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Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 20 general entries.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Carthage
| Here comes an interesting part of the legend, concerning the Phoenician commercial abilities. The natives feared a massive invasion by Phoenicians, so were skeptical about the colonists settling there. So, the queen came up with a master plan. On the pretext that they were just looking for a place to rest, she asked the natives to sell them only as much land an ox's skin could encompass. The natives agreed, and then the queen ordered the skin to be cut into thin strips, and the settlers were able to buy a whole hill. What was the name of this hill? | Carthage Legends and Early History
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Byrsa. Byrsa is right, you know the rest.
| Finally, our colonists arrive. They choose their colony site on a peninsula, separated by the mainland by an isthmus. The site was 30 km south of an earlier Phoenician trading post. What was the name of the latter? | Carthage Legends and Early History
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Uttica. Uttica was founded in 1101 BC, that is roughly 450 years before Carthage. Megara was a neighbourghood of Carthage. Tipasa and Mersa Madakh were also Phoenician trading posts on the North African coast.
| On the way to the founding site, the Carthaginians-to-be made a first stop in an island, where the Great Priest of Juno welcomed them, offering to go with them, on the sole condition that the priests of Carthage should only come from his family. What was this island? | Carthage Legends and Early History
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Cyprus. Moreover, 80 virgins were kidnapped from the island, providing the basis for future population growth.
| This woman, daughter of king Mutto and wife of high-priest Akerbas, decided to flee her homeland when her grasping brother, Pygmalion, killed her husband. Who was she? | Carthage Legends and Early History
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Elisha. Elisha (or Elissa) is the right answer. Samira is an Arabic name, Ithnana is a name made up from the Arabic numeral Ithnan (two), and Cartha is made up.
Tyre. The colonists came from Tyr, then a flourishing city-state, located on the Mediterranean sea-shore, at about middle the distance between modern Beirut and Haifa. Sidon, Arwad and Byblos were in their turn the leaders of the Phoenician world.
Semitic. The Phoenicians were a Semitic people. They invented the first alphabet, from which the Greek and then Roman alphabets were derived. Their trading posts were spread all over the Mediterranean, and even further afiled, on the Atlantic shore of Spain, and about 300 km south of the Straits of Gibraltar, on the African shore.
Baal Hammun. I assume you know who Jupiter and Zeus were. Zalmolxis was the god of the Dacians, who lived north of the lower Danube (in what is now Romania and Moldova).
New City. Qart is the Semitic word for city, and Hadasht means new. The Romans transliterated "Qart Hadasht" as "Carthago".
814 BC. There are various hypotheses about the actual year of the founding. Some historians date the founding even earlier, in about 1000 BC, and some a century or so later, "ab urbe conditam", in the period 663-673. The most widely accepted theory though is that Carthage was founded in 814 BC, according to Timeus.
New city. Carthage was founded near to an existing Phoenician colony called Utica (the old city), the Carthaginian name was Qart Hadasht.
| The Carthaginians were great sailors. One Carthaginian admiral completed an amazing voyage round the west coast of Africa. Who was he? | Carthage
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Hanno the Navigator. The Carthaginians were the only Mediteranean people to frequently go past the Pillars of Hercules (the straits of Gibraltar) even trading as far as Cornwall, and some people believe they even reached the Americas.
| In which battle did the Carthaginians suffer a catastrophic defeat in 480BC? And who was the enemy general? | Carthage
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Himera, Gelon. The Carthaginians had been pressing the Sicilians hard, but this battle completely reversed the situation, the Carthaginians never really threatened the Greek city states on the island again.
146BC. The Romans had a genocidal hatred of the Carthaginians, and when they attacked the city, they butchered its inhabitants, hundreds of thousands of people. The 50,000 survivors were sold into slavery. They did the same at Corinth shortly afterwards.
| In what year was Carthage founded and by whom? | Carthage
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814 BC by Elishat. According to legend Carthage was founded in 814 BC by refugees from the Phonecian city of Tyre led by a woman called Elishat, who came to be known as Dido, the wanderer.
| What was the language spoken in Carthage? | Carthage
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Punic. They spoke a Semitic language of their own, which probably had some relation Aramaic, however small. Traces of the Punic language can be found in the language of Malta, however as far as I know it is now a dead language.
About ten miles from Tunis, Tunisia. Carthage was a massive city (of possibly up to one million people) of which Tunis was only a suburb, but now the situation is reversed.
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