CARTHAGE

Carthage (Punic: Qart-hadasht, the New City) was founded as a Phoenician colony from Tyre, traditionally in the late ninth century BCE. Its religion is a direct inheritance from the Canaanite-Phoenician world, modified by long contact with the indigenous Berber populations of North Africa and by the political requirements of a maritime empire. The two central deities of the Punic period are Tanit, the chief tutelary goddess, and Baal Hammon, the chief male deity.

Almost no Punic literature survives. What we know about Punic religion comes from inscriptions (votive stelae, the dedications from the Tophet), from archaeology, and from accounts written by Greek and Roman authors who were often actively hostile. The result is that any reconstruction of Punic theology requires interpretive humility, and the planetary identifications in this app are flagged on the methodology page where they involve disputed evidence.