once again, noted for the first time in the context
of the earliest excavations carried out in Carthage, the importance of which in the emergence and consolidation
of certain prejudices I aim to stress in this article. In Salomon Reinach’s and Ernest Babelon’s (1886, 27) own
words: ‘Les carthaginois ne paraissent pas avoir eu d’art national proprement dit; sur le tard ils se sont mis à
l’école des Grecs de Sicile et même ont dérobé à cette île, pour les placer dans leurs temples, les ouvres des
artistes grecs que Scipion devait rendre à leurs possesseurs.’ This idea reproduces Ernest Renan’s (1864–1874,
836) analysis of archaeological monuments in Phoenicia, which were divided into three categories according
to their relationship with Greek and Roman cultures: pre-Greek influence, pre-Roman influence and purely
Greco-Roman.
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Although it never acquired the category of textbook, we must include in this
bibliographic review the work of Friedrich Rakob, one of the key excavators of Carthage. His
positive view on Carthage’s Hellenization is of note. Following his examination of the city’s
architecture and urbanism (Rakob 1987; 1989; 1991; 1991–1999; 1995), he suggested that
Carthage’s proficiency in adapting to Greek urban and architectonic models was proof of the
city’s advanced cultural development. From his perspective, this converted the city into ‘an
influential Hellenistic metropolis, the architectonic decorations of which preserve Punic
elements interpreted under a Hellenistic key’ (Rakob 2002, 22–3).
The most recent publication on Carthage for the university student is Sandro Bondì’s
(et al. 2009) textbook, which presents a comprehensive review of Phoenician/Carthaginian
sites, organized by region, and a survey of the key elements of their material culture. His
approach to the history of Carthage, however, is still fundamentally conceived as an account
of the city’s wars and empire (Bondì et al. 2009, 106–9). The latter follows the same
theoretical approach applied to account for Romanization until the 1980s, which has since
been amply superseded (van Dommelen 1997; Mattingly 1997, among others). This model of
‘Punicization’ has already been criticized (Quinn 2003, 23–7). According to it, the changes in
settlement pattern, burial practices and economic strategies detected from the Atlantic coasts
of Morocco and Portugal to the Libyan coastline from the sixth century BC are due mostly to
Carthaginian imperial expansion (Bondì et al. 2009, 116). This extreme view of Carthaginian
control over the Mediterranean reduces the agency of local populations to almost nothing, and
ignores regional variation in the archaeological record. The work stands as the explicit
representation – note the singular case in the title – of a unified Phoenician and Carthaginian
culture (Bondì et al. 2009, viii–x), in which no attention is paid to cultural evolution, except
in the chapter dedicated to pottery (Bondì et al. 2009, 323–45). In conclusion, in my opinion
the latest textbook on the history of Carthage fails to account for the heterogeneity shown by
Phoenician-Punic societies, and certainly remains within the old- fashioned paradigms of
cultural nationalism.
The approaches to cultural contact in these works are, in my opinion, once again heir to
the colonial representation of the ancient Mediterranean, which from the outset has so heavily
affected Phoenician-Punic Archaeology, and which is still latent in academic circles. The
developments of the last few decades, however, have finally offered new theoretical and
methodological approaches to the matter regarding urban development (López Castro 2007;
Helas and Marzoli 2009), interaction between Phoenician and local communities (VivesFerrándiz Sánchez 2008; Cañete Jiménez and Vives-Ferrándiz Sánchez 2011), agricultural
exploitation regimes (van Dommelen and Gómez Bellard 2008), religious practices (Bonnet
2011; Quinn 2011), and identity manifestations (Delgado and Ferrer 2007; Quinn and Vella in
press), to cite but the most prominent examples.
In this regard, I believe that the recent debate on the Hellenization of the Punic world
from the perspective of religious practices is having a very salutary effect (Melliti 2006; Bonnet
2006; van Dommelen and López-Bertran in press). In my opinion, however, the debate should in
future undertake a deep reanalysis of the architecture and urban structure of Carthage and other
Punic cities, because of the significant role played by these factors in the emergence of the
colonial discourse still prevalent in textbooks. In the specific case of Carthage, the stratigraphic
superposition of domestic structures and their surprising alignment with remains found in other
areas of the city, like those documented during Salomon Reinach’s and Ernest Babelon’s
excavations (see above), have yet to be satisfactorily explained. This record should encourage us
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to pay more attention to the urban evolution of Greek archaic colonies in Sicily (Gras 2002;
Fumadó Ortega in press b).20
The dominant paradigm might never have reached such an undisputed position had
Salomon Reinach’s and Ernest Babelon’s results been interpreted differently. However, the
university student of the twenty-first century does not have the chance to access the
developments and approaches achieved over the past two decades in relation to Phoenician-Punic
Archaeology. On the contrary, the main teaching tools insist on communicating the old colonial
notions of Carthaginian history.
CONCLUSIONS
The aim of the present paper is to illustrate the persistence of the old discourse, which
sees Phoenician-Punic Archaeology as ‘colonial archaeology’, in university textbooks. This
discourse, the product of a complex intellectual and political context, has been thoroughly
analysed by several authors, but the important role played by the extensive excavation campaigns
in Carthage between 1859 and 1884 had hitherto been overlooked. The interpretation of its
material record, which has been amply superseded in recent times, was understood as scientific
proof of Western prejudices. Some of them still persist in the representations of Carthaginian
history set forth in university textbooks. For this reason, I believe that a thorough reinterpretation
of the results of these excavations, the hypotheses on pre-Roman Carthaginian urbanism, and the
relationship between the morphology of ancient cities and society is therefore mandatory.
This debate has, in my opinion, the potential to shed new light over the question of the
Hellenization of the central and western Mediterranean, and may be to prompt the production of
a university textbook in which cultural contact and the social transformations undergone by the
ancient Mediterranean are viewed from a perspective that goes beyond the mythology of Western
colonialism.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my sincere thanks to Professor Josephine Crawley Quinn for her time and
advice.
Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology – German Archaeological Institut
Berlin Head Office
Podbielskiallee 69–71
14195 Berlin
GERMANY
E-mail: [email protected]
20
If we accept that the foundation of Carthage involved the official birth of a politically independent community
(Niemeyer 2006, 161; González Wagner 2006, 104), the most efficient way to allocate urban land among the new
settlers would be, as was the case with the Greek colonies in Sicily (Hoepfner and Schwandner 1994, 1–10), the
division of the territory per strigas (cf. Ben Younès 1995, 824–6; cf. Gras 2002, 186–9).
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