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CARTHAGE OF THE 
 PHCENICIANS 
 
 IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN EXCAVATION 
 
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 j' J • 3 J i J > J ',>,»,>'> J J ' J 
 
 SEVEN-BRANCHED LAMP [Douimes) 
 
 \See p. 32. 
 
 \See p. 32. 
 CARTHAGINIAN LAMPS, TWO OF PUNIC FORM AND ONE GREEK 
 
CARTHAGE OF THE 
 PHCENICIANS 
 
 IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN EXCAVATION 
 
 BY 
 
 MABEL MOORE 
 
 •I 
 
 WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. BUTTON & CO. 
 
 1905 
 

 \(A 
 
 Printed in England 
 
I 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 In compiling this* small book, the object of the 
 writer has been to gather together in an epitomized 
 form, for English readers, all that is at present 
 known, and all that has been recently discovered, 
 concerning the earliest inhabitants of Carthage. 
 
 Modern curiosity seems to be stimulated on 
 their behalf by the fact that they are, or have 
 been up to the present, a lost and forgotten people, 
 with whose sea-faring, commercial and colonizing 
 characteristics we are acquainted only by hearsay 
 — Roman hearsay — having the disadvantages of 
 bias, prejudice and the contempt which goes with 
 conquest. 
 
 Modern excavation in the Punic Tombs of 
 Carthage has given this people an opportunity of 
 at last speaking for themselves, and it is to this 
 voice from the grave that we have now to hearken, 
 straining our ears with patient sympathy, as the 
 pick-axes of the monks of Carthage proceed to 
 liberate the stifled spirit of the past. 
 
 This book could not have been written but for 
 the generous assistance of the Archpriest of the 
 Cathedral of St. Louis of Carthage, the Reverend 
 A. L. Delattre, who is the moving spirit of the 
 
 236386 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 excavations, and whose valuable records, familiar 
 to the whole archaeological world, have been 
 placed at the writer's disposition. 
 
 It is hoped that this little account in English, 
 of the work accomplished by the Reverend Father 
 and his confreres, may not only prove of use to 
 those in England who are interested in the 
 excavation of ancient cities, but also serve perhaps 
 as a vade Tnecutn for those travellers who share 
 the wisdom of the swallows and leave our raw 
 winter for the genial realms of North Africa. 
 
 The grateful acknowledgments of the writer are 
 also due to Dr. Wallis Budge, Keeper of the 
 Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum ; to 
 the late Dr. A. S. Murray, and to Cecil Smith, 
 Esq., Keeper of the Greek and Roman Antiquities, 
 for invaluable help and direction, most generously 
 given. 
 
 M. M. 
 
r 
 
 t 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Part I. The Necropolis of Douimes 7 
 
 Part II. The Necropolis of St. Louis 59 
 
 Part III. The Necropolis of Bord-el- 
 
 DjEDiD 126 
 
 Index ^77 
 
 k 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Anthropoid Sarcophagus of a Carthaginian Priestess. 
 
 Reduced facsimile in colour . 
 
 Seven-branched and Carthaginian Lamps 
 
 Punic Mask .... 
 
 Punic Necklace . 
 
 Gilded Bronze Vase . 
 
 Carthaginian Vase and God 
 
 Dancing Girl .... 
 
 Punic Lamps and Amphoraa 
 
 Marble Sarcophagus of a Carthaginian Priest 
 
 Terra-cotta Figure 
 
 Engraved Punic Razors 
 
 Engraved Punic Razors . 
 
 Etruscan Vase and Golden Pendants 
 
 Greek and Etruscan Pottery 
 
 Etruscan Pottery. Corinthian Vase . 
 
 Terra-cotta Busts 
 
 Terra-cotta Statuette . 
 
 Terra-cotta Figurine and Statuette 
 
 Anthropoid Sarcophagus of a Carthaginian Priest and 
 Priestess ...... 
 
 Sculptured Marble Sarcophagus of a 
 Lady ..... 
 
 Terra-cotta Figurines . 
 
 Terra-cotta Dancing Girls 
 
 Terra-cotta Figure 
 
 Terra-cotta Statuette 
 
 Terra-cotta Head 
 
 Carthaginian 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 
 To face page 
 32 
 36 
 
 44 
 
 50 
 
 60 
 
 64 
 
 72 
 
 80 
 
 88 
 
 92 
 
 98 
 
 106 
 
 112 
 
 118 
 
 128 
 
 134 
 140 
 
 146 
 
 152 
 156 
 160 
 164 
 168 
 172 
 
PART I 
 
 THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Cato, in pronouncing the dread fiat, could 
 scarcely have contemplated in anticipation a more 
 complete fulfilment of his words ^'Delenda est 
 Carthago " than that which actually took place. 
 
 The Roman battle-axe was laid to the fair and 
 flourishing tree and the mingled fires of Roman 
 envy and material flame combined to wipe out 
 Carthage from the face of the earth. 
 
 But the strong tree laid low, was not uprooted, 
 and subsequent stems of Roman, Christian and 
 Byzantine growth shot up once more from the 
 hidden roots, only to succumb in their turn to 
 Vandal and Saracen destruction, followed by 
 complete and utter oblivion. ^ 
 
 Only a hundred years ago the true site of }i ^^ 
 Carthage was unknown, and Chateaubriand appears 
 to have been the first to give to the world the 
 
:?;; CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 results of certain investigations attempted by one 
 Major Humbert, a Dutchman, which enabled him 
 to indicate the spot occupied by the Acropolis or 
 Byrsa and the combined ports of the fleet and 
 commerce of Carthage. 
 
 But it was not until a considerably later period 
 that it became possible even so much as to suggest 
 a name for the fragmentary ruins fast disappearing 
 stone by stone from this august though well-nigh 
 naked site. 
 
 As one watches the Arab following his plough 
 over the ashy soil, turning up fragments of the 
 richest stones the earth can produce, or reaping his 
 corn from fields where once stood marble palaces 
 and porphyry pillars ; and when one recollects his 
 insatiable greed for building stone of any description, 
 especially in this land which of itself yields only 
 the non-enduring tufa ; and lastly, when one recalls 
 the fact that the Arab looks upon every ruined city 
 as a useful and ready-worked quarry, then the only 
 surprise one may indulge in is, that there remains 
 so much still to be told of Carthage in the light of 
 modern excavation. For curiously, in spite of 
 Cato, and subsequent to the writings of Mons. 
 Perrot,^ it is Punic Carthage which to-day has 
 yielded the richest fund of interest. 
 
 The roots of the old tree have lain covered by 
 generations upon generations of forgetfulness, and, 
 consequently, are preserved until this present most 
 fitting age in which has been witnessed a wondrous 
 resurrection of the lost cities of the ancient world, 
 
 ^ Histoire de tArt dans VAntiquiti. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 9 
 
 and in which the wise men of the earth go down 
 into the valleys and seem to make the dry bones 
 live. 
 
 It was due to the efforts of the late gifted 
 Cardinal Lavigerie that the systematic excavation 
 of Carthage was taken in hand upwards of twenty 
 years ago, and continued with so much zeal and 
 success by the White Fathers of Carthage under 
 the able guidance of their learned Chaplain, the 
 Reverend Pere Delattre. 
 
 Those sites which have yielded all that is of the 
 greatest interest, as throwing light upon the Punic 
 origins of Carthage, are the three most ancient 
 necropoleis, known_to-day only by their modern 
 appellations of Douifmes, St. Louis, and Bord-el- 
 Djedid. 
 
 In excavating the soil of Douimes to find those 
 remains of Punic sepulture which are conclusively 
 proved to be the oldest of the three groups, the 
 objects and remains of all ages yielded themselves 
 in such perfect successive order as to resemble the 
 arrangement of geological strata. Monuments 
 there were of the lower Carthaginian, Roman and 
 Byzantine periods, Pagan and Christian remains, 
 souvenirs of the Crusade of St. Louis, as well as 
 subsequent Arab art and craft. Above all, it is 
 Christian Carthage which has disappeared, while 
 the oldest epoch of all can show the best preserva- 
 tion of its sepulchral remains in these cities of the 
 dead. 
 
 But before detailing the discoveries, it may 
 perhaps be well to sum up first as much as can be 
 gathered concerning this lost and little-known 
 
10 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 people, their characteristics, their customs, and, 
 above all, their religion, in order to approach with 
 some degree of comprehension the objects yielded 
 by excavation, and to interpret as far as possible 
 the story which they help to tell. 
 
 Mesopotamia, the traditional site of the Garden 
 of Eden, would seem to show a strong claim to be 
 regarded as the birthplace of that Semitic race 
 which survives in the present form of Jew, Turk 
 and Arab, but which anciently appeared on earth 
 under the diverse types of Assyrian, Jew, Canaanite 
 or Phoenician, and possibly also Etruscan. And 
 it is to an Assyrian origin that we are able to trace 
 back so frequently the art and symbolism of much 
 that comes to light in the course of excavating the 
 Punic tombs of Carthage. 
 
 Of the Carthaginian character this much may be 
 safely concluded : that in his complete mastery of 
 the sea he was the antithesis of his cousin the Jew, 
 who from his iron-bound coast might well look 
 forward to the promise of a New Jerusalem where 
 " there shall be no more sea " ; though, by adopting 
 opposite means of transit, they shared the faculty 
 for penetrating into far countries and colonizing 
 with persistence. 
 
 That his tastes were commercial and that, in 
 accordance with the Semitic character, his energies 
 instinctively turned to money-making and the 
 advancement of his worldly interests, would seem 
 obvious, and prosperity was no doubt in ancient 
 Carthage, as in modern Jewry, the stamp and seal 
 of aristocracy. 
 
 That while indulging in every kind of luxury 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUlMES ii 
 
 and every form of lavish display, he was loath to 
 spend money save on himself, would seem to be 
 suggested by the entire absence of gold and almost 
 entire absence of silver coins among the funeral 
 offerings accompanying the dead, and the frequent 
 presence among the bronze coins of money no 
 longer in currency at the time when the corpse was 
 buried. It is however possible that the persistent 
 raid upon the tombs, made through all ages by the 
 Arabs, may account for the first-mentioned fact, 
 though it seems difficult to believe that every tomb 
 opened now for the first time by the White Fathers 
 has been previously visited by these rapacious 
 Arab thieves. 
 
 As to his military skill and prowess the name of 
 Hannibal alone would be sufficient answer to any 
 question on that point. But it was from motives 
 of patriotism and self-preservation that the Car- 
 thaginian fought. His natural instincts were not 
 warlike, and fighting for its own sake never appealed 
 to him. He was probably more reasoning than 
 emotional, and commerce rather than fighting 
 appealed to his reason. Brave no doubt he was, 
 for though pushing his successes in times of 
 prosperity, there is ample proof that he endured 
 toughly his hardships in times of disaster. Most 
 probably too he was cruel, with the sullen revenge- 
 ful savagery of the true Oriental, and certainly the 
 type of countenance depicted on some of the terra 
 cottas would lead one to conclude him to have 
 been an undesirable enemy. 
 
 But with regard to Punica fides it may be well 
 to remember that hitherto we have been forced to 
 
12 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 regard the Carthaginian, for the most part, through 
 the medium of Roman prejudice, and that it is wise 
 to be guarded as to the extent of our acceptance 
 of such bitter and unqualified criticism. 
 
 Of his architectural powers we have no means, 
 unfortunately, of judging. Whether in the laby- 
 rinthan streets of Tunis, the contemporary city of 
 Carthage, remains are still embedded among its 
 masonry of Punic structures, is a question interest- 
 ing to ask but hard to answer. We know the 
 major part of all the artistic and manufactured 
 articles found in the tombs are of imported foreign 
 workmanship as well as design. The heavy 
 massive tombs alone remain in Carthage as types 
 of his building powers. 
 
 When the Romans destroyed the whole of the 
 Carthaginian literature save one agricultural treatise, 
 it was their own utilitarian taste which led them 
 to choose this particular work, but it would be 
 unwise and undiscerning to conclude therefore that 
 all Punic literature was of a like utilitarian character 
 — for though we know they raised the science of 
 agriculture to an astonishing degree of skill, we 
 also remember that the Semitic soul has evolved 
 such diverse and lasting monuments of literature 
 as the Psalms of David and the Arabian Nights. 
 
 Of their habits in food and dress we have certain 
 definite though not extensive information. On 
 one occasion an embassy was sent to Carthage by 
 Darius, praying them not to eat the flesh of dogs, 
 and Plautus makes passing mention of their pulse- 
 eating propensity and their "long trailing foreign 
 dresses " ; while recent research confirms the fact 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUlMES 13 
 
 dwelt upon by Pliny as to the simplicity of the 
 Carthaginian costume, which consisted only of a 
 tunic without either mantle or girdle. This to 
 Roman eyes looked like nothing more than a 
 bathing costume : " Numnam it a balneis ? " 
 
 Seeing the slaves who followed Hanno wearing 
 rings in their ears, Milphio adds, *' Atque ut opinor 
 digitos in manibus non habent. Quid jam ? Quod 
 incedunt cum anulatis auribus" And Plautus makes 
 this same Milphio invoke Hanno in these terms, 
 " Tu qui zonam non habes ! " 
 
 Finally, in one other respect did the custom of 
 the Carthaginian differ from his contemporaries, the 
 Greek and Roman, in that he practised inhumation 
 in preference to cremation, and thus acted consist- 
 ently with Semitic ideas. That he at a later date 
 adopted the practice of cremation, is true, and for 
 a very definite reason, as will be shown later, 
 but he nevertheless clung to and never wholly 
 abandoned his older and racial custom. 
 
 And so it comes about that while in the Necro- 
 polis of Doui'mes, the oldest known Punic cemetery, 
 instances of cremation are almost entirely absent, 
 in that of Bord-el-Djedid they are frequently met 
 with, the cemetery known as the Necropole de St. 
 Louis filling up the gap and forming the link 
 between the two separate epochs belonging to the 
 first-named necropoleis. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 But for a full comprehension of the ideals 
 and motives of a people, it is invariably to their 
 religious beliefs we must turn, and it is here that 
 we shall find the solution of much that would 
 otherwise remain cryptic. 
 
 The school-boy knows well enough that Punic 
 Carthage was given up to the worship of Baal, but 
 when we go further and try to understand what 
 was actually the essence of this degrading Baal 
 worship, we find it to have been a manifestation 
 of that all-pervading Sun and Moon worship, or 
 worship of the vivifying principle of Nature which, 
 in its dual form, underlay the whole of the physical 
 world ; a worship as surely the antithesis of the 
 Christian spiritual ideal as death is the antithesis 
 of life, but nevertheless a worship which, by reason 
 of the universality of its symbols, would seem to 
 have formed the nucleus of all the faiths, save one, 
 that the world has ever known. 
 
 As it spread over the face of the earth and was 
 readily accepted by all nations and kindreds and 
 peoples and tongues, the worship and its symbols, 
 from Budh Gaya to Mexico, remaining for ever 
 the same, it was the deities only who changed their 
 
 14 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUtMES 15 
 
 names as they changed their climes, and local 
 legends gathered fast around them. 
 
 The degree of elevation or depravity to which 
 this worship was capable of attaining would 
 naturally entirely depend on the varied tempera- 
 ments of its votaries, but that it was capable of 
 lending itself to all forms of horror and degrada- 
 tion has been only too frequently and too fully 
 proved. Here then was the " abomination of the 
 Sidonians," the temptation which ever beset the 
 steps of the Jews in their journey both spiritual 
 and temporal to the Promised Land. 
 
 From the universal domination of this Baal or 
 Bel worship, then, the Phoenician no more escaped 
 than the rest of humanity has done from the time 
 when Nimrod the Hunter erected the Tower of 
 Ba-Bel on the Plain of Shinar, which reached, or 
 rather pointed unto heaven, till that mentioned by 
 Mr. Samuel Laing, who says : — 
 
 "The last traces of the Summer solstice are 
 still lingering in the remote parts of Scotland and 
 Ireland, in the Bel-fires which, when I was young, 
 were lighted on Midsummer Night on the highest 
 hills of Orkney and Shetland. As a boy I have 
 rushed with my playmates through the smoke of 
 these bonfires without a suspicion that we were 
 repeating the homage paid to Ba^l in the Valley of 
 Hinnom." 
 
 Nor are the Bel-fires yet extinguished. They 
 burn as they have ever done on Midsummer Eve 
 throughout the fair land of France, but con- 
 secrated to the honour of St. Jean Baptiste. And 
 indeed we may trace the demon whom Milton 
 
j6 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 calls Baalzebub, and whom Christ reveals as the 
 Father of Lies, to this very living present when in 
 Christian Brittany the peasants pay secret reverence 
 to their Menhirs or erect stones, rubbing them with 
 honey, wax, and oil, when they would be freed 
 from the curse of sterility. 
 
 On the Menhir at Dol, subsequent Christianity 
 has consecrated this monolith by carving on its 
 surface a representation of the Crucifixion, but 
 above this sacred emblem may be seen staring 
 forth, as though in exulting pagan triumph, the 
 Masonic symbols of the sun and crescent moon, 
 representing, to the ancient mind, the father and 
 the mother of the physical world. 
 
 The Gods of Carthage were primarily of Sidonian 
 origin, but side by side with them are found, especi- 
 ally in the oldest tombs, images and representations 
 in countless numbers of many of the gods of the 
 Egyptians. This is not so surprising when we 
 remember the ease with which the ancients seem 
 to have accepted foreign gods whom they without 
 any apparent difficulty identified with their own 
 by the simple process of re-christening them. 
 
 The Masonic symbolism of Sun and Moon 
 worship in this respect made the whole world kin. 
 It was the Jew alone who in his struggle to main- 
 tain faith in the one true spiritual God stood 
 absolutely apart from the rest of the world, since 
 his was the faith which could have no part or lot 
 with any other, all others being fundamentally and 
 diametrically opposed to his own. 
 
 Possibly herein may lie hidden the explanation 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 17 
 
 of that curious moral phenomenon, the wide- 
 spread antipathy (we might even say physical 
 antipathy) to the Jew evinced by so many Christian 
 peoples and races ; not, most probably, arising 
 from Christian zeal in the Middle Ages or any age 
 within the last two thousand years ; not because 
 the Christian people by reason of their purer 
 doctrine and higher ideals are, theoretically at 
 least, superior to the Jews, but simply and solely 
 because the races which are now Christian, some 
 twenty centuries ago, belonged to "those lesser 
 breeds without the law," those nations of the 
 Gentiles, all of them without exception given over 
 to the worship of human passion. For it is not 
 from Christians alone that the Jew suffers expul- 
 sion. Nothing could be more striking than the 
 whole-hearted aversion shown by the Arabs of 
 to-day to their Hebrew cousins, for, though in the 
 East they have lived side by side throughout the 
 ages, have dressed alike and in most respects lived 
 alike, never have they mingled, nor do they mingle, 
 in the great functions of their lives, in their 
 marriages, in their worship, or in their feasts. 
 Indeed so strong is the antipathy of the Arab for 
 the Jew, that while loath to admit a Christian inside 
 his mosque, he will in some places and in some 
 cases, for certain considerations, influential and 
 otherwise, relax this rule, on condition that the 
 visitor states on his oath that he is not a Jew nor 
 of Jewish blood. 
 
 It is indeed only necessary to re-read the fierce 
 denunciations of the old Hebrew prophets against 
 Jerusalem, on her lapses into idolatry, to realize 
 
i8 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 how hard was her task in thus upholding the true 
 faith alone in a world of Ba^l worshippers, and 
 how often she failed and fell from her proud 
 position of protest against this universal adoration 
 of human passion. 
 
 The question as to why the Egyptian gods in 
 their original character are found side by side with 
 those of Tyre and Sidon in the Punic tombs 
 cannot as yet be answered with certainty. 
 
 It is possible that when driven from the land of 
 Canaan by the Children of Israel, the Phoenicians 
 passed through Egypt, or possibly sojourned there 
 before eventually finding their way to the loveliest 
 gulf of the Mediterranean to found the Kirjath 
 Hadeschath, or New City, in the neighbourhood ot 
 the more ancient Utica. 
 
 For modern criticism has dispelled the charm 
 which lingered round the legend of Dido and her 
 association with the foundation of Carthage, and 
 we are to relinquish our faith in the pleasing story 
 of the bull's hide cut into many strips, and to 
 accept Byrsa as being derived from Bozra, a 
 Semitic word signifying * fortress.' 
 
 In Egypt they may have learned the cult of 
 Osiris, or perhaps it was only in the process of 
 trafficking commercially with the people of the 
 Nile that they came into possession of such 
 quantities of graven images and amulets bearing 
 a wholly Egyptian character. 
 
 Further labours in the tombs of Carthage and 
 further comparative study, prosecuted by the wise 
 White Fathers, may possibly reveal in time a 
 complete answer to this question. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUlMES 19 
 
 Meanwhile the gods of Carthage may be dealt 
 
 with in order — beginning with 
 
 "... Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians call'd 
 Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns ; 
 To whose bright image nightly by the moon 
 Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs." 
 
 We find her first in Chaldaea, where, under the 
 name of Ishtah, she takes her place as Virgo the 
 Virgin, among the signs of the Zodiac. 
 
 Ishtah, according to a Chaldaean poem, went to 
 the under-world, the world of the dead, in search 
 of the Sun-god who had been taken away by death. 
 
 Ishtah is said to have knocked at the mournful 
 and dusky gates of the nether world, and was at 
 first refused admittance. When she at length 
 gained entrance, she found a succession of other 
 gates, and at every one she was deprived of some 
 article or ornament of dress. Her head-dress, 
 earrings, necklace, even her beautiful outer robe, 
 were taken away, and in humiliation she was 
 brought before the ruler of that gloomy place. 
 
 During her stay beneath, everything in the world 
 above became cold and lifeless, being deprived of 
 the divine influence of love. 
 
 When at length she was released and restored 
 to the Sun-god, and together they returned to the 
 upper air, great was the joy of the reviving earth. 
 
 In a votive tablet from South Arabia her name 
 is spelt Athtah, approaching, rather more nearly, 
 the Ashteroth of Canaan and the Astarte of 
 Carthage. In Greece she becomes Aphrodite, or 
 again Persephone, and therefore to the Romans, 
 Proserpina, though indeed they identified her 
 variously with Diana and Venus Coelestis. 
 
20 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 A question arises to-day as to whether or no she 
 is to be identified with Tanith of Lebanon. Recent 
 excavations at Carthage having brought to Hght a 
 long Punic inscription in which is mentioned the 
 dedication of a Temple to the Goddess Tanith 
 and the Goddess Astarte, archaeologists are natur- 
 ally considering whether the two separate names 
 are now to be looked upon as belonging to two 
 separate personalities rather than the various titles 
 of one deity. 
 
 Possibly the answer to this question may be, 
 that the name Astarte and Tanith signified two 
 separate and quite opposite aspects of the one 
 goddess, i.e. that while Tanith may have been 
 symbolic of the full moon and likewise of mother- 
 hood, Astarte, on the other hand, signified the 
 crescent or virgin moon. This would seem to 
 offer an answer to the question as to why the 
 Romans should elect to identify her with such 
 different personalities as Venus Ccelestis and Diana. 
 
 In Assyrian mythology the planet Venus was 
 worshipped as the chaste goddess Istar when she 
 appeared as a morning star, but as the impure 
 Bilit or Beltis when she shone as an evening star. 
 
 Again, among the Phoenicians of Syria, Astoreth 
 is her name when she is the chaste goddess, but 
 Ashera answers to the idea of a foul spirit. Thus 
 the two aspects of the moon, the first and the last, 
 the crescent and the full, were variously interpreted. 
 Tainat, the Chaldaean prototype of Tanith, had the 
 form of a monstrous dragon or Sphinx — winged, 
 scaly, and with lion's feet. 
 
 Traces of the worship of the virgin goddess are 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 21 
 
 still lingering among us in those many crescent-like 
 objects which, it is claimed by the superstitious, 
 bring good luck. Among these may be mentioned 
 the horseshoe, the wish-bone or merrythought, from 
 the breast of a chicken, the lucky hand of Fatmeh 
 in vogue among the Arabs, and a similar hand 
 fashioned usually in coral and used by the Italians 
 to ward off the evil eye ; not to mention the 
 familiar gesture of raising the index and little 
 finger so as to leave, as it were, the two horns of 
 the crescent moon. To this list may even be 
 added the croissant roll, familiar to the French 
 breakfast-table, being a survival of one of the 
 forms of cakes baked for the Queen of Heaven. 
 Even the lucky eyelash must not be forgotten ; as 
 it lies on the back of the hand of the superstitious, 
 waiting to be beaten off as soon as the " wish " is 
 made, it delicately but very perfectly describes a 
 crescent — a perfect miniature of the very new 
 moon. 
 
 Accepting this view of the emblematic value of 
 crescentiform symbols, it is easy to see how the 
 cow, on account of its horns, has appealed so 
 strongly to the heathen imagination, no matter 
 whether this appeal effected the making of Golden 
 Calves, or legends of lo, or pictures of Isis, or the 
 Cow-worship surviving in present-day Hindooism. 
 
 Among the Phallic Towers still scattered over 
 the face of the earth, and usually symbolic of the 
 male principle, or Sun-god, will be remembered the 
 " Devil's Tower " of Gibraltar, which, unlike most 
 other examples, is crowned or completed with two 
 horns. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Following after Astarte in alphabetical order 
 comes Baal Moloch, whom the Romans identified 
 with Saturn, and the Greeks with Chronos, since 
 he was the devourer of his own children, and who 
 may likewise without hesitation be identified with 
 Beelzebub or Satan. Dr. Davis, during his labours 
 at Carthage, did not find a single tablet which 
 omitted his name. It is more than probable, 
 however, that the term Baal admits of a double 
 interpretation, and includes two different aspects 
 of one idea, being the name under which were 
 united the two everlasting principles underlying 
 the whole of nature— the male and female, — and 
 that when we find Baal in conjunction with the 
 horns or crescent, serpent, pyramid or triangle, it 
 is Baal Astoreth, the female principle or goddess, 
 who is represented. 
 
 No one who has once entered the Gulf of Tunis 
 can fail to have been impressed by the majestic 
 Bou-Khornain, or Two-Horned Mountain, whose 
 eternal grandeur was there the same as to-day 
 when St. Louis closed his eyes for the last time 
 upon it ; whose horns had pierced through the 
 cloud which hung round it, as it hangs to-day 
 when Hannibal, Scipio, Saints Augustine, Monica 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 23 
 
 and Belisarius, lifted their eyes to it, and when the 
 Martyrs, Saints Cyprian, Perpetua, and Felicitas, 
 perished within view of it. The hot springs welled 
 up within its volcanic heart then, as they do to-day, 
 flowing out over the little Arab town of Hammam 
 Lif, whose name, being interpreted, means " Baths 
 of Life," and staining the soil a rich ferruginous 
 red as its waters go to join the sea. 
 
 On the western point of this mountain, where in 
 the old days the priests of Carthage were wont to 
 sacrifice, an altar was discovered in i89i,and some 
 hundreds of votive offerings to the god Saturn, 
 surnamed Balcaranensis, a word in which it is easy 
 to recognize the name of Horned Badl, BaM 
 Kornain, closely approaching the actual present- 
 day name of the mountain, Bou Khornafn, or 
 Bou Khornine, which signifies "Two-Horned 
 Mountain." 
 
 A stele decorated with a triangle enclosing a 
 star, engraved above a crescent whose ends pointed 
 upwards, was also found. Beneath the triangle the 
 following letters could be read — 
 
 SATV mo Bal 
 
 CAR anensis 
 
 sacrum. 
 
 The name Ba^l Kornain or Bou Khornain recalls 
 that of the city Asteroth Karnaim, mentioned in 
 the Book of Genesis (xiv. 5), which in all proba- 
 bility was so named for the reason that it was built 
 on a mountain with two summits. 
 
 Another Sidonian deity, likewise of Chaldaean 
 origin, found his way to the Pantheon of Carthage. 
 
24 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 This god, known to the Greeks by the name of 
 Triton, has left no Punic name behind, but is 
 nevertheless recognizable as the "twice-battered 
 god" of Canaan — Dagon the fish-god, or god of 
 the sea. 
 
 The Chaldaean story, which recalls the Christian 
 LxOvSy tells how one Cannes or Ea-Han, a divine 
 fish-man, came out of the Persian Gulf and taught 
 mankind art, science, laws, and letters. 
 
 In this last-mentioned god may be traced the 
 mystic and ubiquitous name of John, a name 
 which, followed back through any channel, inevit- 
 ably arrives at the sacred source of Jehovah or 
 Jove. 
 
 Lastly among the Sidonian deities comes Mel- 
 carth, to whom one learned writer turns with a 
 sigh of relief, from the evil atmosphere of Ba^l 
 Moloch and Astarte. 
 
 Melcarth or Melech Kirjath, called by the Greeks 
 the Phoenician Hercules, was pre-eminently god 
 of the City of Tyre, and Herodotus, who visited 
 his temple there, mentions that though no image of 
 the god was to be seen, it contained two splendid 
 pillars, one of pure gold and one of emerald, which 
 shone brilliantly at night. 
 
 Here undoubtedly, however, was but one more 
 manifestation of the ruling idea in their system of 
 worship, and the two splendid pillars, the true 
 Pillars of Hercules, like Hiram's pillars at the 
 porch of Solomon's temple, were symbolic of the 
 vitalizing principle in nature. The gold pillar 
 would represent the colour of the sun, and the 
 emerald the colour of that serpent which, in this 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 25 
 
 terrible doctrine, completed the trinity of evil. 
 We are not, however, told if they were united by 
 an arch which would represent the Moon. 
 
 Of the Egyptian Pantheon the following deities 
 are represented in the Punic tombs : — 
 
 Anubisy the jackal-faced god, who was wor- 
 shipped by the Egyptians as a deity possibly 
 because the tombs of the dead were the haunts of 
 the jackal, and because from their fear and dread 
 they evolved the idea that the beast who prowled 
 among and sometimes devoured the bodies of the 
 dead was therefore the guide of the dead in the 
 under-world on their way to Osiris. 
 
 Ast or IsiSy whose hieroglyphic symbol was a 
 throne or altar, and who, crowned with the horns 
 enclosing a disc, was wholly significant of the 
 feminine spirit of the universe — was robed and 
 crowned by the wings and head of the sacred 
 Vulture. That this sacred adornment or robe of 
 office was worn by Carthaginian priestesses is con- 
 clusively shown on the most beautiful Punic 
 sarcophagus as yet discovered. 
 
 BeSy clothed in a I3vpcra, or bull's hide, and some- 
 times playing on a harp, was worshipped as the 
 God of Music, slaughter, and war, and as a 
 destroying force of nature. 
 
 Pthahy a form of the Sun-god, was the chief god 
 of all handicraftsmen and workers in metals and 
 stone, and was identified by the Greeks with Vulcan. 
 
 Rd, the Sun-god, being operative and creative in 
 power, and in age the oldest of all except Osiris. 
 
 Osiris y the God of the Dead. — The oldest re- 
 ligious texts refer to him as being the great God 
 
26 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 of the Dead, and state that he once possessed 
 human form and lived on earth, and that by means 
 of some unusual power or powers he was able to 
 bestow upon himself after death a new life, which 
 he lived in a new body as king, into which life he 
 was believed to be willing to admit all such as had 
 lived a good and correct life. 
 
 Amen Rd^ the names originally of two distinct 
 deities who after the Thirteenth Dynasty were 
 united into one composite being, the Sun-god or 
 author of the creative and generative principles. 
 
 The oudjah, or mystic eye of Osiris, is also met 
 with, together with the Scarabaeus and the Uraeus, 
 emblems of Royalty and Divinity, and there are 
 amulets and other representations of such Egyptian 
 objects of worship as the Lotus, the Lion, the 
 Cynocephalus, the Bull of Apis, Sparrowhawks, 
 Crocodiles, Serpents, etc. 
 
 The remaining symbols belonging properly to 
 Carthage are as follows : — 
 
 The Palm, worshipped at Carthage no doubt 
 on account of the resemblance of its foliage to the 
 rising sun. 
 
 The Horse. — Tradition says that Carthage was 
 built on a spot where a horse's head was dug 
 up. The horse in one form or another invariably 
 appears on the Punic coins, and in many instances 
 it is winged like its Assyrian prototype. 
 
 The disc of Tanith (full moon). 
 
 The crescent of Astarte (new moon). 
 
 The Triangle. 
 
 The Fish, 
 
 The Dove. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUlMES 27 
 
 It now remains to record in order the funeral 
 offerings, inscriptions, and other objects, recovered 
 in turn from the three Punic Necropoleis respect- 
 ively of DouYmes, St. Louis, and Bord-el-Djedid. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 In 1892 an Arab stone searcher came to the 
 Convent of the White Fathers, with some small 
 objects which he wished to show to the Reverend 
 Pere Delattre, the Arch-priest of Carthage, having 
 just found them in a plot of ground which went by 
 the Arab name of Douimes. 
 
 Till this moment futile attempts had been made 
 by various archaeologists, besides the White Fathers 
 themselves, to discover some true indications of the 
 oldest forms of Punic burial. 
 
 The objects in question proved to be as 
 follows : — 
 
 A silver earring, some necklace beads, some of 
 silver, some of hard stone and some of blue, green 
 or white faience. Many of them, being of Egyptian 
 workmanship, proved to skilled eyes peculiarly 
 interesting. Two tiny figurines represented the 
 God Phthah, two others the God Bes. From the 
 experience acquired by previous excavations it was 
 obvious that these articles of adornment could only 
 have come from a Punic tomb. 
 
 The Arab was thereupon engaged to continue 
 
 his search and acquaint the Reverend Father with 
 
 the result. But not finding that which above all 
 
 was the object of his attentive consideration, 
 
 28 
 
f THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUlMES 29 
 
 namely, a wall which he could destroy, in order to 
 sell the stones to a builder, he soon abandoned the 
 field in question in order to drive his pickaxe into 
 some other point of the old city. 
 
 Nevertheless the clue had been given, but various 
 considerations hindered commencing the excavation 
 of this fascinating spot. 
 
 The Fathers must first find the means necessary 
 to satisfy the money-hungry Arabs whom it would 
 be necessary to employ in their undertaking. And 
 so it came about that it was not until the following 
 year, after the harvest, that they could see their 
 way to setting to work. 
 
 A covering of grey soil about two metres in 
 depth was first dug into before arriving at the 
 primitive clay in which the Carthaginians had 
 hollowed out the last dwelling-places of their 
 dead. 
 
 By the month of November 1893 sixty tombs 
 were opened. The greater number were nothing 
 more than simple graves covered with slabs of 
 unworked tufa, the only species of stone employed 
 by primitive Carthaginians for construction. By a 
 process of infiltration each grave was filled with a 
 deposit of fine yellow sand. 
 
 The funereal accompaniments were usually com- 
 posed of two double-handled urns of medium size, 
 two small single-handled phials or vases, a flat lamp 
 with two beaks and its patera or saucer, and to this 
 set of articles was occasionally found added a 
 bronze hatchet razor, a handbell, a pair of cymbals, 
 a mirror and other articles of toilette, necklaces^ 
 rings, bracelets, pendants, painted vases, figurines 
 
30 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 masks, amulets, scarabaei, shells and little stones, 
 and many miscellaneous objects in ivory, gold, 
 silver, lead, etc. 
 
 To avoid a repetition of the finds recorded 
 in the Journal or daily log-book of the Fathers, 
 the plan adopted will be to take each object in 
 turn and give, as far as possible, a comparative 
 description of it. 
 
 By the following March, in the year 1894, the 
 number of tombs discovered had mounted to about 
 one hundred and fifty. The last of these deserves 
 notice. It was composed of one chamber, of 
 which the ceiling was protected by a sort of 
 ridge, formed by the divisions abutting one 
 against the other, a type of subterranean con- 
 struction already met with in the Necropolis of 
 St Louis. 
 
 The interior of the chamber was absolutely 
 intact. To the left, along the side of the wall, 
 three slight infiltrations of sand only had succeeded 
 in penetrating the vertical joints of the flagstones. 
 The chamber enclosed no sarcophagi analogous to 
 those of St. Louis. On the contrary, the two 
 skeletons lying there were reposing directly on the 
 stone slabs. The bones lay completely disjointed 
 and flat upon the ground, only the extremities of 
 the larger ones having preserved their form. But 
 in each case there was found mingled with the 
 crumbled bones, shreds of rotten wood, and in 
 between parts of the bones and wood existed a 
 layer of fine yellow sand, all of which would seem 
 to point to the conclusion that a cedar-wood coffin 
 had first enclosed the corpses, had admitted the 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 31 
 
 infiltration of sand, and finally had crumbled into 
 decay around the skeleton. 
 
 Another tomb, discovered in July of the same 
 year, probably enclosed the remains of a fisher- 
 man, for two bronze fish-hooks were there and 
 several pieces of lead, with which last no doubt he 
 was wont to weight his net. Here likewise were 
 found the remains of a very thick sheet of lead or 
 tin, which seemed to have covered a large part of 
 the body, and which served possibly as a coffin. 
 
 In October, an exceptionally large tomb was 
 opened, two and a half metres in length and one 
 and a half in width, and 1*44 metres in height, the 
 corpse being buried at a depth of nine metres 
 below the actual soil. Two skeletons were here, 
 and a golden ring and a bronze bracelet lay beside 
 the crumbling bones of the arm. A peculiarity of 
 this tomb was that the walls were plastered with 
 stucco of an extremely fine and durable character, 
 with the white and crystallized appearance of snow, 
 which, when illuminated by the candles of those 
 who entered, sparkled with a thousand luminous 
 points. Part of this plastering had become de- 
 tached, and had fallen in large sheets on to the 
 skeleton ; another part, without breaking away, 
 inclined forward like a huge sheet of cardboard. 
 The density of this stucco was such that at the least 
 touch it gave out a metallic ringing sound. An 
 enormous and perfectly square stone closed the 
 opening of this tomb. A golden disc about the 
 size of a sixpence, found together with many other 
 accompaniments, deserves especial notice. It was 
 almost covered with microscopic Punic characters. 
 
32 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS | 
 
 They proved to be archaic, belonging to the fifth 
 or sixth century B.C. ; deciphered by M. Philippe 
 Berger, the inscription reads thus : — " To Astarte 
 Pygmalion, Tadmelak, son of Padai, Pygmalion 
 delivers whomsoever he will." 
 
 Here we have not only the name of the man 
 buried in this tomb, but also the hitherto un- 
 known association of Pygmalion in the Pantheon 
 of Carthage. 
 
 Another tomb belonging to the series of those 
 opened in 1895 contained an earthen phial 
 bearing a Punic inscription written in black ink, 
 in which could be deciphered the name Abd- 
 Melkart, thought by those who discovered it to 
 belong very probably to the corpse who had been 
 buried in this tomb. 
 
 In a single grave, closed with large slabs of 
 stone, with the usual potteries (two urns, two 
 phials, a lamp and its patera), a small cauldron, 
 a little grey sea-pebble, some bits of iron, lead and 
 bronze, together with some bronze fishing-hooks, 
 shells of conic and elliptical form having served as 
 receivers or even lamps, since the extremity of one 
 had become blackened by the action of fire ; a 
 grinding-stone ; and lastly, the chased bezel of a 
 ring encircled in gold, being a cornelian in the form 
 of a scarabaeus, of which the flat side bore the 
 engraving of an upright figure, draped in a simple 
 cloth or klaft, and wearing a high conical cap. 
 This tomb must have, no doubt, enclosed the 
 remains of a Carthaginian fisherman. 
 
 Another simple grave closed by large slabs of 
 stone was opened in February 1895. Near the 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 33 
 
 head of the skeleton, besides the lamp and its 
 patera, were found two phials and three urns of 
 medium size and two terra cotta masks. Each one 
 was provided with a hole above, to enable them to 
 be suspended, notwithstanding they never had been 
 suspended in this tomb. The faces of these masks 
 were slightly smiling in expression, the neck 
 flattened and dotted alternately with red and 
 blue. Traces of the same colour appeared in the 
 hair and head-dress, which terminated, Egyptian 
 fashion, in two flat bands, slightly accentuated, 
 falling perpendicularly each side of the face and 
 neck. At the feet of the skeleton were gathered 
 up some broken fragments of ostrich eggshell, on 
 which were painted the features of a face, some red 
 lead or vermilion in fairly large quantities, and 
 about a hundred necklace beads, among which were 
 a good number of amulets representing well-known 
 subjects. 
 
 The foregoing is a description fairly representa- 
 tive of the tombs found in this particular cemetery, 
 being typical of the oldest-known forms of Punic 
 sepulture. In every case the grave is found at a 
 depth of about twenty to thirty feet, below the 
 accumulated soil of subsequent upheavals, dug out 
 of the primitive clay and covered with the simple 
 slabs of tufa, the only indigenous stone belonging 
 to the place. The absence of a Greek influence 
 and the constant presence of an Egyptian char- 
 acter in the works and objects of art found in the 
 tombs is likewise distinctive of this period, as also 
 is the absence of cremation, and almost entire 
 
 c 
 
34 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 presence of inhumation. But of the work- 
 manship found in all the tombs the only 
 two objects which may be pointed to with any 
 certainty as belonging exclusively to Punic art 
 and invention, are the curious amphorae which 
 terminate in stems at the base, instead of the 
 usual inverted cone, and the very primitive clay 
 lamp which, often blackened by the flame, and in 
 many cases still preserving its wick, offers a perfect 
 example of the archetype of the lamps of all later 
 ages. Originally copied from the natural form of 
 a shell, it consisted of a simple plate or disc of red 
 earth, with usually a yellowish covering. Half the 
 circumference of this disc was pinched back in 
 three places, thus leaving two beaks for the wick. 
 This type of lamp has not till lately been found 
 at Carthage, nor indeed throughout the whole of 
 Africa, but has been met with in the Phoenician 
 necropoleis of Sardinia, and also at Saida (ancient 
 Sidon) from the magnificent sepulchre of King 
 Tabnite, the father of Achmounazar. Curiously 
 the same primitive form of lamp still survives and 
 is used to-day by the peasants of Malta and Gozzo, 
 and by the Arabs of Tunis, the latter improving on 
 the original model by adding a stem and foot to 
 heighten it. 
 
 To leave the most simple form of lamp in 
 order to deal with the most complicated found 
 in Carthage, may appear to be an unscientific 
 manner of dealing with the results of the excava- 
 tions, but the Greek and Roman types are so well 
 known, and examples of them abound in the 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUlMES 35 
 
 museums, that practically any time spent on them 
 is so much taken away from the more important, 
 because less widely known, Punic types. 
 
 The following strange piece is therefore offered 
 for contemplation. 
 
 Imagine, then, seven little cups of goblet form, of 
 grey earthenware, fixed on to a hollow horizontal 
 cylinder, with which they communicate. The 
 cylinder rests on a slightly conic base, and from 
 the midst of this rises, in front, the head of a cow 
 with fine long horns. This head is likewise pierced 
 with a hole, communicating with the cylinder, and 
 is itself surmounted by a head of the Egyptian 
 goddess, Isis-Hathor. The first impression given 
 by this piece of pottery is that of a seven-branched 
 candlestick, and it has been thought that the 
 goblets served to hold wicks made from the pith of 
 elder-trees which were fed by the oil contained in 
 the cylinder, and that a cork or stopper of some 
 kind prevented it from escaping through the orifice 
 of the cow's head. A drawing of this strange lamp 
 submitted to the Academic des Inscriptions et 
 Belles Lettres drew forth the following observations 
 from M. Maspero. 
 
 " The object in question," he says, " reminded 
 me immediately of the plates covered with little 
 cups which are met with rather frequently in the 
 neighbourhood of Egyptian tombs. They are 
 found arranged six or eight on two lines, nine on 
 three lines, and seven on one line. They are all 
 arranged on one flat rectangular support and do 
 not communicate with each other. They affect 
 different forms according to the epochs to which 
 
36 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 they belong, some being small open goblets, some 
 again rotund little vases, and only one tubular or of 
 the phial shape analogous to our present specimen. 
 They served as goblets of offering, to receive the 
 liquids and cakes presented to the dead and to the 
 gods, and especially the canonical oils to the 
 number of seven, or nine more usually, but which 
 could be reduced by facultative omission to eight 
 and six or even four or two. It seems to me that 
 this Carthaginian specimen is a fairly faithful copy 
 of a service of goblets of this kind." {Comptes 
 rendus des seances 12 Juillet^ i^QSO 
 
 By the side of this, it is interesting to read the 
 remarks offered by the Reverend Pere Delattre, the 
 finder of the terra cotta in question : — 
 
 "An analogous piece has been found in Sardinia ; 
 I find it in the illustrated catalogue of the collec- 
 tion of Sardinian antiquities of Raimond Chessa, 
 printed in Cagliari in 1868. The drawing given of 
 it seems to indicate, on the support, a flat and 
 hollow disc communicating with the seven beaks 
 and with a ram's head, pierced no doubt like the 
 cow's head of our vase. Here is the description 
 of it given by Vincent Crespi, the author of the 
 catalogue. 
 
 " * The vase I am about to describe,' " he says, 
 " * is one of those objects whose singularity of form 
 makes it difficult to describe at first sight. In fact 
 it represents a sort of lamp with seven perpendicu- 
 lar branches, similar to the orifice or upper part of 
 a vase of any sort in the shape of a bottle, disposed 
 in a circle commenced and terminated by a ram's 
 head, and upheld by a base about O'lo m^tre in 
 
PUNIC MASK, SIXTH CENTURY {Douimcs) 
 
 \See p. 40. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 37 
 
 height. I cannot for certain affirm this object to 
 be actually a lamp, but in the case of its being one 
 it would probably be symbolic, or even magical in 
 character, not only because it is a many-branched 
 lamp, of which type we have discovered several, but 
 on account of that number of branches so often 
 found in Egyptian monuments to indicate the seven 
 planets.' 
 
 "Admitting this conjecture, the ram's head 
 placed among the branches would represent 
 Jupiter Ammon, the supreme divinity, and the 
 seven branches represented the seven planets, to 
 whom the lamp was dedicated, possibly, in 
 accordance with the beliefs of the ancients, to 
 draw down the rain to their fields and procure for 
 the earth a happy fecundity." 
 
 The Tyrians who founded Carthage had 
 borrowed first from Egypt, then from Chaldaea 
 and Assyria, the products of their art and industry 
 in order to trade with these goods, not only in the 
 isles and on the coasts of the Mediterranean, but 
 even in Gaul as far as the banks of the Seine and 
 the Rhine. 
 
 It is easy to recognize in the specimens preserved 
 to-day at Carthage these diverse influences. Here 
 are figurines of Chaldaean type, there, masks and 
 amulets, coming from Egypt, or else manufactured 
 on the spot by means of moulds brought from 
 Egypt. Later on — that is to say, towards the sixth 
 or fifth century B.C. — Carthage witnessed the un- 
 loading on her quays of quantities of Greek vases 
 and other pottery. There are found, in fact, in 
 various parts of the ancient city numerous vases of 
 
38 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 Hellenic fabrication. The clay of these vases is of 
 a pale red, frequently covered with a beautiful 
 black varnish. Many of the Greek terra cotta 
 lamps bear Punic graffiti, which proves their use 
 and importation to have belonged to the Car- 
 thaginian era. Some of them are unvarnished, 
 and to facilitate their sale in the Carthaginian 
 markets these lamps were at times appropriated to 
 the cult most in honour in the Punic city. It is 
 thus that we find one of them bearing the emblem 
 of Tanith, that is to say, a triangle surmounted by 
 a horizontal bar and disc. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The masks recovered from the Punic tombs of 
 Doufmes are not the least interesting of the 
 treasures preserved in the Museum of St. Louis of 
 Carthage. The most striking perhaps of any as 
 yet discovered is a large grotesque in terra cotta 
 which came to light in September 1893. It would 
 seem to be one of those rare specimens of Punic art 
 and handicraft which are being sought for very 
 naturally with so much more avidity than the well- 
 known Greek, Roman or Egyptian types. It is, 
 moreover, peculiarly hideous, having a low narrow 
 forehead, large flat nose, protruding cheek-bones 
 and wry mouth, retaining traces of black paint. 
 The mouth and eyes are formed by cutting out the 
 clay to leave the necessary spaces. The ears are 
 decorated with earrings, while round the edge are 
 distributed five holes, one at the top, one above 
 each ear and one below. Absolutely nothing of 
 Greek or Egyptian is here either in conception 
 or handling. In fact, it bears the hall-mark of its 
 Punic origin at the base of the forehead and 
 commencement of the nose, in the clearly-defined 
 crescent surmounting the disc which it encloses in 
 its abased points, an emblem whose significance 
 has already been dwelt upon in the foregoing pages, 
 
 39 
 
40 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 and one which appears constantly, either on 
 votive stelae at Carthage, or engraved on the bezel 
 of rings, or again fashioned as an amulet and 
 threaded on to a necklace. This mask changes 
 expression curiously, according as it is viewed at full 
 face, three quarters, or profile. 
 
 Many of the masks collected and preserved in 
 the Museum of St. Louis recall the art of Japan 
 rather than that of the Mediterranean, on account 
 of the extraordinary realism with which they are 
 executed. Another mask similar in character 
 was procured in Mesopotamia by M. Charles 
 Texier, and eventually given to the Louvre, where 
 reposes also a Punic mask from Carthage, and 
 several identical specimens found in Sardinia are 
 to be seen in the very interesting collection at 
 Cagliari, whose Museum of Antiquities has perhaps 
 more in common with that of Carthage than any 
 other in existence. 
 
 Another extremely interesting mask, oval in 
 shape, has neither beard nor moustache, but close 
 side whiskers are indicated by a double hollowed 
 line running from the eyebrows to the lower part 
 of the jaw, leaving the centre of the chin bare. 
 The hair is represented as crisply curled, and the 
 eyes are slightly obliquely set in the head, inclining 
 towards the nose. The pupils and the eyelashes 
 are painted black and the eyeballs white. The 
 skin of the face is indicated by a strong red 
 colouring. But that which renders the mask of 
 peculiar value is that it preserves the bronze earrings 
 and the silver nose-ring or nezem with which it was 
 ornamented when originally placed in the tomb. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUlMES 41 
 
 Untilthis last was foundtheprevailing belief was that 
 nose-rings were relegated to the toilet of women only, 
 but this whiskered mask proves very conclusively that 
 they were, at one time at least, worn by men also. 
 Another quite small and bearded mask was of 
 silver, and yet another in red earth and an identical 
 one in grey earth are wholly Egyptian in character. 
 But the varied types of masks are not thus 
 exhausted, for yet another comes to light, formed 
 by a disc cut from an ostrich shell and painted 
 with features. This disc form recalls another in 
 granite in which eyes, nose and mouth are rudely 
 cut, and it is thought they were meant to represent 
 the goddess Tanith, or the full moon. 
 
 We may now notice a particular and special find 
 which is more prized than any other treasure trove 
 gathered from the soil of Carthage, namely, the 
 curious and interesting hatchet razors which up 
 till now have not revealed themselves in identical 
 form in any other part of the globe. True there may 
 be seen in the British Museum, among the Egyptian 
 tools and bronze implements, the broken portion of 
 a very large bronze razor, similar in form though 
 not in size, and devoid of engraving ; and in the 
 Natural History Museum of Bordeaux may be 
 seen a broken and oxydized fragment hailing from 
 Sayes near Arg^les in the Hautes Pyrdn^es, which 
 is labelled " Hache ciseau en bronze." When we 
 remember that among the ancients the Phoenicians 
 were the miners par excellence and that the Romans 
 and Greeks frequently hired them or paid them to 
 work mines for them, and that to-day the Pyr^n^es 
 
42 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 abound in mines worked and shafts sunk by the 
 ancients, then it is not an unreasonable suggestion 
 that the green flaky morsel at Bordeaux may claim 
 relationship to the beautiful specimen found to-day 
 in the Punic tombs of Carthage. 
 
 While the most beautiful, perfect and engraved 
 specimens are found in the Necropoleis of St. 
 Louis and Bord-el-Djedid, and therefore to be 
 noticed later on more fully, it is necessary here to 
 mention that though they are rarely engraved 
 when found in the cemetery at present described, 
 namely, that of Douimes, yet they are found to- 
 gether with the rest of the charms and objects of 
 ornament and necessity disposed at the side of the 
 earliest Carthaginians in their tombs : for like our 
 Neolithic friend now residing in Bloomsbury, the 
 earliest inhabitants of the "Kirjath Hadeschath" 
 or " New City," the Tarshish of Ezekiel, were laid 
 simply down to rest in their scooped-out graves — 
 though it is true they lay flat on their backs — 
 were supplied with nourishment placed in jars 
 which surrounded them, weapons occasionally, but 
 very, very rarely, for the early Carthaginian was no 
 warrior; and, above all, charms and talismans of 
 every possible description to help them in their 
 hour of need, when they came face to face with 
 the unseen daemons of the under-world. Finally 
 the grave was closed with unworked slabs of 
 tufa after the primitive bicorn lamp had been 
 filled, lit and left to burn itself out. Traces of 
 dried milk in one vase, the skeleton of a quail in 
 another, residue of wine in a third, and the little 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 43 
 
 lamps still preserving the charred remains of their 
 wicks, all testify to the prevailing religion of fear 
 for the life to come. 
 
 The presence of the razors, however, opens out 
 quite another branch of speculation. That the 
 barber, like the midwife, has fallen on evil days is 
 clear, when we remember that " the holy barber's 
 work " was so utterly sacred as to be solemnized by 
 a religious ceremony even as late as the days of St. 
 Paul, and that as we go back in time to search the 
 origins of this mystic calling, we not only find 
 votive offerings of sacred barbers and tonsures 
 composing part of the personnel of the temple of 
 Astarte, but if we look to the hieroglyphic symbols 
 Neter^ signifying gods, we find them to resemble 
 fleams or razors more than they resemble anything 
 else. This is not the place, however, to indulge in 
 a dissertation on the gradual decline and fall in 
 dignity of the barbers' profession, from the time when 
 it was wholly set apart to the sanctified administra- 
 tion of the hierophants till only a hundred years 
 ago in this country, before the incorporation of the 
 Royal College of Surgeons by Royal Charter, 
 when the Barber Surgeons of England were per- 
 sons of distinct importance and dignity, and con- 
 tinually rewarded for their services by the honour 
 of knighthood. One is reminded of another 
 neglected profession mentioned further back, by 
 the French rather than the English name of the 
 practitioner, for so hard is the death of a once 
 living idea that it will often shed an afterglow 
 across the space of time in names and symbols 
 whose meaning has long been forgotten. 
 
44 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 It requires an effort of reconstructive imagina- 
 tion to recognize in the Sage Femme of to-day that 
 dread Wise Woman, or Witch, who in the far past 
 was wont to preside at the advent of the sons of 
 Adam. In a picture of realistic writing, painting 
 the obscure indignity which has overtaken these 
 two professions, a curious unconscious irony is 
 shown in making Mrs. Gamp to dwell over a 
 barber's shop. 
 
 If modern biologists declare generation to be 
 the fairyland of physiology, how much more must 
 the mystery of Birth and Life and Death have 
 impressed the mind and soul of the Ancient 
 World. 
 
 But as concerning the presence of these curious 
 hatchet razors beside the corpses, the last word has 
 yet to be said. They are by no means most plentiful 
 in the oldest cemetery of DouTmes, indeed by far 
 the most beautiful specimens have been found in 
 the graves of Bord-el-Djedid, but that they are not 
 obsolete and extinct in the present day is testified 
 by missionaries to Equatorial Africa, who have 
 supplied specimens of razors used by the negroes 
 of Tanganyika, and which, placed side by side with 
 the Punic razors, show too strong a resemblance 
 to admit of any doubt as to their affinity. 
 
 Usually of bronze, they are occasionally found to 
 be of pure copper when submitted to the chemical 
 analysis, necessary in their oxidized state, to dis- 
 tinguish the one metal from the other. 
 
 The amulets and charms may next be noticed. 
 These are so plentiful as to render enumeration 
 more wearisome and less effective than illustration, 
 
PUNIC NECKLACE (St Louis) 
 
 [Seep. 62. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 45 
 
 but that the Carthaginian taste was eclectic both 
 as to material and subject may be concluded when 
 we observe that they employed such a variety as 
 gold, silver, lead, ivory, ebony, lava, jasper, corne- 
 lian, emerald, mother of pearl, enamel, agate, lapis 
 lazuli and coloured glass of many kinds, to form 
 such shapes as the gods and goddesses Osiris, 
 Phthah, Bes, Horus, Anubis, Ra, Isis, Astarte, BaM- 
 Moloch, Tanith, the urseus, the cynocephalus, the 
 scarabaeus, the oudjah or mystic eye of Osiris, etc., 
 etc., etc. These were usually strung together on a 
 thread and hung around the neck of the corpse as 
 an array of magic charms to keep off harm from the 
 helpless body and disembodied soul. 
 
 A small figurine shows the god Bes grotesquely 
 squatting, with his feet resting on two crocodiles, 
 holding in his hands the tails of two lions. The 
 reverse of this statuette bears an Egyptian inscrip- 
 tion arranged in four vertical columns of hiero- 
 glyphic signs, being evidently one of those magic 
 formulae to 'which the ancients attached a super- 
 stitious influence, capable of preserving them from 
 the peril of harmful beasts of prey, and intended to 
 be worn as a talisman. 
 
 Of the very numerous scarabaei found in the 
 graves, one bears three hieroglyphic characters 
 signifying " Ra is the true ichneumon," an allusion 
 to the cult of the ichneumon and its identification 
 with Ra. 
 
 The Egyptians professed a religious cult of the 
 ichneumon, or Pharaoh's rat, the ^^ Herpestes 
 Pharaonis" an animal met with on the banks of 
 the Nyanza. 
 
46 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 A second scarabaeus bears the image of the 
 goddess Sekhet, crowned with a disc and a sceptre 
 in her hand. Her name is written in front of her 
 and t\\z.\:o^Horotidahiti,\h.Q magnanimous Horus 
 of Psammetichus of the twenty-sixth Dynasty. 
 This scarabseus is therefore of value in determining 
 the furthest limit to which can be assigned the 
 age of the tomb in which it was found, unless we 
 allow for the possibility of the tomb having been 
 of an earlier date, but used for the second time 
 when the said scarabaeus was placed there. 
 
 Psammetichus, who founded the twenty-sixth 
 Dynasty, was one of the twelve kings who shared 
 the government of Egypt at the death of Pharaoh 
 Sethos, whom a statue represents with a rat in his 
 hand and this inscription — " Learn by my example 
 to respect the gods." 
 
 It was no doubt the ichneumon which Sethos 
 thus presented for the veneration of the Egyptians. 
 
 Psammetichus reigned from 671 to 656 B.C. in 
 the north-west part of Egypt to the west of the 
 Delta, but he succeeded in driving out his col- 
 leagues and reigning alone until 617 B.C. It is 
 said that he raised temples at Memphis in honour 
 of the bull Apis and of Phthah. This Pharaoh 
 encouraged foreigners in Egypt, built a fleet and 
 attempted the conquest of Phoenicia. The pre- 
 sence, however, of this scarabaeus in a sepulchre of 
 Doui'mes does not establish as a certainty the fact 
 that the date of this particular tomb, and those 
 immediately surrounding it, could not go back 
 further than the seventh century B.C. It is known 
 that tombs were sometimes re-used at later periods. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 47 
 
 A third scarabaeus shows the cartouche of 
 Menkoauri Mycerinus, the Mycerinos of Herodotus 
 and the Mencheris of Manetho, who was the 
 founder of the third great Pyramid of Gizeh ; 
 above, the title Horou noubiy the gilded Horus, the 
 victorious Horus, and the goddess Sekhet with 
 the lion's head, in the same pose as the preceding 
 example. 
 
 Curiously, in the sloping side of the ground 
 called by the Arab name of Doufmes was found, 
 some twenty-two years ago, together with some 
 votive offerings to Serapis, a marble tablet bearing 
 the name of Manetho, the celebrated Egyptian 
 historian who was priest to the above-mentioned 
 divinity. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Sufficient evidence has now been offered to 
 show the relationship which existed between Egypt 
 and Carthage in such matters as manners, reh'gion, 
 and commercial intercourse. 
 
 That this cemetery of Douimes is the oldest of 
 the three groups is confirmed by the fact that its 
 forms of sepulture are characterized by a simple 
 grave or caves constructed with large stones, that 
 the funereal accompaniments are of a special and 
 distinct character, as well as by the absence of 
 coins and of cremation, while, on the other hand, 
 the remaining two necropoleis to be dealt with are 
 characterized above all by the simultaneous usage 
 of inhumation and cremation as well as the 
 abundant presence of coins of various sizes and 
 ages. The oldest necropolis has furnished a 
 quantity of hieroglyphics ; the least ancient, while 
 enclosing Egyptian scarabaei and amulets, has not 
 as yet yielded a single hieroglyphic. 
 
 The terra cotta figurines found in Doufmes have 
 
 besides, an Egyptian or else a proto-Corinthian 
 
 stamp, while those that come from Bord-el-Djedid, 
 
 on the contrary, show an Italo-Greek or Etruscan 
 
 influence. 
 
 The inscriptions on the vases, exceedingly rare 
 48 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUlMES 49 
 
 in the first necropolis, become relatively numerous 
 in the second, the latter having yielded, among 
 others, an Etruscan inscription, the first which has 
 been found in Carthage. 
 
 It must be, however, stated that there have 
 occurred very rare exceptions in the mode of 
 disposing of the corpse in the earliest tombs. 
 Occasionally a rude and huge monolithic 
 sarcophagus has been met with — and, in one or 
 two instances only, little stone coffers containing 
 calcined bones have told that cremation was not 
 unknown, though so rarely practised by this branch 
 of the Semitic family. 
 
 Turning to the pottery of Doufmes we are 
 reminded of the remark of the Abbd Cochet, the 
 learned archaeologist of Normandy, who wrote 
 somewhere, " Pottery is the most valuable trace of 
 the passage of humanity on this earth." 
 
 Here it is scarce in variety, for beyond the 
 primitive types invariably found accompanying 
 the rudimentary lamp and its patera, there is little 
 to be noted besides the occasional appearance of 
 alabaster vases and flasks of coloured glass, some- 
 times of considerable beauty in colour if not in 
 form, and resembling those beautiful examples of 
 which we are given such excellent illustrations in 
 the volume dealing with Phoenicia, of Mons. 
 Perrott's monumental work LHistoire de CArt 
 dans VAntiquiU. One example is a perfume 
 flask in black glass, on which have been incrusted 
 some lines of white vitreous material. These lines 
 towards the neck of the phial form parallel 
 horizontal circles, then, nearing the centre, they 
 
 D 
 
so CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 describe undulating lines, and finally, lower down, 
 they become unequally zigzagged. This phial 
 reveals great skill in the manipulation of glass in 
 fusion. 
 
 Painted and enamelled specimens of terra cotta 
 vases have been met with, though indeed there is 
 nothing found here corresponding to the number 
 and variety in the later cemeteries. 
 
 One somewhat remarkable terra cotta example 
 has a spirited picture in which figures a warrior 
 with a long lance and round buckler, another 
 figure on horseback, and several women carrying 
 urns on their heads. The lower point of attach- 
 ment of the handle is formed of two serpents 
 between which appears the eastern palm imitating 
 a shell; probably the archetype of the Greek 
 palmette, which appears so frequently in Hellenic 
 ceramics. 
 
 Mons. Heron de Villefosse gives the following 
 interpretation of the painting : — 
 
 "A vase, with black figures, and of the form 
 known as olpe. 
 
 " The handle, somewhat heavy in appearance, is 
 decorated at the base by two serpents separated 
 by a half-rosette. The picture which ornaments 
 the body of the vase depicts the episode of Achilles 
 and Troilos. 
 
 " On the left Achilles, helmeted, bears a round 
 buckler on the left arm, and armed with a lance 
 advances in a spirited manner towards the right, 
 passing in front of the basin which receives the 
 water from the fountain, behind which he was in 
 ambuscade. Polyxena upright, draped, her arms 
 

 GILDED BRONZE VASE (67. Louis) 
 
 [Seep. 88. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 51 
 
 bare, turns her head in his direction. Behind her 
 the young Troilos on horseback, beardless, and with 
 his hair falling on his back, advances tranquilly un- 
 armed. He occupies the centre of the composition, 
 of which the right is composed of the three figures 
 of the young women, companions of Polyxena, 
 draped, with bare arms and each one bearing an 
 amphora on her head. The first of these upholds the 
 amphora with her right hand, and turns towards 
 her companions making a gesture of fear. The 
 second holds the amphora with her left hand, and 
 shares the fright of the first. The third seems less 
 impressed. The dresses of these women are 
 decorated with different ornaments. This little 
 picture is framed on the left by a trellis, on the 
 right by Greek keys ; above, by a line of rosettes 
 which surround the neck of the vase, and below by 
 another line of larger rosettes which go round the 
 body of the vase. 
 
 There is, however, as far as variety goes, nothing 
 resembling the number of forms met with in the later 
 cemetery of Bord-el-Djedid. 
 
 Rings. — The pattern of rings here is invariably 
 the same, being really crescentiform, thick, and 
 rounded in the centre, but tapering towards the 
 ■two ends which meet the bezel formed by a seal 
 inscribed like an Egyptian scarabaeus. These 
 rings are severally of gold, silver, or bronze. 
 
 Inscriptions. — The inscriptions unearthed from 
 the soil of Doui'mes are three in kind, being Punic, 
 Hieroglyphic, and Greek. The Punic characters 
 which Plautus was fond of introducing among his 
 Latin text, and which for generations had puzzled 
 
52 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 students of his plays, proved no more potent than 
 the hieroglyphic and cuneiform symbols when time 
 brought forth the intellect destined to conquer 
 them. It is true there remains much ground to be 
 won yet, but long inscriptions are now deciphered 
 with confidence as to their accuracy, and when we 
 come to the results of the excavations in the third 
 Punic Cemetery we shall find how much light such 
 inscriptions are able to throw on the Punic origins 
 of Carthage. 
 
 Meanwhile in the older tombs the friends of the 
 bereaved troubled themselves less to write long 
 inscriptions, than to see that the defunct was sup- 
 plied with a fair number of charms and images to 
 ward off evil spirits, and a good supply of provisions 
 and light to help and sustain him on his dread 
 journey. 
 
 We have already noticed a statue of the god 
 Bes with a hieroglyphic inscription of magical 
 value engraved on its back — and it was probable 
 that the reasons which made general the adop- 
 tion of Egyptian art also influenced the use of 
 hieroglyphic symbols for the purpose of writing. 
 
 However, specimens of the Punic character do 
 occur, one instance being the appearance on the 
 handle of an amphora of the potter's mark and his 
 name " Magon," a name which curiously appears 
 very frequently in Greek character MAPllN on 
 the terra cotta vases and pottery found here. 
 Another is a Punic epitaph graven on bluish stone 
 (saoun). The text commences with these words, 
 " Tomb of Barmelqart " (perhaps identical with 
 Bodmelqart). Then the name of the defunct is 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 53 
 
 followed by his genealogy, in which the proper 
 names are accompanied by words (titles or pro- 
 fessions), which it was not found possible to 
 decipher. An analogous epitaph came from the 
 tomb of an iron founder named Akbarinty the son 
 of Badlshillic. 
 
 Neither of them is so long as the one mentioned 
 earlier as coming from the grave of one ladmeleky 
 son of Padai, and invoking the strange conjunction 
 of the names Astarte and Pygmalion. This 
 inscription, written in microscopic characters, is 
 pronounced by the learned epigraphist, Mons. 
 Philippe Berger, to be archaic and presenting no 
 trace of the transformation to which the Phoenician 
 alphabet was subjected at the Persian epoch, and 
 that it belonged to the fifth or sixth century B.C. 
 It was in fact not only the first archaic inscription 
 of Africa, but beyond all doubt one of the most 
 ancient Phoenician inscriptions as yet discovered. 
 
 Carthage being the point of departure of those 
 great commercial currents which were the out- 
 come of the indefatigable Punic enterprise, it is 
 not surprising to find, even at this early epoch, the 
 presence of art and workmanship hailing from 
 many another Mediterranean seaport, but if 
 they had a preference for one kind of pottery 
 more than another it would seem to have been 
 that which was shipped from the fragrant Isle of 
 Rhodes. 
 
 Over and over again, not only on the intact 
 specimens but among the debris and on the broken 
 potsherds is met, together with the potter's name, 
 the hall-mark of a rose, the emblem of that isle 
 
54 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 which took its name from the number, beauty and 
 fragrance of the roses which its soil produced. 
 
 Two broken handles of Rhodian vases, together 
 with the rose, are inscribed as follows : — 
 
 The first bears API2T0KAETE, and the other 
 Eni AAMAINETOT AFPIANIOT, and a third, com- 
 posing three lines of characters, of which the last 
 only is completely legible, reads thus : — 
 
 Em A////////A 
 T0I//////////ET2 
 ©ESMO^OPIOT 
 
 It may not be out of place here to mention an 
 interesting find in Spain communicated to the 
 Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, of 
 which they give the following notice in the official 
 journal of January 1904 : — 
 
 " M. Berger communicates on behalf of the Rev. 
 Pere Delattre, a Phoenician inscription from Spain. 
 It was found at Villaricos at the mouth of the river 
 Almanazora to the south of Carthagena, by M. 
 Siret, Directing Engineer of the Iron Mines. Of 
 late years various Punic antiquities have been 
 found in Spain, notably the famous bust from 
 Elche, to-day in the Louvre, but it is the first time 
 that a Punic inscription has 'been found there. 
 
 " It is a funereal stela bearing the words, Tomb 
 of Abdmelgart son of Badlpilles!' 
 
 Before leaving the cemetery of Douimes to enter 
 into a description of that known as the Ndcropole 
 de St. Louis, we may subjoin here an interesting 
 notice on the auriferous sand of Carthage, which, 
 though it leaves unsolved the enigma which is 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUIMES 55 
 
 propounded, yet opens up an interesting specula- 
 tion on the subject of the jewellery used by the 
 ancient Carthaginians and found to-day in their 
 tombs. It is a communication from the learned 
 Chaplain of St. Louis, for which the present writer 
 is indebted, being an extract from those of his 
 valuable writings, which are, unfortunately, out of 
 print. He says, " The sand of the sea at Carthage 
 has passed for a long time as auriferous. In 1835 
 Bureau de la Malle published as an appendix in 
 his Researches on the Topography of Carthage, p. 249, 
 a notice by M. Dusgate thus worded : — 
 
 " ' I will here relate a curious fact, and one of 
 which no traveller to my knowledge has made 
 mention up to the present : the precious metal 
 which the Carthaginians used to search for in 
 the mines of Spain is found mixed with the sand 
 which the tides of the sea heap upon the shores 
 where lies to-day the debris of their city. I hold 
 this fact to be of interest as well as a sample of 
 the sand from the late M. Charles Tulin, Swedish 
 Consul, who informed me in a very succinct note, 
 that the port of Carthage, to-day silted up by 
 the sand, was exploited as a gold mine by the 
 inhabitants of the coast. This fact deserved better 
 elucidation, and filled me with a lively wish to 
 obtain more precise details, and I enlisted Mons. 
 Tulin to obtain more exact information from 
 the gold-searching inhabitants of Douar-ech-Chott 
 as to the quantity of gold which the sand supplied 
 and as to the means used among them in order to 
 extract it. His reply left me nothing to desire, 
 
56 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 and removed all doubts raised by the brevity 
 of his first comment on this singular deposit. 
 Later on, in 1859, I was able to confer personally 
 with Mons. Bineau during his stay in Paris, where 
 he had come to solicit in the name of the Bey the 
 authorization of the government to have constructed 
 at Toulon a machine for removing this same sand 
 from the entry of the new port of La Goulette. 
 The information which I received from this very 
 able engineer only confirmed that which Mons. 
 Tulin had already supplied, and from which it 
 appeared that the sand deposited along the side of 
 the shore from the mouth of the river Miliana 
 (Oued Miliane) as far as Sidi-Bou-Said, is more or 
 less charged with gold, of a sufficiently considerable 
 quantity to have become the object of an exploit- 
 ation followed by the inhabitants of the coast' 
 
 " Such," says Pere Delattre, " is the statement 
 reproduced by Dusgate according to M. Tulin and 
 M. Bineau, the engineer to the Regency. For 
 more than half-a-century the extraction of gold 
 from the sand of the sea at Carthage would appear 
 to have completely ceased, since I cannot gather 
 from the natives anything more than a very vague 
 recollection of the existence of this industry 
 practised at the commencement of the last century 
 and no doubt quickly abandoned. I have, how- 
 ever, myself had the opportunity of proving the 
 existence of a certain quantity of gold in the 
 sand of the sea-shore, and the present note sums 
 up the results of a series of observations made at 
 different intervals during the last few years. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF DOUlMES 57 
 
 " Every winter when in the rough weather the 
 waves break with violence, stirring and washing 
 up the sand on certain parts of the coast, a sifting 
 takes place which brings to the surface minute 
 particles of gold. I have succeeded in gathering 
 up as much as nineteen or twenty grammes — a 
 sufficient quantity to confirm the reality of the fact 
 which has been stated. The gold is of a very fine 
 yellow. Curious to relate, this gold is not met with 
 in the form of dust, it is, in fact, composed of the 
 minute debris of trinkets. The quantity of gold 
 which I have gathered represents nearly three 
 hundred fragments. The scraps which preserve a 
 characteristic form are globules, bits of filigree, 
 twisted fringe, small rosettes, sockets, decorated 
 links, wrought wires, inlaid or open-work pieces, 
 one of these being fashioned in the form of a 
 rectangular cartouche. In all of this there is not 
 the shadow of a grain of natural gold dust. That 
 is not to say that the sand does not actually con- 
 tain any ; but the gold which we have gathered is 
 worked gold. Among these fragments of trinkets 
 we have found little cut stones, principally garnets ; 
 I have come across thirty of them, all belonging to 
 dislocated ornaments." 
 
 Up till this present moment no light has come to 
 shine upon this discovery revealing the true answer 
 to the riddle why the sea should cast up fragments 
 of jewellery. During the siege of Carthage did 
 they possibly cast their collected treasures into the 
 sea to avoid giving them over to the enemy t or 
 were these treasures carefully hidden in the sands 
 
58 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 of the sea-shore in some chest which, once reached 
 by the persistent action of the waves, succumbed 
 at last to their fretting power and yielded the 
 hidden gold and gems to that hungry sea which 
 swallows and keeps its treasures of blood and gold 
 untold, throughout the ages ? 
 
PART II 
 
 THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The discoveries of the Punic necropoleis on the 
 chain of hills rising around the port have consider- 
 ably modified modern conceptions of the topography 
 of Carthage, while, on the other hand, they accord 
 with the rare documents of antiquity. 
 
 Appian relates how in the second Punic war the 
 mob, accusing Hasdrubaal of treason, and wishing 
 him to be put to death, made in a body for his 
 dwelling, but not meeting with him they ran to 
 the cemetery, where they found only his corpse. 
 Fearing the vengeance of the people, he had put 
 himself to death in his father's tomb where shortly 
 before he had taken refuge. This account seems 
 to prove that the cemetery was near the city, and 
 the fact is further confirmed by other details which 
 Appian gives in his account of this same war. 
 When the envoys from the Roman Senate tried to 
 compel the Carthaginians to abandon their town 
 and build another ten miles from the sea, the latter 
 conjured with tears the Consuls Manilius and 
 Censorius to respect their temples, their gods, and 
 
 59 
 
6o CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 their tombs. They added that they preferred to 
 die rather than to assist in the ruin of their city. 
 
 In this circumstance it seems that the Temples 
 of Carthage could not be destroyed without ruining 
 the cemeteries at the same time. This fact, like 
 the preceding one, would seem to indicate that the 
 cemeteries were near to the city, and that to speak 
 of one as far as the site was concerned was equiva- 
 lent to speaking of the other. These and other 
 testimonies would seem to indicate — nay, to 
 establish the fact — that all the necropoleis of early 
 Carthage were situated on the hills which extend 
 from St. Louis, or the Byrsa, to the region known 
 as Bord-el-Djedid, while the original city was built 
 near the sea-shore, and near their commercial 
 port at the foot of these above-mentioned hills, 
 from whence it gradually spread upwards to the 
 culminating citadel of the Byrsa. 
 
 It is around the port that the architectural 
 fragments of Punic buildings have been found, and 
 the thousands of votive stelae dedicated to the 
 goddess Tanith and the god Baal Hammon 
 (examples of these stelae may be seen in the fine 
 collection brought from Carthage by Dr. Davis 
 and acquired by the British Museum), while, 
 except for the sepulchres, beyond this part of the 
 shore, nothing has been found belonging to the 
 Punic epoch beyond the very rare occurrence of 
 stones used in the construction of posterior 
 buildings, which appear to have once belonged to 
 early constructions. 
 
 Archaeological excavations, as well as the 
 thousands of holes dug by the Arabs by the sea- 
 
CARTHAGINIAN VASE IN THE FOBM OF A DOVE 
 
 {Seep. 
 
 CARTHAGINIAN GOD IN TERRA COTTA 
 
 [.See p, 110. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 6i 
 
 shore to obtain worked stones for building purposes, 
 point to the conclusion that the primitive city, 
 commencing here and creeping up to the Byrsa, 
 never exceeded the limit thus composed by the 
 heights arranged like an amphitheatre, overlooking 
 the Gulf, crowned no doubt each one with a temple, 
 the hill-sides consecrated to the reception of the 
 dead citizens. 
 
 However, when the population increased to such 
 an extent as to exceed the possibilities of accom- 
 modation, a series of suburbs developed beyond the 
 city wall, forming an outer belt on the inland 
 side. These suburbs, enclosed within a further 
 wall of fortification, and included under the name 
 of Magalia, formed a second city. Servius draws 
 attention to this double appearance of the town of 
 Carthage, the one part enfolding the other, when he 
 says : — Carthago antea speciem habuit duplicis 
 oppidi quasi aliud alterum complecteretur^ cujus 
 interior pars Byrsa dicebatur exterior Magalia. 
 
 Thus the quarter known as Magalia embraced 
 that of Byrsa as in the emblem of Carthage, the 
 crescent moon, embraced the solar disc. Thus the 
 old city, like many a modern one on the African 
 coast washed by the Mediterranean, was placed at 
 the foot of the hills and near the sea from whence 
 came her wealth, and, by reason of her peculiarly 
 happy position in this Gulf of Tunis, was at once 
 sheltered from the violent and fatiguing winds of 
 the North, and to some extent from the oily, 
 stifling sirocco of the desert. 
 
 The Punic cemetery of the name of St. Louis, 
 unearthed on the hill-side known as the Byrsa, 
 
62 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 takes its own peculiar interest from the fact that, 
 to some extent, it reveals a period of transition 
 when individual Punic art and inventiveness — 
 always identical, whether in Phoenicia, Cyprus, 
 Sardinia, or Carthage, and always demonstrated 
 in the manipulation of heavy masses, in the indica- 
 tions rather of industry than originality — has 
 escaped from the overshadowing and overpowering 
 influence of Egypt before having arrived at and 
 fallen under in submission to Greek Art. 
 
 In fact, it seems very highly probable that the 
 two ends of its period of existence as an employed 
 cemetery overlap the close of the use of that of 
 Douimes and the commencement of that of 
 Bord-el-Djedid. 
 
 As early as 1880, during the construction of 
 certain buildings required in connection with the 
 Cathedral and Convent, in the course of digging 
 the foundations, a very curious Punic tomb was 
 met with on the south-west side of the hill, looking 
 towards Douar-ech-Chott and La Goulette. 
 
 This tomb, which on account of its monumental 
 proportions deserves to be called a Mausoleum, was 
 built of large blocks of tufa arranged in layers. As 
 in the tombs on Juno's hill, no mortar or cement 
 had entered into its construction. It was com- 
 posed of a rectangular chamber, surmounted by a 
 double sloping roof. The first object met with was 
 a Punic collar or necklace, composed of fifty-one 
 beads and seven amulets, some of white and others 
 of green enamel, imitating the Egyptian faience. 
 Among these amulets the urcEus is met with twice 
 under the form of a viper which, folded back on 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 63 
 
 itself, puffs up its neck, and stretches out its head. 
 One notices also the oudjah or mystic eye of Osiris, 
 and some figurines which in spite of their minia- 
 ture proportions recall, in their half-squatting 
 attitude, the Colossus of Amanthus preserved in 
 the Imperial Museum of Constantinople. No 
 doubt these are representations of the god Bes, 
 possibly the oldest of all popular grotesques found 
 in connection with ancient sepulture. In this 
 collar, the amulets which depict the god Bes are 
 invariably double-faced. 
 
 The tomb enclosed two skeletons reposing in the 
 midst of diverse potteries, lamps, and jars. Twenty- 
 five is the number of terra cottas recovered from 
 this grave, in addition to nine Punic lamps of the 
 primitive type already explained (a disc of clay 
 pinched back in three places to form two beaks), 
 and one of these jars appeared to preserve traces of 
 milk. The liquid in evaporating had left subsisting 
 to the surface a white and fragile encrustation 
 which remained like a spider's web hanging inside 
 the jar, another instance of the custom of placing 
 aliments of various sorts in the tombs of the 
 departed, by those who believed their dead were 
 about to make a long and trying journey, during 
 which they would require physical sustenance. 
 
 The skeletons themselves, though at first sight 
 apparently well preserved, became reduced to a 
 humid paste the moment they were touched. They 
 reposed each one of them on two large slabs, which 
 themselves closed two sarcophagi. An interval of 
 a few inches existed between these two stones, and 
 permitted the introduction of the hand and arm, 
 
64 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 and a lighted candle introduced into the aperture 
 revealed another skeleton in its primitive position. 
 Nothing further could be done before these flag- 
 stones were first carefully cleared of the deposit of 
 sand which had filtered in and covered over from 
 sight many small objects in bronze, and the rotten 
 remains of wood which seemed to suggest the 
 former presence of a coffin of cedar or Cyprus. 
 This accomplished, the slabs which constituted the 
 resting-place for one skeleton and the covering of 
 the tomb of another were then carefully removed. 
 The grave on the left side enclosed a skeleton 
 whose head was turned to the right. The skull 
 appeared to retain sufficient consistence to be 
 recovered and preserved, but the moment it was 
 touched it crumbled to pieces between the fingers. 
 No single object was found accompanying this 
 corpse, and the tomb was closed again in order to 
 open and examine that on the right. 
 
 Here likewise the skeleton was found in place, 
 but in such a degree of decomposition that the 
 bones resembled a thin sheet of paper after it had 
 been burned to white ash without losing its form. 
 One touch therefore sufficed to effisct its complete 
 destruction. 
 
 These two skeletons were found at a depth of 
 some twenty-eight feet below the actual soil of the 
 hill of the Byrsa, but unlike the first, the second 
 one was found accompanied by a Punic lamp, a 
 broken patera, a small bowl of bone, and a copper 
 hatchet razor, all arranged around the upper part of 
 the body, while from the region of the ")elvis eight 
 small copper objects composed of a ring and a 
 
DANCING GIRL [Bord-el-Djedid) 
 
 ySecp. 126. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 65 
 
 biforked plate were recovered, and would seem to 
 have once formed the component parts of a military 
 belt, especially as they were found together with 
 two weapons. The blade of one of these retained 
 traces of the wood of the scabbard which once 
 enclosed it. The form of this weapon resembled 
 that of a poniard or dagger, the other looked like 
 a dart, though possibly this last may have merely 
 served to sharpen the first-mentioned weapon. 
 
 Up till this present day, save in the Isle of 
 Cyprus, the Phoenician cemeteries have rarely \/ 
 
 furnished weapons — a fact noticed by Mons. Perrot, 
 who says that during two years of excavations in 
 the Sidonian Necropolis not one single weapon was 
 met with. Among every other people who were in 
 the habit of depositing similar objects in the 
 tombs, spears and lances, casques and bucklers, are 
 met with at every turn. "This singularity," he 
 says, " can only be explained by the character and 
 habits of the Phoenicians. This race of merchants 
 was not warlike ; they manufactured fine weapons, 
 but it was chiefly for the purpose of exporting and 
 selling them ; for themselves they never used them, 
 save to defend their persons, and never carried 
 them from motives of vanity. It was not at the 
 point of the sword that they conquered those 
 riches, and that power of which they were so 
 proud." 
 
 Here, however, we are in the presence of a Punic 
 sepulchre, more ancient than the Byrsa or necropolis 
 itself, and which appears to enclose the remains of 
 one of the first chiefs of the Carthaginian Power, 
 
66 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 together with either members of his family or some 
 of his companions in arms. To which age, then, 
 does this tomb belong ? Is it not probable that it 
 belongs to that far-removed period when the bold 
 Tyrian merchants came and founded their 
 Emporium on this peninsula ? It could scarcely 
 have been without difficulty and struggle that these 
 first pioneers of the future Carthage planted them- 
 selves in the land. It was no doubt very necessary 
 at times to defend themselves with weapons against 
 the native population when the treasures of their 
 counting-house were threatened. 
 
 This tomb was met with by chance, by the 
 Arabs working at the foundations of some modern 
 building. It is to be regretted that before they 
 acquainted the Reverend Chaplain of St. Louis 
 with the find, they commenced destroying it as 
 fast as they could work with their pick-axes to 
 obtain the stones. When he arrived on the scene 
 they had gone a long way towards completing 
 their work of vandalism. Happily he arrived in 
 time to prevent its entire destruction. 
 
 These stone searchers have truly the genius for 
 destruction ; they cannot look at a few feet of wall 
 without contemplating the immediate profit which 
 they could draw from it by selling the stones to 
 some landowner or builder. For centuries they 
 have fought and quarrelled over the ruins of 
 Carthage, and have succeeded in making them 
 almost entirely disappear. 
 
 As far back as the thirteenth century, Edrisi, an 
 Arab historian, relates how, since the downfall of 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 67 
 
 Carthage until his own times, they had never 
 ceased digging among the ruins down to the 
 foundations for stone, and that there was no sign 
 of discontinuing this destruction while they ex- 
 ported to far-off countries incredible quantities of 
 this material. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Genoa, Venice, Pisa, Algiers, Constantino and, 
 we may add, Tunis, possess in their finest monu- 
 ments marbles carried away from the ruins of 
 Carthage. 
 
 Thus it is that the walls of fortifications, vestiges 
 of temples and palaces, have disappeared stone by 
 stone. And to-day, as in the days of Edrisi, the 
 Arabs never cease or rest from destroying the 
 ancient remains and monuments covered by the 
 soil. 
 
 This practically total destruction of Carthage 
 necessarily adds a very special interest to such 
 rare monuments as are still met with intact. 
 
 The archaeological world therefore owes its 
 thanks to the late Cardinal Lavigerie, who first 
 awoke to the imperative necessity of an immediate 
 and methodical work of arrestation and investiga- 
 tion into this sorely drained though still richly 
 treasure-laden soil. 
 
 When his lamented death arrested the valuable 
 
 work which he had initiated and to which he had 
 
 drawn the attention of the learned societies of 
 
 France — happily for science and for the future — 
 
 the work, too precious now ever to be abandoned 
 
 until completed, was taken up with an enthusiastic 
 
 68 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 69 
 
 zeal joined to a lofty and scholarly spirit by the 
 Reverend Pere Delattre, who has so absolutely 
 identified Jiimself with excavated Carthage as to 
 render it as impossible from henceforth to think of 
 the two entities apart as it would seem impossible 
 to dissociate the name of Dr. Schliemann from the 
 ruins of Troy. 
 
 He tells how the excavation of the Byrsa was 
 finally accomplished in the face of the many 
 difficulties which would naturally occur in the case 
 of expensive work, taken up in a whole-hearted 
 fashion by a fraternity who, having already re- 
 nounced all personal worldly possessions, and 
 whose labours are dedicated to the benefit of the 
 sick and suffering, can therefore never possess any 
 means save those which are forthcoming from the 
 outer world Vherewith to meet the costly outlay of 
 this work. Following the occasion of the discovery 
 on the Byrsa, he says : — 
 
 " For several years the resources which I had to 
 dispose of did not appear to me sufficient to under- 
 take excavations at such a depth, and therefore so 
 costly. I hesitated for a long time in view of the 
 enormous quantity of earth which it would be 
 necessary to remove before obtaining any serious 
 result. I was, besides, drawn towards two other 
 points of ancient Carthage where excavation was 
 easier and discoveries certain, namely, a large 
 Christian Cemetery with its interesting Basilica, 
 and two other large graveyards reserved for slaves 
 and imperial freedmen, so rich in information and 
 enlightenment on the offices of Roman administra- 
 tion in the second century. 
 
70 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 " However, from time to time I had a few cubic 
 metres of earth removed from around the Punic 
 tomb of the Byrsa, as much for the sake of pro- 
 curing bread for the poor Arabs who soHcited work, 
 as for the certainty of coming across in the soil, 
 funereal amphorae, fragments of fine Greek pottery, 
 and above all those small jars encircled with red 
 lines, having one handle, and on the convexity a 
 conic beak called by the Arabs bazzuola, signifying 
 mamella, and found usually m the neighbourhood 
 of infants' graves. 
 
 " But I could not think how to effect a complete 
 clearing which would permit attaining to the most 
 ancient and likewise the most interesting tombs. 
 
 " It was not until 1888 that I was enabled at last 
 to study this Punic Necropolis more seriously. 
 M. le Marquis de Vogue, Member of the Institute, 
 and author of learned works on the Antiquities of 
 Syria and Palestine, visiting one day the ruins of 
 Carthage and our Museum, was struck with the 
 important results obtained by our first essays and 
 desired to interest himself in our researches. Thanks 
 to a generous offering which he vouchsafed to remit 
 to me for the purpose of contributing to the dis- 
 covery of Punic monuments I was able to take up 
 again those labours so many times arrested, and 
 push them on as far as the stratum where we 
 should find the Punic tombs." 
 
 In 1889 a further financial help was supplied by 
 a Russian tourist, a Monsieur Jacques Rosenberg, 
 and with various intervals of necessitated inter- 
 ruption, the work of excavating the hill of the 
 Byrsa was carried on until 1896. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 71 
 
 Meanwhile, in the course of digging into and 
 clearing away the ground for the purposes of dis- 
 covery, the following diverse remains belonging 
 to widely separated ages were met with and 
 brought to light. The uppermost of these was a 
 Musulman Cemetery of the Middle Ages. A fine 
 example of Byzantine architecture and decoration 
 in the well-preserved remains of a house then came 
 next — in geological order, so to speak — followed 
 by some Roman cisterns, a Roman road, a wall of 
 fortification, a series of apses, of uncertain use, 
 and, finally, below all, the Punic Necropolis. 
 
 The Musulman Cemetery consisted of a group 
 of Arab graves about twenty in number, enclosed 
 by walls. But these walls were of a date far 
 anterior to that of the graves, belonging, in fact, to 
 the Byzantine epoch, and to the Byzantine house 
 already mentioned. When the Musulman mourners 
 chose this spot to bury their dead, they found an 
 enclosure already prepared in a half-ruined hall, 
 which in crumbling had partly filled up the walls 
 emerging from the soil. Later on, the falling 
 earth from the hill-side above finished the pro- 
 cess by burying both the Arab tombs and the 
 Byzantine house. 
 
 These tombs, though simple in form, were of a 
 fine and careful type of work, and one no longer 
 met with in the Regency of Tunis, though ex- 
 amples may still be seen in Turkey and Tripoli. 
 Each of the tombs was composed of a horizontal 
 narrow stone slab, the length of the body which it 
 covered. A second slab of the same length was 
 placed on top of this, but edgewise, enframing 
 
72 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 itself in the lower one, its upper edge cut away 
 and narrowed off almost to the thickness of a 
 knife-blade. Some of these tombs were of white 
 marble and better worked than others. In these 
 the base of the upper stone was engraved with 
 several rows of beading and mouldings of even 
 simpler form, but good effect. Among the rest 
 some were of the stone of the country known to the 
 Arabs as kadd. They, too, were carefully worked. 
 And the last group were made of shelly tufa 
 borrowed from the ruins of Carthage and executed 
 with less care. The best preserved of these tombs 
 have been transported to the garden Museum of 
 the Convent of St. Louis, that wonderful garden 
 which, like Milan's Giardino di Marmo, is planted 
 so profusely with strange and beautiful results in 
 stone of " Man's expression of his delight in the 
 works of God." 
 
 Beneath these tombs, as they were found in the 
 ruined Byzantine hall, the corpse lay about four 
 feet below the stone slab, in earth filled with, nay, 
 composed of, debris ^ and just slightly above the 
 mosaic floor with which this room was paved, like 
 the rest of the rooms which have subsequently 
 been completely cleared, revealing them in all 
 their beauty and freshness. We are fortunate in 
 our possession at the British Museum of such 
 perfect examples of sixth-century mosaics from 
 Carthage as are shown on the walls of the staircase 
 — more especially as otherwise Byzantine Carthage 
 is not strongly represented here. We are still 
 more fortunate in knowing that, humanly speaking 
 they are safe and likely to remain unhurt for an 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 73 
 
 indefinite age, to delight and satisfy the archae- 
 ological thirst of unborn generations ; but, alas ! 
 that the same might be said of those exquisite 
 carpets with their delicacy and brilliancy of tint, 
 their " birds and flowers many numbered," which, 
 preserved in situ and therefore not under the ever- 
 present care and vigilance of the White Fathers, 
 have already suffered and, one must suppose, will 
 continue to suffer from various destructive forces 
 in the form of tourists, time, tempests and other 
 dangers. 
 
 The half-ruined hall in which the Arabs had 
 inhumed their dead formed part of an edifice of 
 somewhat considerable size, whose walls, to about 
 the height of sixteen feet, are still upright. The 
 building was composed like our mediaeval manors, 
 of a centre block and two wings enclosing a 
 rectangular court paved with flags which cover a 
 cistern. The great hall, which subsequently be- 
 came the Arab graveyard, together with another 
 contiguous chamber, is separated from the court by 
 a sort of corridor paved with mosaic and terminated 
 by an apse whose well-preserved vault retains the 
 remains of more mosaic. 
 
 In the course of clearing away the debris which 
 filled up and encumbered all the space within the 
 walls of this house, evidence of the richness of the 
 house and its owners came to light in the form of 
 fine white marble columns intact with base and 
 capital, columns of onyx, a large quantity of 
 marble plaques of all colours, being the remains of 
 various decorations ; discs, too, of porphyry and 
 malachite, and numerous fragments of mosaic 
 
74 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 among which the following designs appeared : — 
 The life-sized head of a lady, two theatre masks, 
 a cow's head, the paws and mane of a lion, 
 serpents, fish, and birds, such as plovers, partridges, 
 etc., garlands, baskets of flowers, and series of 
 arcades, etc., etc. In addition, a beautiful head 
 of Minerva in white marble was unearthed, a 
 bronze buckle engraved and bearing a Byzantine 
 monogram, some Jewish lamps and a large number 
 of Christian lamps — one of these has a disc 
 ornamented with the Alpha and Omega, and 
 another bears the image of a small fish, the tx^vs 
 of the early Church. 
 
 While on the spot here digging our way down 
 through Mediaeval, Arab, and Byzantine Carthage, 
 in order to arrive at the Punic forms of sepulture, 
 we may note in passing the finding of an enormous 
 bone over four feet in length, and in form resembling 
 somewhat a shoulder-blade, though more elliptical 
 than triangular. Other large bones came to light 
 from time to time, until the former presence of a 
 whale's skeleton on this spot was proved. It must 
 necessarily have come here, or have been thrown 
 here, either during or after the Musulman destruc- 
 tion of Carthage. 
 
 According to St. Augustine,^ the skeleton of a 
 sea monster was preserved and exhibited at 
 Carthage, and it is a propos of Jonah that he cites 
 the fact. Whether this is the actual identical 
 whale cannot be determined, but we may presume 
 that the gigantic skeleton was kept in the Capitol, 
 
 ^ In a letter to Deogratias written in 408. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 75 
 
 and, therefore, at least very near where the White 
 Fathers met with the above-mentioned bones. 
 
 With regard to the subject of Jonah, the boat in 
 which he embarked set sail for Tarshish. It has 
 been thought that this city was situated on the 
 Mediterranean. From among the diverse opinions 
 emitted on this subject, it is interesting to recall 
 that of the Septuagint, of St. Augustine, and of 
 St. Jerome, who believed this city to be no other 
 than Carthage. 
 
 This opinion is met with in the Middle Ages in 
 the writings of an Arab geographer, who says that 
 the ancient name of Tunis was Tharchiche. How- 
 ever this may be, the scene of Jonah vomited by 
 the sea monster is frequently met with at Carthage, 
 on the Christian lamps, and in the interior of the 
 country of Tunis, on the terra cotta tiles of which 
 one may see very curious examples in the Museum 
 of St. Louis. 
 
 The mention in the seventy-second Psalm of the 
 name of Tarshish coupled with that of **the 
 Isles," is further illuminating on this point, perhaps, 
 when we remember that almost all the chief isles 
 of the Mediterranean had been at some epoch 
 Phoenician possessions and settlements. 
 
 In the region of the Roman cistern found below 
 this Byzantine house a coin was met with, which, 
 from its position, appeared to have been designedly 
 placed there by the builders. Belonging to the 
 reign of Tiberius it was struck at Utica under the 
 decemvirate of Lucius Caecilius Pius. It is there- 
 fore reasonable to believe this cistern to belong to 
 the first century of our era. 
 
76 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 The traces of a Roman road are next met with, 
 and then the remains of the wall built under 
 Theodosius H. and repaired by Belisarius under 
 the Emperor Justinian. 
 
 A curious find comes to light in a series of apses 
 discovered about twelve feet behind the wall of 
 Theodosius. These make up altogether the 
 number of twenty-three, including those which are 
 complete, and the ruined remains of others. 
 
 They rest supported by an enormous wall whose 
 construction is surely unique, for it is composed of 
 rows upon rows of large terra cotta amphorae 
 filled with earth and laid one upon the other. On 
 the necks of these jars the age of the wine they 
 formerly contained is written in red or black ink. 
 The various dates spread over the interval between 
 the years 43 and 15 B.C., and therefore seem to 
 conclusively assign a Roman origin to this con- 
 struction, these dates being indicated by the names 
 of the Consuls of the particular year in which each 
 amphora was filled. 
 
 The use of the apses or the object of their 
 construction remains the subject of divided 
 opinions. Some see in them the " hollow covered 
 walls " of Appian, while others recognize a 
 Pantheon dedicatea to all the pagan gods of 
 Carthage, and others again refuse to see in them 
 anything more than ordinary cisterns. 
 
 They have, however, no connection with the 
 Punic cemetery below, beyond having served as 
 an, accidental protection which has aided the 
 preservation of what would, without these super- 
 structures described, have certainly succumbed, 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 77 
 
 together with the rest of Punic Carthage, under 
 the relentless destructive forces which have com- 
 bined in carrying out the Roman edict and wiping 
 the old city from off the face of the earth. 
 
 For this reason only, therefore, they deserve 
 mention in a notice set apart purposely for the 
 description of the Punic origins and remains of 
 Carthage. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 When this layer of accumulations belonging to 
 such varied periods had been dug through it was 
 found that the actual soil to the depth of nine feet 
 was filled with urns and funereal amphorae, the one 
 enclosing calcined bones, the others bones showing 
 no trace of cremation. 
 
 These amphorae were of red, and at times of 
 grey, earth, frequently coated on the outside with a 
 layer of yellow. Their form was as nearly as 
 possible that of an ostrich-shell cut through the 
 middle, of which the two parts were joined to- 
 gether again by means of a cylinder of the same 
 diameter. They were devoid of a neck and 
 supplied with two closely-adhering handles. Of 
 those containing the calcined bones one example 
 found enclosed also a necklace which had been 
 burnt with the body. The beads and amulets of 
 this half-melted collar were misshapen and soldered 
 together. 
 
 All of these vases, urns and amphorae had given 
 way under the pressure from above, and were 
 every one of them broken. In those parts of the 
 ground which had received foundations of buildings, 
 
 78 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 79 
 
 the vases immediately below were completely 
 smashed and flattened. 
 
 A fairly typical collection of symbolic emblems 
 was next met with in such diverse forms as a terra 
 cotta fish, an amulet in the form of a triangle 
 surmounted by a bar and a ring — the emblem of the 
 goddess Tanith — two green jasper scarabaei, one of 
 which bears engraved the picture of a Hercules 
 struggling with a lion, and lastly a statuette of the 
 goddess Tanith herself. 
 
 This last is nineteen centimetres high and in 
 shape like a mummy. The ears and lips are painted 
 a vivid red, the arms hang at the sides, and the feet, 
 though broken, would appear to have been crossed. 
 While recalling the style of Egyptian figurines, it 
 showed a certain degree of freedom of pose, or 
 liberty, which is lacking in the art of the Nile. 
 
 The Museum at Cagliari possesses a similar 
 figurine, reproduced by Mons. Perrot in his History 
 of Art. He gives the following interesting descrip- 
 tion of it : — 
 
 " A type of which, up to the present, Sardinia 
 alone has furnished an example is that represented 
 by a beautiful terra cotta from Tharros. Arrayed 
 in a long robe and Egyptian head-dress, the face 
 appears to have, at the first glance, something of 
 the aspect of a mummy, reminding one of the 
 funereal figurines of Egypt. It is, however, distinct 
 from this in two characteristics. Here the arms, 
 instead of being folded on the breast, fall beside the 
 hips ; the feet are not imprisoned within a sheath 
 which hides the form of the whole of the lower part 
 of the body, but appear below the lower edge of 
 
8o CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 the robe, and, like that of the arms, their model- 
 ling is firm and true ; the face, well framed, is not 
 lacking in a certain elegance. This figurine, for 
 which the artist has been very freely inspired by 
 an oriental type, is certainly one of the best works 
 which can be attributed to Phoenician modellers 
 in clay. These statuettes found in the cemeteries 
 of Phoenician Colonies in Sardinia, have they 
 been brought from the Mother Country, or manu- 
 factured in the island itself by artists who had 
 estabHshed themselves and opened their studios 
 there ? 
 
 "This last hypothesis seems much the most 
 probable ; they commenced, no doubt, in Sardinia, 
 as in Cyprus, by using moulds brought from 
 Phoenicia, and finished by copying on the spot, with 
 a certain freedom, the models which had been 
 created in the Mother Country." 
 
 Further on he says : — 
 
 " In the Western Colonies certain types in 
 connection with the local cults have been more 
 often reproduced than others, thus, the divinity 
 holding the disc appears to have been more popular 
 in the Phoenician colonial world than in the ports 
 of the East." 
 
 A grey clay figurine of this goddess, of the last 
 described type, was met with in the soil at present 
 under discussion, namely, the Byrsa, or hill of St. 
 Louis. 
 
 The Carthaginians addressed her as the great 
 lady Tanith, the reflection or face of Baal. It was 
 to her and to Baal Hammon that they offered the 
 three or four thousand votive stones found in 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 8i 
 
 Carthage during the last twenty years. All these 
 stelae, with scarcely any exceptions, bear the same 
 formula. 
 
 The following is a translation of the inscription 
 on one of them, chosen from the Museum of St. 
 Louis : — 
 
 " To the great Lady Tanith, face of Baal, and to 
 the Lord Baal Hammon : Vow made by Hamilcart, 
 son of Abd-el-Melkart, the Suffete, son of Adoni- 
 baal the Suffete." 
 
 In these inscriptions, all written in Punic char- 
 acters, one meets with the well-known names 
 of Annibal (Hannibal), Amilcar (Abd-el-Melkart), 
 Asdrubaal (Azrubaal), Hanno, Mago, etc. On 
 several of the stelae the name of the one who has 
 made the vow is followed by the indication of his 
 profession. The names of traders figure here, and 
 chiefly those of goldsmiths, silver, tin and iron 
 merchants, recalling the verse in Ezekiel xxvii. 
 12, denouncing the pride of the city of Tyre — 
 
 " Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the 
 multitude of all kinds of riches ; with silver ^ iron^ tin 
 and lead, they traded in thy fairs'* 
 
 Or to quote from the Vulgate — 
 
 " Carthaginenses negotiatores tuiy a multitudine 
 cunctarum divitiaru7n^ argento, ferro, stanno^ 
 plumboqiie, repleverunt nundinas tuas!' 
 
 While still digging in the region of the am- 
 phorae, before arriving at the actual Punic tombs, 
 many remarkable and characteristic necklaces came 
 to light, one of which is composed of seventy-eight 
 beads and amulets. Bes, the oudjah, and the urceus 
 almost invariably figure several times among the 
 
82 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 collection, and several upright figures are likewise 
 very frequently noticed having either the head of a 
 monkey or a sparrowhawk. Other charms appear 
 only once in the same necklace, such as fishhooks 
 of bronze and ivory, a dolphin, a palm, and a kind 
 of domino pierced with small holes. Small silver 
 rings and copper rings covered with a fine layer of 
 gold are likewise found to constitute the elements 
 of these necklaces, as well as bronze cylinders and 
 long glass beads having somewhat the form and 
 very nearly the colour of cigars, and divers animals, 
 sparrowhawks, crouching lions, etc. 
 
 It was especially in this upper layer that the 
 necklaces were found, belonging to those corpses 
 whose bones had been enclosed in an urn or 
 amphora. 
 
 One of these amphorae, cracked all over, had 
 nevertheless resisted the pressure from above 
 sufficiently to make it possible to take note of the 
 disposition of the deceased. It was found to 
 contain the skeleton of a child. The head occupied 
 the base of the amphora, and the feet touched the 
 orifice. It was evident that the vase must have 
 been broken in order to introduce the body, and 
 that the broken parts were afterwards re-united. 
 Behind and around the skull some bronze hoops 
 were recovered, recalling those large metal rings, to 
 simulate earrings, worn by Tunisian Arab women 
 in the country, but which are in reality hung each 
 side of the face by means of a cord passing over the 
 top of the head. 
 
 On the breast of this skeleton was found one 
 bead, a silver ring, and several of those amulets 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 83 
 
 representing either the Mystic Eye of Osiris or the 
 god Bes. But at times the chief amulet of the 
 necklace was a little bell, sometimes of bronze and 
 occasionally of gold. 
 
 One of these amphorae was found lying horizon- 
 tally in the soil ; the bottom, broken to facilitate the 
 introduction of a child's body, was afterwards 
 closed by the help of stones. Near the head some 
 collar beads were recovered, and next the feet two 
 small vases had been placed. One of these was 
 that peculiar type already referred to, called by the 
 Arabs " bazzuola," with a conic beak on the convex- 
 ity, a type which, though employed by them to-day 
 for ordinary domestic uses, was in all probability 
 originally intended to serve as a feeding-bottle for 
 the little dead children in their tombs ; a pathetic 
 substitute for the mother who could not accompany 
 them on the dread unknown journey. This at 
 least is the solution which suggests itself in the 
 presence of those curious jars invariably found 
 accompanied by the skeleton of an infant, and 
 never met with in those larger tombs below. 
 
 These amphorae, which enclose simply calcined 
 bones, are in many respects analogous to certain 
 archaic ceramics coming from Cyprus and Rhodes, 
 and the discovery of this very considerable number 
 of urns indicates that at a certain epoch the 
 Carthaginians, imitating the Greeks, adopted the 
 practice of cremation. There is the testimony, too> 
 of Justin, who relates how Darius sent an embassy 
 to the Carthaginians praying them not to eat the 
 flesh of dogs nor to burn their dead, and we do 
 not forget that Virgil makes Dido perish on her 
 
84 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 funeral pyre. In i86i a tomb was found at Sidon 
 enclosing the cremated bones and ashes, and a 
 certain number of similar instances have been met 
 with even in the case of Hebrew tombs. 
 
 Finally, however, after much digging, the pick-axe 
 struck the upper extremity of a real sepulchre. 
 
 At first nothing but the points of the two large 
 abutting stones was revealed. They were enough, 
 however, to indicate what was coming, owing to 
 that unvarying peculiarity in the mode of construc- 
 tion met with in these early tombs. Two cells of 
 graves were dug or built in the soil and were 
 then covered with four large slabs or flagstones, 
 surrounded by four solid walls, which were then 
 roofed in by means of two enormous stones leaning 
 to or abutting on to each other, thus leaving an 
 upper portion of the tomb between the apse and 
 the upper stones of the two graves. In this upper 
 story an uncoffined skeleton was occasionally found 
 in addition to those below — while at other times, 
 this portion merely enclosed some of the charms, 
 such as necklaces, placed there for the spiritual 
 protection of the corpse. This upper portion may 
 be compared in form and dimensions to the small 
 tents used by soldiers while campaigning. This 
 first tomb was completely empty in its upper tent- 
 like portion. 
 
 An amusing incident associated with this 
 discovery is related by Pere Delattre. 
 
 It being necessary to remove with great care 
 some huge slabs to make an entry into the tomb, 
 this operation was confided to one of the Arab 
 workmen well known to the Fathers. Especially 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 85 
 
 devoted to them, this man never wearied in relating 
 the kind acts of which he had been the recipient 
 from the hands of the late Cardinal Lavigerie, nor 
 to recall the remembrance of those missionaries 
 whom he had known personally during their stay 
 in Carthage, mentioning them by name, though at 
 the same time murdering with his pronunciation 
 the very names which were so dear to him. 
 
 " We were very low down below the surface of 
 the hill," says Pere Delattre, " when I said to our 
 Hadj-Aly, * You see this stone ; you must clear it 
 right away, and when it is moved you will find 
 underneath a niche filled with vases of different 
 sizes. Don't touch anything, but come at once and 
 tell me.' 
 
 " Hadj-Aly looked at the Father with astonished 
 air, but, full of confidence, took his pick-axe and set 
 to work, while the Reverend Father left him and 
 went away back to the Convent. But half-an-hour 
 had scarcely passed when he heard loud peals of 
 laughter echoing through the cloisters. It was 
 Hadj-Aly, who had arrived quite out of breath to 
 tell what had happened, and quite unable to 
 contain his surprise at having found at a certain 
 depth exactly those things which he had already 
 been told to expect. As the Father went back to 
 the tomb Hadj-Aly accompanied him, saying with 
 emotion, * Oh Father, thou knowest everything ; 
 there is not a single spot in Carthage where thou 
 canst not say, " On digging here, such and such 
 a thing will be found," and, besides, thou knowest 
 how to read the books which reveal the things under 
 the earth.' And when the Father told him that 
 
86 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIAxNS 
 
 the books had absolutely nothing to do with 
 the discovery which he had predicted, he started 
 laughing again in a peculiar way which showed 
 plainly that he did not believe this, and replied, * I 
 once saw in your room a large number of books ; 
 what is the use of so much writing if it doesn't tell 
 you what is under the earth ? ' " 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 The potteries taken from the niche at the head 
 of the skeleton comprised a large vase in the form 
 of a cylinder resting on an inverted cone, with two 
 small side handles and terminated at the top by a 
 very slightly conic disc, two small short-necked 
 jars, a patera of reddish earth, and two small phials 
 with one handle. 
 
 Two skeletons were here, each in an identical 
 position, lying on the top of the stone graves below 
 and covered with the usual shreds of rotten cedar 
 wood. Beneath these shreds a series of vases was 
 revealed, arranged the whole length of the body, 
 and almost all of them upset. One only at the 
 bottom was still upright. From beneath the 
 crumbling remains of the skull a little hatchet 
 razor was taken. As has been mentioned, these 
 votive hatchets had already been met with both in 
 the graves of Douimes and the upper layer of earth 
 containing the funereal urns over above these Punic 
 tombs at present under discussion. A curious 
 bronze object in the form of a T, and terminated 
 by a ring, was also found here, but this was by no 
 means the first time such a find occurred. Finally, 
 near the left foot was a Punic lamp and its patera, 
 
 87 
 
88 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 the former upset and showing signs of having only 
 once been used. 
 
 Except that these crumbling bones were of a 
 yellowish tint, there is nothing further to note with 
 regard to this skeleton ; while that reposing at the 
 side of the first was of a deep brown hue. Its 
 condition, as' well as the objects accompanying it, 
 appeared to be identical with that of the first, 
 except that three lamps in this case were discovered, 
 one in the niche above its head, one near the left 
 shoulder, and one between the two femurs, upset 
 and covered with its patera ; evidently this last 
 had been placed originally on the knees of the 
 corpse. The lamp was unblackened and the wick 
 preserved. Some of the large vases disposed 
 around these skeletons retained deposits of the 
 liquids which once filled them. 
 
 The heavy stones which covered the graves 
 below necessitated the employing of a lever in their 
 removal, and within the grave here once more a 
 yellow skeleton was met with. The skeleton was 
 in sufficiently good condition to render it worth 
 while to give it a coating of spermaceti towards its 
 further preservation. It was unaccompanied by 
 either bronze work or pottery, and the same 
 absence of accompaniments characterized the 
 second skeleton, with the exception of a bronze 
 buckle in the form of a Y. 
 
 In 1889 a monolithic sarcophagus of shelly tufa 
 was found close to the warrior's tomb already 
 described as being found in 1880. The right hand 
 was placed on the thigh, the left on the hip. 
 Contrary to expectation, no single example of 
 
TERRA-COTTA FIGURE {Bord-d-Djedid) 
 
 {See p. 144. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 89 
 
 pottery was found in this coffin ; nothing, in fact, 
 but a very oxidized bronze pin beneath the left 
 shoulder-blade, which no doubt had served to 
 fasten a garment. However, on continuing the 
 excavation, four vases were at length found outside 
 the sarcophagus. Their heavy form of coarse 
 undecorated clay placed them among the class of 
 the most primitive pottery. 
 
 It was in the region of these tombs, in the course 
 of digging for others, that the best examples were 
 found of those most curious masks, composed of a 
 moon-shaped cutting from an ostrich's eggshell, 
 painted partly and partly engraved with human 
 features, in red, white and black, of the most rude 
 and primitive kind ; surely an instance of the very 
 earliest style of painting among the Phoenicians. 
 
 The same types of workmanship already de- 
 scribed as shown in the innumerable votive offerings 
 continued to reveal themselves in numbers, both in 
 and around the tombs of this region. We may 
 notice, in passing, the occurrence of bronze castanets, 
 instruments whose use, so strongly implanted in 
 Spain to-day, may possibly be the result not of 
 the Moorish occupation of nearer times, but of that 
 far distant Phoenician colonization which occupied 
 the larger southern half of the Peninsula. 
 
 Also the earrings have a peculiar interest of their 
 own. The ring or hook which enters the lobe of 
 the ear is further decorated by a T joined on to 
 the base, and thus the Egyptian cross or tau is 
 formed. There is strong reason to suppose that 
 this was the form of those earrings which in the 
 time of Moses the Israelitish women wore, copying 
 
90 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 their Egyptian neighbours, and it was such rings 
 as these fashioned in gold that contributed towards 
 the shaping of the Golden Calf 
 
 Similar earrings both in silver and gold have 
 been found in Sardinia, and are to be seen in the 
 very valuable collection at Cagliari. They have 
 not, however, up to the present been discovered in 
 any other region of Phoenician remains. That the 
 piercing of the ear was a ceremony of mystic 
 importance is probable, and the operation, still 
 performed to-day in parts of France by the Sage 
 Femmey was no doubt as much associated with 
 magic ritual as the process of shaving. One of the 
 ceramics coming from the third important Punic 
 cemetery bears an interesting picture of a lady's 
 toilette, depicting the crucial moment when the 
 slave maid — or was it the Sage Femme ? — was 
 about to subject her mistress to the painful 
 operation of having her earring inserted. 
 
 A magnificent bronze vase which we have to 
 notice here is unique of its kind. It stands thirty- 
 two centimetres high, was originally gilded, and is 
 strikingly graceful in shape. 
 
 The handle, rising beyond the height of the beak, 
 describes an elegant curve. The points of attach- 
 ment of this handle are curious. The extremity 
 which joins the top of the vase inside the neck is 
 decorated with a calf's head surmounted by a globe 
 between two urcei, and the other extremity joining 
 the convexity of the vase is terminated by a palm 
 identical to that which decorated the handles of 
 the colossal vase from Amathus at present in the 
 Louvre. These palm-like terminations appear to 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 91 
 
 have been very popular with Phoenician goldsmiths 
 and workers in bronze. 
 
 The interior of this vase enclosed a somewhat 
 thick layer of red matter resembling clay. 
 
 The somewhat unusual find of a basket has next 
 to be recorded. At first it was mistaken for a 
 piece of coarse canvas, or some such material, 
 distinctly blackened for some unknown reason. 
 It is finely plaited in rushes and might well be 
 a duplicate of that made for the little Moses. 
 Completely flattened and sunken within itself in 
 undulating folds, it proved to be lined within with 
 a leather hide, extremely thin and devoid of con- 
 sistence. When lifting it gently up, there slipped 
 from its folds a mirror, a hatchet, two long handles 
 of unequal size, preserving the attached remains of 
 wood, three round beads and a double-faced amulet 
 of Egyptian paste. 
 
 The mirror was a circular brass plaque, and, 
 unhke the Roman mirrors of the same metal found 
 at Carthage, it had no handle, but was simply 
 furnished with a small appendix pierced with a 
 hole which permitted it to be hung by the aid of a 
 cord. 
 
 The Arab countrywomen of Tunis of the pre- 
 sent day carry a circular glass, fastened to their 
 clothing, on their chests. Possibly this mirror may 
 serve to give an idea of those in use among the 
 Israelitish women in the time of Moses ; those, in 
 fact, who, as it is recorded in Exodus, assembled at 
 the door of the Tabernacle and offered their mirrors 
 to make a brass basin. 
 
 The amulet was a small rectangular tablet of 
 
92 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 Egyptian paste bearing on one side the oudjah or 
 Mystic Eye of Osiris, and on the other a cow 
 suckling her calf, which, symbolizing Isis suckling 
 Horus, was a subject not only greatly in favour in 
 Egypt, but also in Sardinia, an island which, more 
 than all the other isles of the Mediterranean, has 
 kept strong traces of its Phoenician character, not 
 only in the rich store of archaeological remains 
 revealed by its soil, but also perhaps in the curious 
 speech of to-day, that strange Sardo of the peasants, 
 which is almost as far removed from the Italian 
 as the Basque tongue is removed from the French, 
 or the Gaelic from the English. 
 
 In 1890 the work of excavation in the Byrsa 
 region was taken up again after an interval of a 
 year or so. This time it was Cardinal Lavigerie 
 who financed the undertaking, with the assistance 
 of a generous French family named Couvreux- 
 Decauville. 
 
 The practice of digging downwards to arrive at 
 the tombs was abandoned, and, instead, a trench 
 was made at the side of the hill, and then an 
 escarpment, so as to reach the entrance of the 
 sepulchres from their own level. A great hindrance 
 was met with in the shape of an enormous wall of 
 a later age, possibly Byzantine, whose thickness 
 and solidity rendered it a truly formidable obstacle. 
 
 Once in the region of the bed rock clay, they 
 met with one of those primitive Punic tombs 
 similar to the examples found in the soil of 
 Douimes, with practically the same accompani- 
 ments, jars, necklace, amulets, etc., with representa- 
 tions of Bes, urceus, crouching lion, etc. 
 
ENGRAVED PUNIC RAZORS {Bord-el-Djedid) 
 
 [See p. 1 60. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 93 
 
 Thus the hill of the Byrsa had revealed so far 
 this fact, that it had unquestionably been employed 
 as a site of burial for the inhabitants of Carthage 
 for a considerably lengthy period, and had not 
 only contained the most primitive style of inhuma- 
 tion, but had likewise filled up the gap of that 
 transitional epoch when Punic Carthage had 
 practically abandoned its Egyptian tendencies, 
 without having wholly adopted that Greek char- 
 acter which was to introduce itself later into Punic 
 art and manners. 
 
 However, immediately after the simple grave a 
 typical stone tomb was found, to be followed by 
 many more furnishing matter for enlightenment on 
 the subject of this curious change and development, 
 and transition from one period to another. There 
 certainly is no hard line of demarcation indicated 
 anywhere. 
 
 In 1890 the first stone tomb discovered was no 
 longer like the earlier types, the merely simple 
 graves dug in the ultimate clay below the accu- 
 mulated soil, but proved to be, on the contrary, 
 a monumental subterranean chamber closed by a 
 fine great stone of the native tufa, exactly two 
 metres high placed upright, forming a door, and 
 reminding one of the tombs of the Holy Scriptures. 
 A second stone had been abutted on to this to 
 keep it in place, and during about twenty-five 
 centuries nothing had moved. 
 
 Two sarcophagi were here, closed by four large 
 flagstones, while to the left lay a skeleton, its feet 
 turned towards the entrance. This skeleton ap- 
 peared to hold the position of an outsider of some 
 
94 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 sort, since it did not share with the others the 
 dignity of a stone sarcophagus. On the right and 
 left, the whole length of the body, was a slight 
 deposit of greenish matter, the remains probably of 
 a shroud or garment of some sort. 
 
 Here the absence of a coffin is remarked as in 
 Dou'fmes, though the presence of fragments of 
 rotten cedar-wood sprinkled over the skeleton 
 raises the debatable question as to whether the 
 wood was originally employed in shreds as a pre- 
 servative from decay, or whether these shreds 
 represent the crumbled remains of a decomposed 
 coffin. A strip of bronze twice encircling one of 
 the fragments of rotten wood may have been the 
 remains of a coffin handle, but this is problematical. 
 
 As has been said, it was the first tomb opened 
 on this site, and it revealed a whitish earthen jar 
 with conic base unlike any as yet met with in 
 Punic tombs. Here at once was a departure from 
 curious and typical amphorae with stems noticed 
 in the earlier cemetery. 
 
 At the extremity of this cell immediately under 
 the ceiling two square niches enclosed each one 
 two jars which took up all their breadth and 
 height. At the edge of the left niche was found in 
 addition a dish filled with bones. 
 
 The upper part of the cell had been plastered 
 with whitewash or stucco, and an instance of the 
 care with which they strove to hermetically seal the 
 tomb was seen in a lump of this plaster which lay 
 upon the floor, immediately under the cavity in the 
 ceiling from which it had dropped, after having 
 been placed there to stop up the gap. It had been 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 95 
 
 applied with the hand and preserved the marks of 
 the fingers of the workman. A little ivory or bone 
 box was found here with a circular rim ; the inside 
 was coloured with bright red, no doubt on account 
 of its having contained vermilion, a substance met 
 with somewhat frequently in the Punic tombs. 
 
 But the whole of it at the first contact fell into 
 dust. A bronze mirror, oxidized to a brilliant 
 green, was also recovered from among the heap of 
 rotten shreds of wood, and a bronze hatchet razor. 
 Likewise there were three amulets, one a figure of 
 Bes, another the head of a dog, and a third the head 
 of a sparrowhawk. 
 
 Of the skeletons contained in the sarcophagi, that 
 on the left appeared to have, so to speak, scattered 
 its bones somewhat in disorder. The vertebral 
 column was curved and the ribs were distributed 
 in a singular fashion. One of them had slipped 
 away from the rest and fallen against the west wall 
 of the grave. The first idea naturally to seize the 
 imagination was that the poor creature must 
 originally have been prematurely interred. How- 
 ever, the peculiarity of the position of the bones 
 may be possibly accounted for by the fact of the 
 corpse having been laid in his tomb on his side 
 instead of, as more usually occurs, on his back. 
 
 After the decomposition of the muscles, the dis- 
 location of the bones would result in the ribs, 
 instead of falling one after the other each side of 
 the vertebral column, slipping one on the top of the 
 other. 
 
 The second skeleton was completely reduced to 
 a crumbled mass, forming together with the rotten 
 
96 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 wood a striated heap of brown and yellow, green 
 and white, covering the bottom of the grave. From 
 where the left hand had been, six little hollow silver 
 cylinders were recovered, being the remains of a 
 bracelet. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 It was not until the third tomb was opened that 
 the first coin was met with, which though very- 
 much oxidized was easily recognizable as a Punic 
 piece, and again for the first time there appeared 
 the presence of little terra-cotta objects known till 
 lately by the name of lachrymatories^ which were 
 destined, in the course of these excavations, to reveal 
 themselves in hundreds. They were encircled 
 with brown painted lines, a form of decoration to 
 which the unimaginative Carthaginian potter seems 
 to have been particularly addicted. They must 
 have been thrown into the grave during the course 
 of the interment, for the major part were found on 
 the surface and usually broken. A small double- 
 spouted jar of fine red earth, unvarnished, but 
 red inside and black outside, contrasting as it 
 does with the other types of pottery found in this 
 tomb, would seem to suggest here what is noticed 
 in other instances in this cemetery — that the tomb 
 must have been made use of at separate intervals 
 of time. 
 
 The fourth tomb opened was one extraordinarily 
 rich in worldly possessions — their inventory is well 
 worth consideration and contemplation. Gold, 
 
 97 G 
 
98 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 silver, bronze, glass, ivory, ceramic, etc., are well 
 represented. 
 
 Gold. — Diadem frontal, a band, thirty-six 
 centimetres in length, placed at each extremity, 
 with little holes permitting the introduction of a 
 thread to fix it. 
 
 Earring in the form of a ring or rather a hook, 
 terminating in the form of a T, making together 
 the Egyptian Tau. 
 
 Silver. — A simple ring. 
 
 A figurine representing a man upright in an 
 erect attitude, the left leg advanced, the arms 
 hanging close to the sides ; the face appears to be 
 bearded. 
 
 A spherical bead, pierced for threading. 
 
 A small tablet with rectangular base, but with 
 rounded upper corners and adorned with a ram's 
 head, being an amulet. 
 
 Bronze. — Two discs supplied with a ring in the 
 centre. The sides opposite to the rings are 
 slightly concave. These objects were used as 
 cymbals or castanets, being of Egyptian or 
 Assyrian origin. 
 
 Ivory. — A rectangular tablet whose front is en- 
 graved with lines which have partly become effaced, 
 but which permit the recognition of an Assyrian 
 taste in this handiwork. 
 
 According to Mons. G. Perrot, these ivory 
 plaques were one of the principal articles of export- 
 ation from Tyre, Sidon and Carthage. 
 
 It is to be regretted that the rich results of these 
 excavations were as yet unrevealed and belonging 
 to the then unborn future when his notice of 
 
< < t t 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 99 
 
 Carthage was written, otherwise we might have 
 received from the same pen which wrote so charm- 
 ingly and exhaustively of Phoenicia proper and the 
 Isles, a rich and valuable record of that which lies 
 to our hands to-day accomplished for us by the 
 skill, experience and unwearying pains of the 
 White Fathers of Carthage. 
 
 Two large ivory pin-heads were also found. 
 Shells. — A bivalvular shell (pecten). The two 
 valves are held together at their points of meeting 
 by a bronze wire forming a double hinge, making a 
 sort of box of the shell, and a little ring is fixed 
 into the centre of the upper half. 
 
 Upwards of twenty fragments of ostrich egg- 
 shell. One of them is decorated with a drawing 
 composed of red squares forming a draught-board 
 pattern. 
 
 Several other fragments likewise preserve traces 
 of paintings in vermilion. These eggshells must 
 have been used as recipients. One of the frag- 
 ments proves that the rim of these cups or vases 
 was scalloped or dented. 
 
 GlasSy etc. — A necklace ; except for a few bronze 
 and agate beads, all the rest which composed the 
 necklace were of glass, among which were found 
 four scarabaei, several representations of the god 
 Bes, six figurines of black glass, four masks, a 
 winged face of a man, the head of a monkey, a 
 cow, a urcsus, a lotus flower, two unguentaria, etc., 
 etc. 
 
 As for the scarabaei, two are of green and two 
 of blue glass, and it is evident that they have 
 been moulded — not carved or engraved. 
 
100 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 Several thousand small loose beads next come 
 into the list, red, white, yellow, orange, green, 
 brown, and black, of the size of those which 
 children amuse themselves by threading. 
 
 Ceramics. — A grey earthen jar with hemispherical 
 cover decorated with a horizontal black band be- 
 tween two red lines. At the bottom of the jar, 
 lying among some black and brown matter, was 
 found the golden diadem already described, to- 
 gether with some beads, some teeth and human 
 bones. 
 
 Two fine globular vases with stems of beautiful red 
 earth — probably censers. 
 
 Two cylinders of red earth, open at the base and 
 orifice and serving to support vases. 
 
 A red earthen goblet encircled with black lines. 
 
 A patera, black, with orange red edges pierced 
 with two holes made before baking, indicating 
 perhaps a votive distination. 
 
 A grey earthen jar decorated^with a red band 
 and narrower lines of black. 
 
 Three double-handled cups, wide and short, black, 
 and varnished on the handles, and decorated out- 
 wardly with black bands on a pale red ground. 
 Each one differs from the other in height. In the 
 largest was found the ivory plaque and the thou- 
 sands of little beads. 
 
 A small single-handled vase of black earth 
 elegant in form, like the pottery of Cumae. 
 
 A small Corinthian oinochoe or jug with hemi- 
 spheric convexity, very short neck, and orifice 
 slightly pinched to form a spout. The handle rises 
 above the orifice, describing a very elegant curve. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS loi 
 
 The convexity is encircled with lines, some white 
 and some of a sombre colour. Below the handle 
 it is decorated with a frieze of animals with very 
 elongated bodies. 
 
 Common Potteries. — Among the six examples of 
 common pottery found was a red earthen double- 
 handled vase with conic base, cylindrical form, 
 mushroom-like summit. 
 
 The invariable presence of the Punic lamp and 
 its patera was not lacking in this instance. 
 
 Alabaster. — Finally, this tomb produced an ala- 
 bastrum, nineteen centimetres high. The alabaster 
 from which it was made had not been polished. 
 
 In order to scatter the perfume the neck of the 
 bottle had been broken, a detail met with several 
 times in these investigations, and one recalling the 
 scene in the house of Simon the Leper. 
 
 It is interesting to learn that on the very same 
 day this tomb was opened, October 4, 1890, there 
 was discovered in Malta at Notabile a rich Punic 
 tomb formed of two cells hollowed in the rock. 
 The contents were composed of several large vases, 
 lamps of Punic form, unguentaricB^ patercs and 
 several trinkets. A golden clasp worked in re- 
 pousse bore the Phoenician palm between two 
 animals facing. These treasures are to be seen 
 to-day in the Museum at Valetta. 
 
 Few of the tombs however found, together with 
 the above-quoted Carthaginian example, can boast 
 of anything approaching the richness and variety it 
 showed in the manner in which it was stocked. 
 
 The distinction to be noticed between these 
 tombs found in the lowest stratum and those which 
 
102 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 followed after in the course of continuing the ex- 
 cavations during 1892 and 1893, is that the earlier 
 ones contained no traces of mortar, nor inscriptions, 
 nor coins, nor Greek vases. 
 
 A common grave, however, containing the re- 
 mains of some hundreds of Carthaginians, furnished 
 almost as many coins as it yielded skeletons. 
 Whether these crowded skeletons represented the 
 period of some dreadful visitation of sickness, such 
 as that plague which swept over Carthage in the 
 time of St. Louis, cannot be determined. 
 
 Among the mixed remains of Roman walls and 
 heavy masses of masonry, appeared a kind of 
 obelisk in tufa, upright, and apparently in its original 
 position. There was little doubt that this mono- 
 lith, appearing as it did in the midst of a burial 
 ground, could be anything but a funeral stela, and 
 that it marked the spot of some tomb whose 
 occupant was at least a not unimportant person. 
 
 The trunk pyramidal and the base cubic in form, 
 this is but one example of rhany such funeral 
 stelae found in other burial areas ; and the model 
 of miniature copies in soft white stone found in the 
 tombs, their use having been that of vessels for 
 burning purfumes. 
 
 The tomb over which this obelisk was placed 
 was another instance of the heavy solid style which 
 characterized the true Punic masonry. 
 
 In an upright position, against the huge block of 
 stone which closed the entrance, was found a long 
 funeral amphora, cylindrical in form, with conic 
 base, devoid of neck, but supplied with two small 
 handles. The weight of the soil had quite cracked 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 103 
 
 it, and in the attempt to remove it, it fell to pieces, 
 leaving its contents to escape. These were com- 
 posed, in the upper part, of the bones of an adult 
 and those of a child, showing no trace whatever of 
 cremation, while at the bottom of the jar were the 
 calcined remains of another child accompanied by 
 a drinking vessel, a pot blackened by the action of 
 fire, and a silver ring. This was almost always 
 the way in which the ancient Carthaginians buried 
 their children and furnished their last abode. 
 Near this was found the debris of a broken though 
 fine Greek vase. 
 
 The tomb itself, however, proved to have been 
 violated long before. Indeed, the amphora placed 
 at the entrance proves that it was as far back as 
 the time of the Carthaginians, and the instances of 
 this horrible form of theft have been proved against 
 them again and again. 
 
 It enclosed two sarcophagi, of which the two 
 covering slabs remained in place only on one, the 
 second sarcophagus being covered only with one 
 slab, while its companion lay on the ground. 
 Evidence was here that the tomb had been rifled 
 in haste, and the remaining parts of the broken 
 Greek vase met with outside were found here 
 within the tomb. This last was found half filled 
 with earth, and yielded to the searchers the 
 following remains — a patera, two bronze hatchets, 
 a bronze handle, a small red earthen jar, a small 
 ivory grotesque, the size of a button, a fragment of 
 very fine yellow sulphur, and several fragments of a 
 large vase. 
 
 But it was not in these large stone sepulchres that 
 
104 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 the most interesting finds were exclusively dis- 
 covered. In the simple graves, dug in the clay, sur- 
 rounding the more pretentious tombs, necklaces and 
 objects of adornment have been met with which 
 were composed of two hundred separate parts, 
 glass beads and amulets of all descriptions. 
 
 Among these last may be quoted an ivory hand, 
 a ram's head apparently carved from a piece of 
 lava, two discs surmounted by the crescent, the 
 horns abased, the most popular emblem of Carthage, 
 two crouching lions with hieroglyphic signs, two 
 urcei^ one of which preserved the silver wire which 
 served to suspend it, two crocodiles, three sparrow- 
 hawks, six elephants or hippopotami, six shells, 
 four cones, eight scarabaei, of which six have hiero- 
 glyphic subjects engraved on their surface, eight 
 cylinders, eleven heads of monsters, which at first 
 sight might be taken for frogs or toads, twenty-one 
 divinities, such as Bes, Phthah, Anubis, Osiris, Isis, 
 etc., and finally, two masks surmounted with the 
 crescents with horns elevated as on the head of 
 Isis-Hathor. One is reminded by these horned 
 masks of Baal Kornain, who was worshipped 
 opposite Carthage on the summit of the Bou- 
 Khornine or two-horned mountain, which of late 
 years has yielded so many votive stelae dedicated 
 to Saturn, surnamed Balcaranensis, or in other words 
 Horned Baal. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Another grave of the simplest description 
 yielded interesting points in the red-brown tint of 
 the inner side of those slabs with which it was 
 closed. They had the appearance of having been 
 thus coloured, or rather discoloured, with blood. 
 
 In the earth with which this grave was filled, an 
 animal's rib was found, and at the foot of the 
 skeleton, a patera containing the usual double- 
 beaked lamp, blackened with use, a bronze hatchet 
 razor, and on one of the hand bones a bronze ring 
 was found encircling the finger. 
 
 Thus the Punic Necropolis of the Byrsa reveals 
 
 three distinct forms of burial, which are in many 
 
 instances so mixed together in the closest vicinity 
 
 as to leave little doubt that at any rate for some 
 
 certain fixed period they were practised together. 
 
 These were represented by the simple graves dug 
 
 in the primitive clay and covered with unworked 
 
 slabs of tufa ; the massive stone tombs, sometimes 
 
 of sufficient size to deserve the name of mausoleum, 
 
 and in every ca^e characterized by the most solid 
 
 style of masonry ; and thirdly and lastly, the strange 
 
 forms of infant burial, in which the corpse was 
 
 inserted into an urn, amphora, or jar, which usually 
 
 105 
 
io6 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 had to be broken first to admit of its entrance, and 
 then joined together again, and which, found usually 
 in a horizontal position in the earth, almost without 
 exception contained the three unvarying accom- 
 paniments of a drinking vessel or bazzuola, whose 
 form suggests its use as an infant's feeding bottle, 
 an earthen cooking pot blackened beneath by the 
 action of fire, and a small silver ring. 
 
 In among these fundamental types are found, 
 in sparse numbers it is true, instances of cremation, 
 but it was not until the upper layer of mortality 
 was committed to the dust in the all-pervading 
 urns, that cremation had established itself in Car- 
 thage in any sort of degree of regularity and 
 permanency. 
 
 In the later cemetery of Bord-el-Djedid it appears 
 to have been practised interchangeably with inhu- 
 mation, and the very definite and interesting reason 
 for this will be dealt with in the course of describing 
 that Necropolis which, with its inscriptions and 
 richer share of spoils, is perhaps more enlightening 
 in its revelations of the individual characteristic of 
 its citizens, whose long sojourn in this City of the 
 Dead has by no means effected an effacement of 
 personal identity. 
 
 Here at least is some revenge for their total 
 effacement as a nation ; the very destroying force 
 which wiped their city from off the face of the 
 earth, in so doing, and by the very same means, 
 effected the most admirable preservation of perhaps 
 the most instructive section of the corporate whole. 
 
 That the Punic tombs should be preserved un- 
 violated until the age and epoch most cultured and 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 107 
 
 fitted to appreciate them, could scarcely have en- 
 tered into the calculations of the brutal destroyers 
 of ancient Carthage. 
 
 Finally there remains to be described a common 
 grave, an unusual occurrence, containing the remains 
 of forty Carthaginians. Two hypotheses present 
 themselves. An epidemic may have been the 
 cause of this mixed burial, or, as seems more 
 probable in view of the variety and diversity in 
 type of the objects contained in this tomb, it may 
 have been utilized possibly at different epochs. 
 
 A large quantity of coins yielded themselves in 
 various stages of preservation or corrosion. As for 
 the pottery, the greaterjpart was broken. However, 
 there still remained in good condition four Punic 
 lamps, two extremely small Greek lamps, eight 
 dishes with handles, five bazzuoliy ten single-handled 
 jars, five small cooking pots, upwards of fifty terra 
 cotta lachrymatories or unguentaria^ four black 
 earthen paterae of Grecian fabric — one a fineexample 
 decorated on the interior with tragic masks raised 
 in relief and arranged in a circle — and finally four 
 large double-handled vases. 
 
 Bronze was here represented in the forms of a 
 ring, a nail, a hatchet, four coffin handles and a 
 mirror, and other miscellaneous objects came to 
 light in the shape of an iron ring with an agate 
 bezel, a shell, a terra cotta sling ball, a small hand 
 in bone or ivory, the stone cover of a small sarco- 
 phagus, three blue glass beads and fifty-four bronze 
 coins. One of these coins found placed on the face 
 of the corpse had given a green tinge to the skull 
 as a result of its oxidation. 
 
io8 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 Though a common grave was not a common find 
 in the Necropoleis, the above-mentioned example 
 was not the only one met with. The corpses were 
 found ranged one above the other, as many as four 
 or five skulls deep. The skeletons, together with 
 the clay among which they are compacted, form 
 definite strata, and are so closely adhesive as to 
 render it impossible to remove the one from the other 
 without breaking the bones absolutely to pieces. 
 
 A fragment of a stele from Tello, reproduced by 
 Mons. Perrot, represents a scene of the inhumation 
 of a number of corpses in a common grave, similar 
 to that found at Carthage ; but in the Chaldaean bas- 
 relief the corpses are arranged sardine-wise, the 
 feet of one side by side with the head of another in 
 alternate lines, whilst in the Byrsa grave all the 
 corpses have been placed in the same position with 
 the head always pointing towards the centre of the 
 hill. 
 
 It is, however, probable that though buried in the 
 same grave these corpses were not all buried at the 
 same time. Indeed a very considerable period 
 would seem to have elapsed between the depositing 
 of the first skeleton and the last, judging by the 
 diverse types of pottery found and the variety of 
 coins ; this last, the infallible test of time limit in 
 the assignment of dates. 
 
 The typical Carthaginian coin is a bronze, with 
 the Phoenician horse and the sacred symbols of the 
 solar disc enclosed either by the crescent moon or 
 by the double urceus whose inflated heads are 
 possibly closer in resemblance to the leaves of the 
 mistletoe than are the horns of the crescent. 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 109 
 
 The reverse bears the pleasing classic head of 
 Astarte, the artistic emanation of a Greek taste, 
 and the product of Sicily, where from the fifth 
 century B.C. onwards, Carthage, it is believed, was 
 wont to have her coins struck. 
 
 The form of the horse varies; sometimes it is a 
 head only, sometimes a whole animal in a quiet 
 pose ; again at times it is depicted galloping and 
 occasionally winged like its Assyrian prototype. 
 
 Many, of course, are utterly illegible and stuck 
 together in a green lump bythe process of oxidation, 
 but there are again other examples preserved in 
 practically a perfect condition. 
 
 Another coin bearing the head of Libya is 
 surrounded by the inscription BASIAE122 HTOAE- 
 MAIOT, while the reverse bears the crowned head of 
 Ptolemy. 
 
 This was Ptolemy II. Philadelphus, to whom we 
 owe the Greek translation of the Bible known as 
 the Septuagint, since, at the suggestion of his 
 Alexandrian Librarian, he consented to send an 
 embassy to the High Priest at Jerusalem praying 
 that six ancient, worthy and learned men from 
 each of the twelve tribes might be sent to translate 
 the law for him at Alexandria. His reign was from 
 285 to 247 B.C. 
 
 Another coin found in this common grave has a 
 fine head of Ares crowned with laurels and turned 
 to the right, with the word APE02 with an eagle 
 on the reverse and the inscription MAMEPTINX2N. 
 This coin therefore belongs to the money of the 
 Mamertines of Sicily, who were the first to call the 
 Romans to their aid against the Carthaginians, and 
 
no CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 this became, in 264, the cause of the first Punic war, 
 which lasted twenty-two years. 
 
 A very curious statue came to light from this 
 Necropolis. It was of brick-red terra cotta, and 
 open at the bottom, it was found to be completely 
 hollow. It apparently represents the goddess 
 Tanith seated and wearing on the head a high 
 crown widening towards the top, shaped somewhat 
 like a bushel measure or a basket. The ears have 
 earrings and the chest is covered with a pectoral or 
 double necklace. The robe, folded in large festoons 
 below the knees, develops around the bust and 
 shoulders in the form of a disc or shell in such a 
 manner as to reveal the upper part of the body 
 while completely hiding the arms. In ancient 
 Carthage the statue of the goddess Tanith was 
 draped in a sumptuous mantle acquired by the 
 citizens at the price of one hundred and twenty 
 talents. Apparently it was square in shape, 
 purple-red in colour, and adorned with artistic 
 embroideries. In the centre were the heads of the 
 principal deities of Greece ; above a group of the 
 animals sacred to the Susians, and below those of 
 the Persians, while in the corners were other 
 figures, among which was the portrait of Alcis- 
 thenes, the rich Sybarite for whose personal use 
 this marvellous drapery had been executed. 
 Alcisthenes parted with it to Denis the Elder, who 
 sold it again to the Carthaginians towards the 
 commencement of the fourth century B.C. On 
 account of its price, rarity, and beauty, the Car- 
 thaginians attached to this veil a superstitious 
 influence. For a long time the peplos of Tanith 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS in 
 
 was regarded as the sovereign palladium of the 
 city. 
 
 On seeing the curious and elaborated drapery of 
 the little terra cotta, one wonders whether perhaps the 
 sculpture is intended to represent this rich garment. 
 
 It will be remembered that the dove is very 
 peculiarly an emblem of Astarte — and though 
 representations of this bird are rare in the earlier 
 tombs, it will be interesting to note that a white 
 earthen bottle or jug was found having the life- 
 sized form of a dove, with an arched handle which 
 reached from the tail to the neck, which it joined. 
 The liquid was poured in at an opening of funnel 
 shape on the tail, and poured out again from the 
 bird's beak. 
 
 The foregoing comparative description of the two 
 Necropoleis of Douimes and the Byrsa will suffice 
 to show the reasons on which are founded the con- 
 clusions as touching their respective ages. While 
 Doufmes preserves a uniformly simple character in 
 the mode of sepulture — a mode so simple as almost 
 to resemble the types known as pre-historic — the 
 second region of tombs found in the hill where the 
 Cathedral and Convent stand, gives a very clear 
 demonstration in its stratified arrangement of 
 changing and transitory forms (simple graves, 
 mausoleums, stone tombs, common graves, 
 amphoras, urns and little stone coffers), its inhuma- 
 tion and its cremation, that a very wide period was 
 covered by the time taken to deposit all these 
 varying and evolving methods in their respective 
 layers within the soil beneath the Acropolis. 
 
 It likewise shows the two great influences by 
 
112 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 which Phoenician art and indeed Phoenician worship 
 came to be dominated, as well as that transitional 
 period when, in an interval of respite, Punic Car- 
 thage tried to assert herself and satisfy herself with 
 the artistic types evolved from her own cont:eptions. 
 Some of these types she was always true to, and 
 among these may be placed in the front rank as 
 real specimens of her own inventive art her Punic 
 lamp, formed from a disc of clay pinched back in 
 three places to form two beaks ; her curious amphorae 
 with stems instead of the usual base in the shape of 
 an inverted cone, found chiefly in the third Necro- 
 polis ; and lastly and most chiefly in her very 
 curious and interesting bronze and copper Punic 
 hatchet razors with their beautiful and delicate in- 
 scription of Egyptian forms and scenes, and their 
 pleasing slender shape terminating in the head and 
 neck of a swan. 
 
 It is not quite certain which was the epoch when 
 coins were first actually introduced : their presence 
 is not very far removed from the presence of crema- 
 tion ; but it is probable that cremation was entirely 
 a Greek importation, and that the practice of 
 depositing coins with the dead was certainly an 
 earlier if not a much earlier habit. 
 
 Coming thus between the Egyptian period on the 
 one hand and the Greek on the other, this area 
 enclosed perhaps a summing up of what may be 
 looked upon as a more purely and individually 
 Punic epoch than either of the other two cemeteries, 
 the one preceding and the other following it in the 
 course of time. 
 
 We do not know yet, nor can we quite satisfac- 
 
[Seep. 167. 
 GREEK AND ETRUSCAN POTTERY {Bord-el-Djedid) 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 113 
 
 torily guess the reason for that strong Egyptian 
 colouring which was shed upon the earliest Carthage 
 and which evidently permeated her daily life. 
 Possibly commerce may have originated this adop- 
 tion, or shall we call it embracing, of the spirit of 
 the Nile in art and worship — but the truth will 
 suffer less perhaps from being left in abeyance than 
 from an undue straining after an answer to the 
 riddle before such time as the true CEdipus arrives, 
 when the Sphinx will no doubt prove powerless to 
 retain her secret. 
 
 The excavations, still in progress, will undoubt- 
 edly yield a similar proportion of information and 
 material in the future as they have hitherto done 
 in the past, and will continue to take their part in 
 the building up of a perfect whole, and in the 
 telling of the story of Punic Carthage in the light 
 of modern research. 
 
 We have now to leave the Cathedral Hill, the 
 site of the ancient Acropolis, and the spot where 
 St. Louis died, having acquainted ourselves 
 sufficiently with typical examples of the mode of 
 burial in the middle period of Punic Carthaginian 
 history. 
 
 The third Necropolis to be investigated enters 
 upon a new era, more sumptuous, more civilized, 
 more artistic as a whole, but without any immediate 
 or abrupt change, nor pronounced line of demarca- 
 tion, separating the third epoch from the second. 
 Nothing but a perfectly unbroken continuity shows 
 itself through the system or group of Necropoleis 
 the description of which has been undertaken in 
 this small work. Nothing, we believe, points to the 
 
 H 
 
114 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 conclusion that there was a period of the Punic civic 
 life, unrepresented here, at least by the remains of 
 those people who took part in it and by whose cor- 
 porate presence it alone existed and took life. We 
 may look then, we believe, upon this great company 
 of witnesses, these hundreds and thousands who 
 joined the great majority so long ago, as so many 
 pages of an intricate paHmpsest, holding the truth 
 before our eyes, ready for us to read the unbroken 
 story, if only we can disentangle it from the 
 bewildering superscriptions and the ruthless damage 
 which the ages have accomplished, the irreparable 
 effacement wrought so uncompromisingly, not 
 only by the relentless Roman rivals, but by that 
 unceasing spirit of destruction embodied in Arab 
 flesh and blood. 
 
 Happily, against this system of perpetual destruc- 
 tion has been arrayed at last a methodic process of 
 arrestation, late in time, alas, but unspeakably 
 valuable, and, in spite of all deterrents, full of hope. 
 During the last twenty years, since Cardinal 
 Lavigerie first put his hand to the plough, there has 
 been no looking back ; Elijah's mantle fell on the 
 shoulders of Elisha, and the work continues and 
 lives with a definite purpose and definite results. 
 
 So much has been done already that it is scarcely 
 possible to place a limit to that which may yet be 
 accomplished, nor the light which may come to 
 shine upon the Punic origins of Carthage. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 A SUBTERRANEAN group of tombs which exist 
 beneath a hill known as Gamart or Kamart at 
 the north-north-east, terminating the Carthaginian 
 peninsula, having occupied at various times a 
 good deal of attention from many noted archaeolo- 
 gists of different nations, it may be well here to 
 sum up briefly that which is now known and the 
 conclusions which have resulted from the excava- 
 tion of this site and the observations made by the 
 White Fathers. 
 
 A part of the hill which bears the name of 
 Djebel-Khaoui, or Hollow Mountain, on account 
 of the subterranean sepulchres it contains, and 
 which have passed for a long time, in the eyes of 
 many archaeologists, for the Punic Necropolis of 
 Carthage, appears, however, to offer the very 
 strongest reason for assigning a different inter- 
 pretation to its presence, use and origin. 
 
 The funeral chambers are met with chiefly near 
 the summit of the hill, hollowed out from the soft 
 limestone beneath a harder layer above, which 
 serves for their roof. 
 
 Half-a-century ago they were noticed by Falbe, 
 the author of Recherches sur V emplace^nent de 
 
 115 
 
ii6 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 Carthage^ and later mentioned by Dr. Barth, 
 then excavated by Dr. Davis, MM. Beul^ de 
 Sainte Marie and d'Hdrisson, with the following 
 results — 
 
 Falbe scarcely recognized the existence of a 
 necropolis. He speaks simply of having found at 
 Gamart " vestiges of tombs in a red-clay quarry " 
 and of having penetrated " through a hole into a 
 small sepulchral chamber whose walls were pierced 
 with niches for depositing the dead." 
 
 Dr. Davis was the first to excavate this spot, 
 and has related the result of his work in his book 
 entitled Carthage and her Remains, 
 
 After speaking of the difficulty and disappoint- 
 ment in digging into this hill, he tells how at last 
 they came upon a chamber apparently without 
 niches, but which after careful examination ap- 
 peared to have been blocked up with cement 
 which distinctly retained the imprint of the work- 
 man's hands. " On one of the niches," he says, 
 " we noticed the picture of a candlestick with seven 
 branches, and on another the letters A P. The 
 eight others had nothing at all. We pierced the 
 thin covering of cement and found the skeleton 
 just as it had been placed there. It was the 
 colour of coffee and fell to dust at the least touch. 
 
 " In the vicinity of this room we found others 
 which were empty, and by chance we found one 
 or two receptacles still occupied. On examina- 
 tion we found traces proving that they had been 
 occupied once, and that the fragile cement had 
 been broken on purpose and the skeleton removed. 
 The fragments of cement still adhering to the 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 117 
 
 opening led us to this conclusion. But the question 
 is, whether we must attribute this spoliation to 
 man endowed with reason, or to the irrational 
 hyena. 
 
 " Those who originally bored through these hills 
 in order to deposit their dead here, had no doubt 
 protected these places from the encroachments of 
 animals. And when those who were interested 
 could no longer guard nor protect them, the cata- 
 combs became the refuge and abode of wild beasts. 
 But at this time the greater part of the human 
 remains deposited here had ceased to be the bait 
 of those beasts known to ravage cemeteries. The 
 spoliation of the Necropolis of Gamart must then 
 be attributed to man. 
 
 " The vast extent of these catacombs indicates 
 that they must have been connected with the 
 population of a large city, such as the city of Punic 
 Carthage, which counted seven hundred thousand 
 inhabitants at the time of her destruction." 
 
 He goes on to notice that the practice of crema- 
 tion in use in Pagan Rome precluded the possibility 
 of this being a Roman cemetery. With regard to 
 the representation of the Seven-branched Golden 
 Candlestick, he says that it undoubtedly repre- 
 sented the Golden Candlestick belonging to the 
 Temple at Jerusalem, but finds the explanation in 
 the Vandal occupation of Africa Proper. 
 
 " We know," he says, " that Geneseric during the 
 eighteen days of the sacking of Rome took away, 
 among other objects of value, the Golden Table 
 and the Seven-branched Candlestick which had 
 been originally made after the instructions of God 
 
ii8 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 Himself. At the triumph of Titus these sacred 
 ornaments were paraded with ostentation before 
 the eyes of the Roman people and then deposited 
 in the Temple of Peace. 
 
 ** After four centuries the product of the pillage 
 of Jerusalem was transported from Rome to 
 Carthage. That the people who professed respect 
 for the Holy Scriptures should show veneration for 
 such a relic as the Golden Candlestick it is quite 
 natural to suppose. We have found it on several 
 terra-cotta lamps, and here we have it in the cata- 
 combs. Surely they would not have adopted such 
 a symbol by chance. 
 
 "The complete absence of lamps and other 
 accompaniments of Pagan sepulture tends to 
 confirm that the remains here found belong to the 
 Christian era. 
 
 " In one niche only, and at a distance from those 
 we have mentioned, we found a small jar and a 
 glass lachrymatory, besides a number of rusty 
 nails." He sums up by saying that the results of 
 these investigations did not proportionately recom- 
 pense the expense, and that they must content 
 themselves with knowing that catacombs exist 
 there, and that they embrace a circumference of 
 about four miles, that they were of Punic origin, 
 and that Carthage on becoming Christian used 
 them afterwards for herself. 
 
 " That which likewise gives these catacombs an 
 oriental and Punic character, is that there are 
 found on diverse points of Djebel-Khaoui round 
 holes hollowed in the rock. They must have 
 served to collect water to refresh the soul, which, 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 119 
 
 it was believed, hovered above the spot of the 
 burial of its body. This superstition still exists 
 to-day, as may be seen in Jewish cemeteries in the 
 East." 
 
 The testimony of M. Beul6 shows that the whole 
 mountain is undermined by thousands of sepulchres 
 and millions of tombs, but that the earth has 
 covered over the stairs, the doors and the venti- 
 lating shafts, and that it was only on examining 
 attentively the surface of the ground that he 
 discovered here and there under the tufts of fennel 
 and acanthus an opening by which it was possible 
 to slip in. He penetrated into a rectangular 
 chamber, the walls of which were riddled with 
 holes of sufficient depth to contain a corpse. 
 
 Dust, rain and other infiltrations had affected 
 three-quarters of the depth of this chamber, being 
 filled with earth, so that it became necessary not 
 only to walk in a stooping position but more often 
 to crawl. 
 
 He was the first to mention a curious point 
 regarding the position of this Necropolis, which 
 was that it lay on the side of the hill the furthest 
 removed from Carthage, facing the ancient Utica 
 and the high seas, a fact which reminded him of 
 the custom of the Jews, whose law forbade them to 
 bury their dead within the city walls. He also 
 noted that the disposition of these tombs, which 
 appeared to follow an immutable rule, accorded 
 with the mode of burial of the Old Testament in 
 such instances as the tombs of Abraham, Isaac, 
 Ishmael and Jacob. He therefore concludes that 
 the custom of the Semites of Palestine was an 
 
120 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 absolute law among the Semites of Carthage. 
 The caves were originally closed by the aid of a 
 stone like the tombs of Lazarus and our Lord, and 
 the niches in the walls hollowed out to receive the 
 corpse have been decribed as " Coffin ovens " whose 
 prototypes have been found in the valley of 
 Hinnom. He likewise notices the very fine hard 
 stucco, extremely white and highly polished, with 
 which the caves are plastered, and which reminded 
 him very naturally of the whited sepulchres to 
 which our Lord compared the Pharisees. He 
 tells how he searched in vain for paintings or 
 inscriptions, finding none. 
 
 MM. Sainte Marie and Hdrisson next atacked 
 this site, but with less fortunate results than the 
 foregoing writers, and it then fell into the hands of 
 the White Fathers in the following manner. 
 
 An orphanage founded by Cardinal Lavigerie 
 exists at Carthage for the care and training of 
 negro children, many of whom have in due 
 course qualified for medicine, and have rendered 
 valuable missionary services in Equatorial Africa. 
 Some of these little negroes were walking over the 
 mountain of Gamart one day when they noticed 
 some Arabs on the point of destroying a subter- 
 ranean construction in order to extract the lime- 
 stone. After having destroyed those caves which 
 were easy of access, they had reached some which 
 were more hidden under the gronnd. One of these 
 last retained, above four of its niches, some inscrip- 
 tions traced in the stucco with which the cave was 
 plastered. The little negroes who had often 
 helped in these searches had acquired a taste for 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 121 
 
 antiquities and had frequently picked up fragments 
 of inscriptions on the site of the ancient Christian 
 cemeteries; therefore, when they came across the 
 well-known formula In Pace^ they immediately 
 recognized it and hastened to communicate their 
 find to the Father Director, who the next day 
 commenced a fuller investigation. 
 
 The structure was half destroyed when he 
 arrived, but above the loculi which remained he 
 was able to read the following inscriptions: — LlC- 
 EN I A— LUC I INPACE—lVSTFINPACEf 
 
 Above the fourth coffin niche was another but 
 undecipherable inscription. The adjoining chamber 
 contained, strewed on the floor, the bones of 
 animals brought here by the jackals and hyenas 
 who for centuries had converted these tombs or 
 catacombs into a retreat They were likewise so 
 filled up with earth and so dark as to render it not 
 only necessary to be furnished with torches, but 
 also to crawl full length along the ground. 
 
 R VG VE IN PA CE accompanied by a seven- 
 branched candlestick, and further on, GAIVS — 
 ARNESVS IN PACE— ASTEINEP ACE, 
 were among some of the inscriptions found, and 
 such names as Colomba, Fortunatia, Sidonius, 
 Alexander, likewise revealed themselves. The 
 scarcity of inscriptions found is no doubt due to 
 the falling away of the plastering on which they 
 were engraved. Many there were too which were 
 quite illegible, but on a fragment of marble picked 
 up it was interesting to read in Hebrew characters 
 the single word Chalom, signifying peace. 
 
 The complete absence of ornamentation in so 
 
122 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 many of the chambers accords well with Jewish 
 practice, and their interpretation of the Second 
 Commandment. To this rule, however, there is a 
 notable exception in the remaining portions of a 
 painted ceiling which retains traces of red-and- 
 green colouring, and a cornice decorated with 
 festoons and a vase ; and another instance was 
 a ceiling of stucco in relief painted and enclosed 
 in two frames of rectangular moulding. One 
 encloses a horseman, the other an upright figure 
 near a tree. 
 
 The remains of a frieze were next met with 
 giving details of a vintage scene. On one side may 
 be distinguished men carrying amphoras of Roman 
 form and arranging them upright in order, and on 
 the other side the upright form of a woman near a 
 circular vat. Two people are coming towards her, 
 one on foot and one on horseback. 
 
 A very singular feature of this Necropolis is the 
 presence of square and circular holes found on the 
 surface of the rock above the tombs which, though 
 they are hollowed down to various depths, never 
 reach the ceiling of the caves below. 
 
 Diverse hypotheses have been offered by various 
 observers as concerning their use. 
 
 Dr. Davis, as has already been noted, believed 
 them to be destined to gather the rain as it fell, 
 wherewith to refresh the souls of the dead, a usage 
 which he attributed to the customs of the Eastern 
 Jews. M. Beule sees in these holes receptacles for 
 water to quench the thirst of birds such as is seen 
 on certain modern tombs in the East. Others, 
 again, have thought that they must have served to 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 123 
 
 fix some exterior monument such as a pyramid or 
 obelisk, but this was not the custom among the 
 Jews, even on the tombs of their kings. 
 
 Another opinion was that they were used to fix 
 tent-poles to shelter the relatives and friends who 
 on certain days were in the habit of praying on the 
 tombs, a custom which continues to exist among 
 the Jews of Tunis. 
 
 It will therefore appear that the balance of 
 probability is in favour of the supposition as to 
 the Jewish character of these catacombs which for 
 so long were taken to be the one true Punic 
 Necropolis of Carthage. The formula In Pace 
 was primitively common to Jew and Christian 
 alike. 
 
 Fuller investigations have considerably modified 
 the supposed dimensions of this cemetery. The 
 four miles of Dr. Davis' approximation and the 
 thousands of sepulchral chambers and millions of 
 tombs of M. Beuld's computation have proved to 
 possess no demonstrable basis on the closer 
 scrutiny of those working continually on the spot. 
 
 The two principal historic emigrations of 
 Israelites before the Christian era were those 
 which took place, the one following the taking of 
 Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and the other at 
 the time of the building of the city of Alexandria 
 by Alexander the Great. On each of these 
 occasions it is known that the Jews settled in 
 Egypt, and it is probable that a certain number 
 settled in the principal ports of the Mediterranean 
 coast. Thousands of Jews settled at Rome in the 
 time of Augustus, and their cemetery, like that of 
 
124 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 Gamart, is composed of subterranean chambers, 
 retaining the emblem of the Seven -branched Candle- 
 stick and remains of Hebrew epitaphs. 
 
 The Mediterranean, the great commercial high- 
 way which led the Tyrians to Utica and then to 
 Carthage, may well have conveyed detachments of 
 Jews to the opulent city, either on those occasions 
 of emigration already alluded to, or else at the time 
 of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 
 70. Otherwise it would be difficult to find an 
 explanation for the presence of so many thousands 
 of Jews in North Africa to-day. The city of Tunis, 
 which succeeded Carthage as the capital of the 
 country of Tunis, the Africa of the ancients, 
 contains no less than thirty-five thousand, and 
 there are more than a hundred thousand in the 
 Regency. Jerusalem was no doubt in relation with 
 Carthage at the time of the Pentecost, for among 
 the multitudes addressed by the Apostles were 
 some inhabitants of Libya. Now, by the name of 
 Libya was understood the land situated to the 
 west of Egypt, thus including, at least in the! 
 common acceptation of the term, Carthage. I 
 
 It appears that the Jewish Necropolis of Rome 
 described by P. Garucci contains, like that of 
 Gamart, decorations in which figure men, women, 
 animals and genii, objects generally believed to be 
 banned by Mosaic custom. Here, then, falls the 
 only real objection which could possibly be urged 
 against the conclusion arrived at by Pere Delattre 
 as to the Jewish and solely Jewish character of 
 this construction. 
 
 Dr. Davis and M. Beule, accurate in their 
 
THE NECROPOLIS OF ST. LOUIS 125 
 
 observations, were no doubt misled in their 
 deductions, but it must be remembered on their 
 behalf that the true Punic cemeteries had not then 
 been found, and every explorer would naturally be 
 ultra-disposed to see clues and traces of that which 
 he was most earnestly anxious to find. 
 
PART III 
 
 THE NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 In the Tunisian Pavilion of the Paris Exhibition 
 of 1889 there appeared on view a beautiful large 
 square of mosaic from Carthage, representing, with 
 their names, the four seasons, and the twelve 
 months of the year represented by figures. This 
 was discovered very near the house of a certain 
 Sidi-Mahomed-ben-Mustapha-Khasnadar. Eight 
 years later, again in this same vicinity, a second 
 and very important discovery was made, being 
 nothing less than the richest Punic cemetery of 
 Carthage, in the region of a hill situated between 
 the battery called Bord-el-Djedid and the Chapelle 
 de Sainte Monique belonging to the Carmelite 
 Sisters. The side of the hill forming a cliff next 
 the sea in the north-north-easterly direction was 
 originally one of the terminating points of the 
 ancient city wall of Carthage, which was originally 
 composed of the three regions known as the 
 Byrsa or Acropolis, Magalia or the outer belt 
 enclosed within a second wall, and Cothon, or 
 
 126 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 127 
 
 the region near the coast, comprising the quay 
 and the commercial position generally, of the 
 Punic city. 
 
 Towards the end of November 1897 M* 
 C^l^ri6, Guardian of the Battery, in having a 
 trench dug for sand, came across traces of Punic 
 sepulture, and on investigating still further, more 
 evidence came to light of the presence of an 
 ancient Carthaginian cemetery. Happily Sidi- 
 Mahomed, the son of the late above-mentioned 
 Khasnadar, had already invited the Fathers to 
 investigate his land with a view to excavating. 
 He now on their behalf signed an act of location 
 in the name of his wife, the Princess Khasnadar, 
 engaging for a certain fixed sum to permit excava- 
 tions throughout the extent of his property. This 
 act, together with another which it was necessary to 
 obtain from the military authorities, and some 
 financial encouragement from the Academic des 
 Inscriptions, rendered it possible to attack the 
 situation in question with a clear and unimpeded 
 spirit. The contracts were signed on the 4th of 
 the following January, and the next day the work 
 was commenced. 
 
 The cemetery is formed of hundreds of grave 
 pits hollowed in the hillside, as close together as 
 possible, and resembling a great beehive whose 
 cells are sunk deep into the rock. In one instance, 
 to arrive at a lower tomb it was necessary to 
 descend twenty-two metres, and in another twenty- 
 five metres had to be passed before coming 
 to the deepest grave. 
 
 In most cases these funeral chambers contain 
 
128 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 two pits or graves divided by a sort of embank- 
 ment, on which usually is found the crumbling 
 remains of a skeleton, and the shreds of rotten 
 wood and oxidized copper nails which indicate 
 the former presence of a coffin. There are few, 
 if any, objects of common use which have under- 
 gone less change in form than these copper 
 nails. Except for the vivid and beautiful green 
 of their oxidation they might well have been 
 purchased yesterday from the ironmonger. Some 
 have heads of hemispheric form washed with gold, 
 but I have seen some of the flat-headed type 
 known, I believe, commercially as clout nails. 
 Some very large-sized nails seem to suggest the 
 sinister use of crucifixion suffered by criminals 
 and animals alike, not to mention the defeated 
 generals who, returning from battle unvictorious, 
 knew that the shame and pain of the cross 
 unfailingly awaited them. 
 
 The process of burial in the side graves presents 
 some rather peculiar features. The skeleton is in a 
 very great number of cases found lying upon and 
 supported by a layer of vases, urns and jars, which, 
 lying in a horizontal position, completely cover the 
 whole extent of the grave, and which, in their 
 turn, overlie a second skeleton lying right at the 
 bottom. Sometimes one grave and one embank- 
 ment composed the interior plan of the cell, and 
 the variations from the above-mentioned type are 
 as numerous as one would suppose to be the 
 case in a cemetery which gives evidence of having 
 served its purpose for three hundred years, i, e, 
 from the fifth to the second century B.C. 
 

 ^■S 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 129 
 
 As to the contents, the chief differences at first 
 noted by the excavators to exist between the 
 present and former earlier types, existed severally 
 in the cases of the bicorn lamp, which was here 
 found to have developed a disc-like base, to be much 
 smaller in size, together with its patera, and to 
 have edges which curved over and closed up the 
 centre to a greater extent, and to be at times 
 decorated with painting. In addition to these 
 characteristics they are here found side by side 
 with Greek lamps, a coincidence which never once 
 occurred in the more primitive tombs. The curious 
 amphorae with stems instead of the usual conic base 
 are again characteristic of the tombs of the last 
 Punic period, and the drinking vases, which were 
 entirely absent from the cemetery of Douimes, 
 and only represented in that of St. Louis by the 
 curious bazzuoli placed in the funeral urns of 
 infants, are here found to occur in frequent numbers. 
 Another unique possession of this necropolis is 
 the curious collection of ivory and bone objects 
 resembling the bridges of string instruments. The 
 Egyptian influence by no means entirely disappears, 
 though hieroglyphic inscriptions cease to appear 
 and the curious gold and silver earrings forming 
 the Egyptian tau are no longer found, while, on 
 the other hand, Punic inscriptions on stone reveal 
 themselves in increasing number and length, and 
 the simultaneous practice of cremation and inhuma- 
 tion is at last found to have unequivocally 
 established itself. In the course of digging down 
 to reach the tombs below, the interesting and 
 somewhat important discovery was made of a 
 
130 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 Punic inscription, the longest hitherto found, 
 engraved in very fine characters on a plaque of 
 whitish stone, composed of nine lines and enclosed 
 in a cartouche formed by a raised rim or beading 
 which framed the front side of the stone. It 
 proved to be a votive offering to Ashtoreth and 
 Tanith of Lebanon — unfortunately it is incomplete. 
 
 MM. de Vogiie, Philippe Berger and Clermont- 
 Ganneau have all studied it, and the conclusion 
 arrived at by the latter seems to show that it 
 belongs to the epoch when Carthage was inde- 
 pendent, and is a dedication to Ashtoreth and 
 Tanith of Lebanon, of two new sanctuaries and 
 their entire contents, and gives an enumeration, 
 unfortunately incomplete, of objects, manufactured 
 and sculptured, of sacred vessels, possibly those of 
 the altars placed before the sanctuaries and used in 
 the ceremonial ritual, and it finishes with a date 
 indicated by the name of the month of Higar and 
 the names of the magistrates. Their list is long 
 and apparently arranged in hierarchic order. 
 
 First come the Suffetes, supreme magistrates of 
 the city ; then persons simply designated by the 
 title Rab^ members no doubt of the Senate ; then 
 the high priests, sons themselves and grandsons of 
 high priests ; lastly, a magistrate whose function 
 remains to be determined. 
 
 The inscription commences with these words, " To 
 the Goddess Ashtoreth and to the Goddess Tanith 
 of Lebanon, two new sanctuaries." This is a 
 sufficiently interesting commencement, and reveals 
 an unexpected fact, since up till that moment it was 
 usual to confound Ashtoreth with Tanith. M 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 131 
 
 Philippe Berger advances the suggestion that these 
 two divinities might correspond with Demeter and 
 Persephone, that is to say, Ceres and Proserpina. 
 
 The inscription goes on to enumerate the con- 
 tents of these sanctuaries and all things pertaining 
 to them — columns and sculptures, works in gold, 
 stairs, steps, barriers or enclosing walls, etc. 
 
 Mons. Clermont-Ganneau fills in the gaps of 
 the text and makes the first part to read thus — 
 
 "And in like manner they" (the people of 
 Carthage) "have surrounded with an enclosure 
 the Chomerat (or the Chomerots) in order to 
 (protect) the hill of . . ." 
 
 From the fifth line he goes on to decipher 
 thus — 
 
 "And the expense has been entirely borne 
 by the people of Carthage from the greatest to 
 the least. Made in the month of Haijar, the 
 Suffetes being Abd-el-Melkart and . . ." Here 
 the name of the second Sufifete is missing. The 
 Carthaginian year was indicated by the name 
 of the supreme magistrates or SufTetes in charge, 
 just as later on the Roman year was designated 
 by the names of the two consuls. 
 
 At the sixth line M. Clermont-Ganneau reads — 
 
 " The Suffetes being Chophet and Hanno " — 
 and here the learned epigraphist finds cause for 
 rejoicing, for he takes it that there are here two 
 dates given which he looks upon as forming the 
 first step in Punic chronology, since for the first 
 time it is possible to establish, at an unknown 
 distance it is true, two suffetic years in relative 
 order. The rest of the inscription names civil and 
 
132 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 religious functionaries in charge during the con- 
 struction of the two sanctuaries. 
 
 First comes the Rab Abd-el-Melkart, son of 
 Magon, who possibly may be identified with the 
 chief of the famous Council of the Hundred, who 
 administered the affairs of Carthage. The other 
 persons named on the stone are Azrubaal, son of 
 Chophet the High Priest, which would seem to 
 indicate that the function was hereditary ; then, 
 lastly, a person of the name of Akboram, son of 
 Hannibaal, whom M. Clermont-Ganneau takes to 
 be a master builder and M. Philippe Berger a 
 questor. 
 
 The last-mentioned savant was of opinion that 
 the stone had been found in the neighbourhood 
 of the Temple of Ceres, and subsequent discoveries 
 would seem to have added strength to his surmise. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 In the course of excavating this spot there next 
 came to light the stumps of fluted columns of Nu- 
 midian marble and other architectural fragments, 
 likewise of marble and of a beautiful style, such as 
 bases and capitals, cornices and pilasters, and 
 numerous fragments of inscriptions sufficient to in- 
 dicate the presence of a sanctuary at some former 
 time, and in addition a statue of Ceres in a fine state 
 of preservation, laden with fruit (grapes, figs and 
 bananas), and bearing a wheat-sheaf, the habitual 
 attribute of this divinity, who was surnamed the 
 " Goddess of the Harvest." 
 
 A beautiful classic head of the Goddess was 
 likewise found here, veiled, and crowned with wheat- 
 ears ; then came some curious fragments, apparently 
 stumps of a large marble serpent or dragon, on 
 which strode a tiny elf — portions only of the little 
 body and limbs remaining, and another stump 
 belonging to the region of the reptile's head, and 
 bearing wings. 
 
 On finding these, Pere Delattre says he no longer 
 retained a single doubt on the subject, for he took 
 it that these fragments belonged to certain winged 
 serpents or dragons driven by small genii, which 
 
 133 
 
134 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 drew the car of Ceres, since it is thus, according to 
 the fable, that the Goddess is represented going to 
 search for her daughter, Proserpina, whom Pluto 
 had borne off to dwell with him in Hades. 
 
 It was often the custom in Roman times to con- 
 fide the sacerdotal ministry of Ceres to matrons of 
 the upper classes, whose office lasted for one year, 
 and M. Delattre mentions that in an epitaph from 
 Carthage which was acquired by the British Museum 
 from Dr. Davis, the word Cereales is given as a 
 cognomen or possibly a title to a woman of 
 Carthage. 
 
 The ludi cereales consisted chiefly of processions 
 in which nuts and dried peas were thrown to the 
 crowd, and curiously enough an ^g^ was solemnly 
 borne, possibly as a symbol of the earth which Ceres 
 had been obliged to overrun in searching for her 
 daughter Proserpina, in which case it would seem 
 that the ancients were acquainted with the real 
 form of our planet. 
 
 It was at the commencement of the fourth century 
 before our era that the Carthaginians, frightened 
 by their reverses in Sicily, and attributing them to 
 the vengeance of the Goddesses Demeter and 
 Persephone because the army had violated and 
 ravaged their temple at Syracuse, resolved to in- 
 troduce them into their pantheon. They raised 
 statues to them, and, in order to render the Godesses 
 favourable to them, they essayed to honour them 
 with the pomps and rites of Greek sacrifices. In 
 addition they gave the care of their cult to Greek 
 priests. 
 
 The panic which was a prelude to the establish- 
 
TERRA-COTTA STATUETTE {Bord-el-Djedid) 
 
 iSce p. 17] 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 135 
 
 ment of the cult of Ceres and Proserpina at 
 Carthage, and the influence which the Greek priests 
 exercised on the manners of the Carthaginians, 
 seems to both explain and admit of the dating of 
 the unexpected appearance of the custom of burning 
 the dead and enclosing their calcined and broken 
 bones in little stone chests. This usage shows itself 
 then at the commencement of the fourth century, 
 for the Necropolis at Douimes, which dates approxi- 
 mately from the end of the seventh to the first years 
 of the fifth century, furnished scarcely an example 
 of cremation in upwards of a thousand sepulchres 
 visited by Pere Delattre, while these pits and funeral 
 chambers hollowed in the massive rock — where, it is 
 believed, was raised the fanum of Ceres — contain 
 almost exclusively urns with calcined bones, as 
 many as eight or ten urns in one chamber. Between 
 four and five hundred have been met with in the 
 course of investigating this site. 
 
 The custom of cremation seems to have been 
 introduced suddenly into Carthage at the epoch 
 when the Greek Priests, charged with the cult of 
 Ceres and Proserpina, exercised their influence on 
 the manners and religion of the Carthaginians. 
 
 It will be remembered that the presence of cal- 
 cined remains, especially those of children, was 
 noted as having been met with in the cemetery, 
 known to-day by the name of " N^cropole de St. 
 Louis." 
 
 We have to bear in mind the possibility of another 
 cause than that of natural death, affecting the 
 presence there of these infantine ashes. We have 
 to recall the dread rites practised by the people of 
 
136 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 the old city, the ghastly sacrifices demanded by 
 Baal, that Prince of Darkness, who to them was the 
 Lucifer, the bearer and emblem of Light. The urns 
 and little coffins of stone found there, containing 
 calcined and broken bones, may well have been the 
 remains of those human victims which the Cartha- 
 ginians were in the habit of offering to the god 
 Moloch, on certain days when the hideous statue 
 used to receive into its arms and let fall into a 
 burning brazier from two to three hundred children 
 of the noblest families of Carthage, the mothers 
 being forced to look on at these odious sacrifices 
 without shedding a tear. 
 
 Almost all the tombs found at Bord-el-Djedid 
 appear to have contained uncremated corpses in the 
 first instance, of whose coffins rarely anything 
 remains but the shreds of rotten wood. Later on, 
 when the practice of cremation established itself, 
 these same tombs were utilized to deposit the small 
 coffrets of stone, and the cinerary urns containing 
 the calcined remains of the dead. At least this 
 much is gathered from the presence simultaneously 
 in the tombs of the burnt and unburnt skeletons, 
 and the amphorae or broken portions of amphorae, 
 containing whitened ashes. 
 
 The usual accompaniments comprise numerous 
 urns with stems, lamps of the Punic form in its 
 later development already noted, Greek lamps, 
 amphorae with conic base, cylindrical amphorae, 
 some of an elongated cone shape, jars, drinking 
 vessels, perfume burners, small double-handled 
 cooking pots, single-handled jars, long-necked jars, 
 cups and dishes, etc. Again, there are terra-cotta 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 137 
 
 vases decorated with black varnish, which possibly 
 served as cups and bowls, one example being in 
 the form of a chalice. 
 
 The frequent presence too of funeral stelae, either 
 intact or broken, is characteristic of this Cemetery. 
 They bear, sculptured in relief, the form, either 
 seated or more usually upright, of a woman, the 
 right hand raised, while the left hand holds, sup- 
 ported against the breast, a sacrificial vessel. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 It will be well to deal with the beautiful marble 
 sarcophagi next, both the simple painted examples 
 and the rare and fascinating anthropoid specimens, 
 so lately discovered for the first time in North 
 Africa, which, excepting of course Egypt, though 
 explored so widely at so many points, had until 
 within the last two or three years yielded no single 
 example of anthropoid sarcophagus. In 1898, it 
 is true, the White Fathers discovered at Carthage 
 two ossuaries, small stone coffers, containing broken, 
 calcined bones, the residue of cremation, on the 
 cover of which the image of the defunct was graven. 
 One of these was accompanied by the name of 
 Baalshillek the Rab, while the other, by the pose, 
 the costume and the insignia, indicated that the 
 original had been a priest of one of the Carthaginian 
 divinities. Here it may be mentioned that this 
 Necropolis, or at any rate one particular portion 
 of it, seems to have been very much taken up by 
 the occupation of the corpses of the aristocracy of 
 Carthage, namely, of priests, priestesses and rabs ; 
 the latter title, of purely Semitic or Assyrian origin, 
 signifying prince, is met with in the Old Testament. 
 
 Here is the description of a fine monolithic 
 138 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 139 
 
 specimen found on November the 4th, 1902, be- 
 ing the festival of San Carlo Borromeo, when 
 P^re Delattre, having just celebrated Mass at the 
 altar of the saint in the cathedral, was called to go 
 immediately to the Necropolis. Here in a funeral 
 pit, from under the debris of two cedar-wood 
 coffins, was revealed a magnificent anthropoid 
 sarcophagus. On the lid was carved, in high relief, 
 the image of a Carthaginian priest, lying extended 
 on his back, robed in a long tunic reaching to the 
 feet, which are shod with sandals. The sleeves 
 are short, the right hand is raised, while the left 
 hand holds the sacrificial vessel. Between the 
 finely sculptured toes is seen the red colour with 
 which the surface of the sandal had been painted, 
 while the thick sole is apparently held in place 
 by a simple sandal-strap, indicated by a sharp 
 black line across the instep. There falls from 
 the left shoulder on to the tunic and recedes to 
 the hips, a toga terminated by a fringe. 
 
 The head is extremely fine and the features 
 well accentuated. The beard and moustache are 
 full and treated well, the forehead slightly wrinkled, 
 the eyebrows pronounced, the hair fairly short, and 
 the ears small. The ensemble achieves the effect 
 of a very imposing portrait. The original could 
 scarcely have been other than a man of character 
 and personality to a marked degree. The eyes 
 were painted, and the iris is still visible, giving 
 to the face a peculiarly living expression. The 
 right forearm is bare, and of fine modelling, and 
 the same may be said of the open hand, of which 
 
140 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 however the thumb appears too decidedly arched 
 back. The left hand, holding the vessel, reveals 
 a certain embarrassment which apparently the 
 artist was not equal to overcoming. The whole 
 of the forearm is suppressed, and the hand appears 
 soldered to the elbow. This effect of foreshorten- 
 ing is the least happy part of this beautiful piece 
 of sculpture. 
 
 The feet rest on a sort of solid stool. The 
 marble from which the figure is carved has ac- 
 quired a reddish tint similar to that of rust, and 
 possibly due partly to the action of the colour of 
 the coffins with which it was in contact, while 
 the marble itself contains greenish veins. Under 
 the right elbow of the priest the coffin-cover 
 bears the imprint of a basket, or rather the 
 bottom of a basket, and curiously this is only 
 one of several instances in which a similar imprint 
 has been found on the covers of sarcophagi. At 
 each of the four corners of the lid, iron-handles 
 were cramped into the stone, which probably is 
 the explanation for the presence of the double 
 sets of holes found on other stone coffin-lids. In 
 this instance however the holes completely pierce 
 the marble, while they have not been found to do 
 so in the other cases met with. 
 
 When the cover was raised the coffin was found 
 to contain an entire skeleton, the remains of a 
 corpse which had lain extended on its back, the 
 arms lying straight each side of the body. An 
 even line extending round the coffin seemed to 
 indicate the height attained by a liquid which it 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 141 
 
 originally contained, and which has since evapor- 
 ated, while at the feet of the corpse in the right- 
 hand corner a horizontal incrustation, about the 
 size of a hand, showed that the liquid must have 
 been an emulsion of resin. On the neck a tiny- 
 cylindrical box of ivory or wood had become 
 oxidized to the breast-bone, and on removing it 
 the fork of the sternum came away with it ; but 
 the box itself, after a very short exposure, crumbled 
 away to atoms, leaving revealed twenty- five coins 
 which all proved to be bronze. Thus it is on the 
 chest or at the height of the chest that the coins 
 are found. We know the ancients hung their 
 purses from their necks and put them under their 
 outer garments, and even to this day the Arabs, 
 faithfully conservative of antique customs, have 
 a pocket in their bosoms in which they put hand- 
 kerchief, purse, and tobacco. 
 
 The horrible practices of rifling the tombs and 
 thieving from the bodies of the dead was not less 
 known to the ancients of Carthage than it is to 
 the Arabs of to-day, and the entire absence of 
 silver and gold coins in any of the tombs, or of 
 ossuaries, leads one to wonder whether this de- 
 plorable custom was perhaps the cause. 
 
 However, it is possible to attribute other reasons 
 for the exclusive presence of bronze coins which 
 appear by hundreds and even thousands, some- 
 times well preserved and with the head of Perse- 
 phone or Astarte clearly defined and the galloping 
 Phoenician horse or the sacred palm on the reverse. 
 
 It has already been suggested that this habit 
 
142 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 of placing only bronze coins, and sometimes 
 even those no longer in currency at the time of 
 the interment, in the graves, may indicate an 
 absence of generosity and a strong spirit of self- 
 interest on the part of the friends of the dead ; 
 but another and very probable solution is that 
 the golden rings found in some of these tombs 
 were possibly coins in their primitive form, and 
 used as such by the Carthaginians, even as the 
 Egyptians, before they introduced stamped golden 
 coins, made use of golden rings for the purpose of 
 exchange. 
 
 Three of these golden rings were found in the 
 stone coffin of the priest and their position deserves 
 to be noticed. On the right side of the skull at 
 the bottom of the coffin lay two of these rings and 
 the third was found on the left side. The de- 
 scription is given earlier, of a terra-cotta mask 
 representing the face of a man wearing bronze 
 rings in his ears and a leaden or silver ring in 
 his nose, analogous to the Nezem of the Hebrews. 
 The discovery of this mask revealed the fact that 
 nose-rings were not entirely relegated to the toilet 
 of women, but were, in some instances at any rate, 
 worn by men also. In view of this fact an in- 
 teresting speculation arises as to whether our priest 
 perhaps wore them too, and whether in the course 
 of decomposition the nose-ring slipped down to 
 the right and joined the earring. 
 
 The ring-finger of the left hand bore a beautiful 
 signet ring, entirely of gold, engraved on the bezel 
 of which was a profile head with hair and beard 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 143 
 
 crisply curled. So close is the resemblance of 
 this head to that sculptured on the lid of the 
 sarcophagus as to leave no doubt that we have 
 here two accurate portraits of the defunct priest. 
 
 The sculptor has succeeded in revealing a man 
 of character and dignified presence, and the eyes, 
 whose irises still retain traces of colour, gaze 
 straight forward with a reality and solemnity 
 which is almost startling, and this impression is 
 by no means diminished by the attitude of the 
 right hand raised in benediction. 
 
 The period when the cemetery was in use is 
 believed to correspond with that of the war of 
 the Mercenaries, i. e. the middle of the third 
 century B.C. The finances of the city were in 
 such a bad state that Carthage was unable to 
 discharge her liabilities towards the soldiers who 
 came back from Sicily loudly demanding payment 
 for their services. 
 
 It is therefore just possible that these tombs 
 belonged to that critical period in the history of 
 Carthage when the public treasury was completely 
 exhausted by the tax of the war, to such an 
 extent that the citizens could not accompany their 
 dead with the smallest silver or gold coin. 
 
 On the other hand, it may have been the custom 
 to give to the dead only the smallest pieces of 
 money, and the practice of placing obsolete coins 
 in coffins has been met with in a superposed 
 Roman cemetery, where, in addition to very 
 worn and disused Roman coins, was found also 
 one belonging to the Carthaginian era. In any 
 
144 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 case, up to this present moment no gold coin has 
 been found in the Punic tombs, and in the oldest 
 graves even bronze examples are entirely absent. 
 Apparently their introduction was a late one. 
 Two days after its discovery the Priest's sarco- 
 phagus was extracted from its tomb and trans- 
 ported to the Museum, where it was installed in 
 the Salle Punique. The small quantity of dust 
 which surrounded the skeleton, on being sifted, 
 yielded nothing more save a tiny broken amulet, 
 mounted in a delicate, stirrup-like clasp of twisted 
 gold. The sarcophagus contained no further 
 treasure. 
 
 The cave itself had from time to time received 
 several coffins, two of which had been placed on 
 the top of the sarcophagus. Three well-preserved 
 skulls proved to belong to the dolichocephalus 
 type. Apart from the sarcophagus, and mixed 
 up with the debris of the wooden coffins and 
 bones, were found a dozen urns with stems, eight 
 bicorn lamps with their paterae, three lamps of 
 Greek form, ten unguentaria, three small single- 
 handled vases, four black cups with handles, two 
 small bowls, a white clay patera with horizontal 
 angular handles, a bag-shaped amphora, and one 
 with conic base ; as also an alabaster unguentarium, 
 a tiny alabaster Greek lamp, a bronze hatchet- 
 shaped razor, some nails, several of which have 
 gilded heads. There were coins, scissors, a strigila, 
 a long glass cylinder bulging in the centre, glass 
 amulets representing the sparrow-hawk, the alert 
 little figure of Anubis, etc. ; a glass bunch of 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 145 
 
 grapes of the size, colour and thickness of a fine, 
 large, elongated blackberry; portions of ostrich 
 eggshells painted with human features, a little 
 gold spoon formed by an open hand at the end of 
 a simple flat handle ; then a golden signet-ring, 
 the bezel of cornelian bearing a graven bull with a 
 very elongated body, the tail in the air, the head 
 abased in a fighting attitude ; and other miscel- 
 laneous objects. Such were the contents of the 
 chamber containing the Priest's sarcophagus. On 
 the nth of November, the octave of the festival of 
 San Carlo Borromeo, another sarcophagus was dis- 
 covered, of a fine and interesting description, but 
 one which may be delayed for the present in 
 order to deal with the later discoveries of further 
 anthropoid sarcophagi. On the 25th of Novem- 
 ber, in the course of excavating, the workmen 
 came upon traces of a sarcophagus and the partly 
 revealed foot of a statue. The next day being 
 the tenth anniversary of the death of Cardinal 
 Lavigerie, the morning was partly taken up in 
 celebrating the Mass and funeral service in 
 memory of the prelate who had done so much 
 for Carthage. However, as soon as ever it was 
 possible, Pere Delattre, accompanied by the Arch- 
 bishop, Monseigneur Combes, started for the 
 Necropolis full of the emotion of suspended 
 expectation and wonder which must always ac- 
 company any investigation into the secrets of 
 Mother Earth by all truth-seekers. 
 
 In the meantime almost the whole of the 
 funeral chamber had been cleared, and, on enter- 
 
 K 
 
146 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 ing, two superb anthropoid sarcophagi met the 
 eye. On the left a priest, on the right a priestess. 
 The priest is represented lying full length on his 
 back, in the same position as no doubt the corpse 
 below was arranged for burial. The right hand is 
 raised, the vase of offering held in the left hand ; 
 the head is bound with a circlet or band, the face 
 bearded, and the eyes, relieved with colour, give 
 to the countenance a striking expression of life. 
 The left ear bears a gilded ring. The figure is 
 draped with a long tunic, on which falls from the 
 left shoulder a toga, the insignia of his dignity. The 
 feet are apparently enclosed in thick-soled shoes, 
 retaining traces of red and black. The right foot 
 is larger than the left. The tunic shows a reddish 
 tinge, due, possibly, to the action of that all-per- 
 vading colour with which the neighbouring wooden 
 coffins, like so many of the wooden coffins, were 
 frequently painted, and which especially belonged 
 to the people of Carthage — that Phoenician purple 
 which was one of their chief articles of com- 
 merce. 
 
 But it was the priestess whose beauty was a 
 revelation, and whose discovery was the crowning 
 surprise of the year's work. The brilliancy of 
 colour and strangeness of her attire, far from 
 detracting from the dignity of her presence, seem, 
 on the contrary, to enhance the noble simplicity 
 and gentle restraint suggested by the effigy. A 
 rare and lovely personality seems to have inspired 
 the sculptor in this instance, and not the least re- 
 markable trait indicated is the absolutely unique 
 
>••-,> 
 
 [See/. 146. 
 ANTHROPOID SARCOPHAGUS OF A 
 CARTHAGINIAN PRIESTESS 
 
 {Bord-el-Djedid) 
 
 [Seep. 146. 
 ANTHROPOID SARCOPHAGUS OF A 
 CARTHAGINIAN PRIEST 
 
 {Dord-el-Djedid) 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 147 
 
 character of this type of beauty. She does not 
 resemble a Greek, still less an Egyptian, and the 
 Semitic mould is hardly recognizable here. The 
 dove which she holds in her right hand might be 
 taken as a symbol of her own gentle beauty and 
 serious sweetness. She lies extended on her sarco- 
 phagus, which is painted all over with the most 
 brilliant colours, and which are still further en- 
 hanced by the addition of gilding. She wears the 
 costume of the great Egyptian Goddess Isis and 
 Nephtys, the body being hidden by the two wings 
 of the sacred vulture, which enfold the hips and 
 cross in front, thus arching their extremities in 
 such a fashion as to give to the lower part of the 
 body almost the appearance of a fish's tail. The 
 vulture's head appears surmounting the head- 
 dress, and a short veil falls from below it on to 
 the shoulders, leaving free the brow, surrounded 
 by close curls, the full calm face, the throat, 
 and ears bearing rings. The bosom is draped 
 with a slight, veil-like fabric, symmetrically and 
 beautifully folded, and attached by two brooches 
 to a wide golden collar-band, while the same piece 
 of fabric continues from the girdle to the feet, so 
 exquisitely chiselled, which appear from beneath 
 the robe and between the two great wings. The 
 upper part of the bosom is decorated with three 
 coloured bands, which pass under the falling ends 
 of the veil and hair and appear again on the 
 shoulders. One of these bands is purple-red 
 between two outer bands of deep blue. 
 
 The small feathers of the great wings are 
 
148 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 indicated in red, while the large feathers are 
 represented by a sort of golden mesh on a deep 
 blue ground. 
 
 It is to be regretted that photography can do 
 no more than reproduce the form, with its values 
 of light and shade, and to a certain extent the 
 expression, while it falls short of the harmonious 
 whole in the lack of the truly strange and 
 impressive colouring. 
 
 Surely here is a pure type of Phoenician woman- 
 hood. That majestic calm which is the outward 
 and visible sign of the highest courage within 
 accords well with all we are told of the women of 
 Carthage — of their bearing and enduring in that 
 most terrible siege, which tried and proved them 
 valiant unto death. 
 
 It is easy to understand how so many visitors, 
 on leaving the hall of the Museum where she has 
 been placed, after having gazed at this sweet 
 priestess for a long time, cannot refrain from 
 turning one last admiring glance towards her 
 before they pass through the door. 
 
 In spite of the small quantity of light and 
 space, a gentleman succeeded in photographing 
 the sarcophagus of the Priest and Priestess as 
 they lay side by side in the tomb. The next 
 operation was that exciting one of opening the 
 coffins, the potential contents of which could not 
 fail to evoke in the onlookers visions of sacerdotal 
 insignia and hopes of sumptuous Carthaginian 
 vesture. Alas for the vanity of human wishes ! 
 Each coffin contained a hole hollowed in the stone 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 149 
 
 lid, near the head, large enough to pass the hand 
 and arm well inside. Their presence augured ill 
 for the realization of the visions indulged in, for 
 they spoke with no uncertain voice, telling of pro- 
 faning hands which had disturbed the dead in 
 their last sleep, and of violation and horrid theft 
 away back in the far gone centuries. On lifting 
 the lid which covered the remains of the Priestess 
 a femur was found near the skull — conclusive 
 proof that hasty, restless hands disordered her 
 bones in the search for objects of value. 
 
 The corpse proved originally to have been placed 
 in resin, which still adhered in a ridge round the 
 sides and in the corners of the coffin. If it is 
 possible to judge by the jaw, which had lost 
 nearly all its molars, the Priestess must have 
 been a very aged woman. The comparison of 
 this skull with the lovely countenance on the lid 
 might well be appreciated as a sermon in stones — 
 and bones. The thieves had left untouched 
 twenty-one bronze coins ; probably they found 
 other things of more value than obsolete cop- 
 pers. These little coins bore the classic head of 
 Persephone, and on the reverse the galloping 
 horse, and were arranged in groups on the 
 breast. 
 
 Like the Priestess's coffin, that of the Priest 
 was firmly and hermetically sealed by means of 
 iron bars and melted lead. Up till this time no 
 similar instance of sealing had been found among 
 the fifteen stone coffins discovered. The usual 
 experience was to find the lids fitted simply on 
 
ISO CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 to the lower part without any attempt at adhesion. 
 This skeleton was enclosed in a hard covering of 
 resin, broken in the region of the head, near 
 the hole which had been made in the lid. In 
 evaporating it had shrunk so as to scarcely cover 
 the skeleton. On the left side of the corpse the 
 resin retained the trace of a staff or some such 
 implement, as long as the coffin itself. Possibly 
 this was an insignia or staff of office, such as is 
 pictured being borne by a priest on a cornelian 
 scarabaeus contained in a signet-ring found in a 
 tomb near by. 
 
 Chemical analysis revealed the fact that the 
 resin was a product known as terebinthine, an 
 extract from the tree Pistacia terebinthus^ met 
 with in the Mediterranean basin, in Asia Minor, 
 Syria, Palestine, North Africa, and the Canaries, 
 and even as far as Afghanistan. 
 
 The curious imprint of a basket on the stone 
 lid, already alluded to, is sufficiently peculiar to 
 have evoked a search for an explanation, especially 
 as it has been found to occur in more than one 
 instance. And the conclusion arrived at by the 
 Reverend Pere Delattre is that a basket of fruit 
 was originally actually placed on the lid, and that 
 the action of the acids from the fruit effected this 
 curious impression. A recent discovery would 
 seem to reveal what were the kinds of fruits con- 
 tained in these baskets. A gilded coffin was found, 
 surrounded with figurines and other objects in 
 terra cotta, representing figs, grapes, mandarines, 
 an almond, a plum, some tomatoes, cucumbers, a 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 151 
 
 bulb of garlic, a honeycomb, and a cheese. These 
 diverse aliments, which must have entered into the 
 daily nutriment of the Carthaginians, likewise 
 belong, almost all, to the ordinary Arab menu of 
 to-day. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 The first day of the following February was 
 destined to furnish another surprise in the shape of 
 a fourth anthropoid marble sarcophagus, on which 
 was sculptured in high relief the figure of a young 
 woman ; indeed it is best described as a statue, the 
 first discovered in the Punic tombs. She is draped 
 in a long plaited tunic, leaving exposed the fore 
 part of the feet, and a long veil passes over and 
 falls from her head. With her right hand she 
 moves aside that part of her veil which otherwise 
 had partly covered her face, while with the left 
 hand and arm she clasps the remaining portion of 
 the veil around her waist. This fashion of wearing 
 the veil recalls the Maltese custom of draping the 
 ghonella. 
 
 Unhappily the face has suffered some damage. 
 The hair, separated in the centre, undulates in 
 waves over the ears and falls on to the shoulders 
 and over the breast in long tresses. 
 
 It is to be noted that this lady wears no bracelets 
 nor rings, and apparently no girdle. She evidently 
 is the work of a Greek artist, and bears much 
 resemblance to an Attic funereal statue of the 
 fourth century preserved in the Louvre. 
 
 152 
 
[Seep. 152. 
 SCULPTURED MARBLE SARCOPHAGUS OF A CARTHAGINIAN 
 
 LADY [Bord-el-Djedid) 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 153 
 
 Nothing could be more marked than the differ- 
 ence of effect produced by this Carthaginian 
 matron and the Priestess already described. 
 While the former is no more nor less than an 
 embodiment of youthful voluptuousness, strikingly 
 portrayed by an unerring hand, from the Priestess, 
 on the contrary, in some mysterious manner 
 emanates a power which commands and keeps a 
 reverent and enraptured recognition, a strange and 
 almost overwhelming admiration, deeply penetrated 
 with awe, a calm and adorable beauty which 
 perpetually satisfies and refreshes the spirit as a 
 well of cool water in the desert would refresh a 
 thirsty traveller. 
 
 Although it seems certain that this part of the 
 cemetery was set apart chiefly for the reception of 
 the bodies of the Rabs, Priests and Priestesses — 
 there seems no evidence to show that the last 
 found sarcophagus, bearing on its lid a statue of a 
 young woman, contained the remains of a Priestess 
 of Carthage. Everything seems to suggest that 
 the lady was simply the wife of a rich Carthaginian, 
 possibly a Rab, and it is probable that statues of 
 this kind were first sculptured for the living, and 
 placed in a position of honour in the homes of the 
 originals, where they remained until his or her 
 death, when they served both as a covering for the 
 sarcophagus and a monumental piece of statuary, 
 preserving the likeness of the originals as they 
 appeared in their prime. 
 
 The discovery of these four very typical and 
 striking anthropoid coflfins completes that series of 
 discoveries embracing Phoenician sarcophagi of an 
 
154 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 analogous character in Spain, Sardinia, Sicily, 
 Malta, Cyprus and Syria, the last being the cradle 
 of this seafaring and colonizing race. However, 
 the unmistakably Phoenician types of womanhood 
 are sufficiently rare to make any example found of 
 an inestimable value. We remember the vivid 
 word-picture of Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, and we 
 wonder whether she is nearest in likeness to our 
 Carthaginian lady or our lovely Priestess, or the very 
 curious and striking face of the lady of Elche, 
 preserved to-day in the Louvre. No three types 
 could surely differ more than these. The Priestess 
 is utterly unlike either, while both in simplicity of 
 costume, as well as expression, our Carthaginian 
 lady differs as widely as difference can from the 
 sumptuous ornate apparel of the Spanish bust, as 
 well as from its complex, subtle smile. If Jezebel 
 resembled any one of these three, it surely must 
 have been the lady of Elche, apparelled more like 
 the statue of a goddess (very like, in fact, to many 
 statuettes of Tanith) than even great riches or high 
 station and ordinary personal comfort would seem 
 to have called for. 
 
 The coffin which bore the sculptured image 
 of the Carthaginian lady contained very little 
 beyond the remains of the skeleton of a young 
 adult female. A broken unguentarium came to 
 light, and several potsherds, some of them the 
 remains of fine clay vases, some of them the debris 
 of coarse earthen jars. 
 
 A thick layer of brownish earth had penetrated 
 this coffin, and in the course of carefully removing 
 it in layers, a yellowish layer appeared, smoothly 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 155 
 
 covering the bottom of the sarcophagus. This 
 last was the residue of an enaulsion of resin in 
 which the corpse appeared to have been plunged. 
 According to Herodotus the Babylonians steeped 
 their dead in honey, but it is not possible to judge 
 whether the latter substance lent the tinge of 
 yellow to this preparation under discussion. The 
 powdered remains of this gluey resin still clung 
 to the bones, and melted in the heat of the hands 
 when touched. On carefully sifting the remains of 
 this resin, fragments of a gilded bronze ring and a 
 Punic coin were found. The presence of a similar 
 ring is more or less of a common occurrence in the 
 sarcophagi of this Necropolis. 
 
 The funeral chamber in which this last example 
 was found contained likewise several other skeletons 
 in various stages of preservation and dissolution, 
 like the cedar coffins which had once contained 
 them, or still continued to do so. The cave itself 
 yielded eleven amphorae with stems, seven bicorn 
 lamps, four Greek lamps, four unguentaria, two 
 black drinking vessels, two small double-handled 
 cups, and amulets representing Bes, the oudjah, 
 Anubis, the cat, the cynocephalus, etc., twenty- 
 seven bronze coins, four iron nails, three bone 
 hinges, two fragments of a necklace or bracelet of 
 gilded lead, a white pebble, some sulphur and 
 some pitch. 
 
 The stone ossuary which contained the calcined 
 remains of one BaMsillek deserves notice, for 
 though the cover can scarcely be described as any- 
 thing much more than a graven stone, it seems to 
 indicate a certain transition or process of evolution 
 
156 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 from low to high reliefs, and is likewise interesting 
 as belonging to the aristocratic region of the Rabs, 
 of whom he was one. 
 
 This coffin is of a solid, massive and heavy 
 description in proportion to its size. On its lid is 
 designed the silhouette of an old man in low 
 flat relief. There is indicated a beard and a head- 
 dress of some kind of turban. He is draped in a 
 long robe leaving bare only the feet, and he lies 
 extended on his back, his head resting on two 
 oblong cushions. His attitude is the usual sacer- 
 dotal one ; the right hand raised to the height of 
 the shoulder, while the left holds a sacred vessel to 
 his breast. At the top end of the lid may be 
 clearly read, in fine Punic characters, his name and 
 his title, Baalsillek the Rab. It is scarcely 
 necessary to point out how nearly related it is 
 to the Hebrew Rabbi^ Rabboni. In the long 
 inscription dedicating a Temple to Ashtoreth and 
 Tanith, already described, the Rabs are named 
 after the Suffetes, and before the High Priests. 
 The characters of the inscription are found to have 
 retained nothing archaic, nor yet, on the other 
 hand, do they in any way presage the Neo-Punic 
 influence. 
 
 Another small crematory coffer of soft stone 
 shows on the lid the figure of an old priest 
 in high relief, a realistic and somewhat clumsy 
 representation. 
 
 These ossuaries are usually found placed above 
 the inhumed corpses, and again coffins are fre- 
 quently found placed on the top of the ossuaries; 
 still a large proportion of the tombs contain no 
 
^ 
 
 
 J H 
 
 1 i^ 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 157 
 
 traces of cremation at all. This curious irregularity 
 of method presents a problem for which there may 
 be several solutions, but it may be gathered with 
 certainty that at no time was cremation a general 
 practice in Punic Carthage, nor even practised 
 exclusively in the same family. The presence of 
 cremation in certain tombs and its absence in 
 others would seem to point to the conclusion that 
 it took place only in special circumstances — cir- 
 cumstances possibly to be associated with the 
 human sacrifices which the Carthaginians offered 
 to the god Baal Moloch. The victims, children of 
 the best families of the city, and at times adults, 
 were thrown into the flames at the foot of the 
 hideous statue. 
 
 It seems reasonable to suppose that the relatives 
 of the victims would endeavour to possess their 
 remains and place them in the family grave, and 
 these innumerable ossuaries found in this and the 
 earlier cemetery of St. Louis may well enclose the 
 calcined remains of those unfortunate victims, 
 reclaimed by their parents or relatives, and disposed 
 beside the other deceased members of their families 
 who had died naturally and received burial 
 according to the old Phoenician custom of inhuming 
 the embalmed corpse, or the simpler earlier usage 
 of placing the corpse without resin into the cedar- 
 wood coffin, trusting to the preservative qualities of 
 the wood, whose sap was the true Xi^avo9 of the 
 Wise Men, to arrest, at any rate for a time, the 
 inevitable decomposition. The large white marble 
 and stone sarcophagi are distinctly more rarely 
 met with than either the cedar-wood coffins, 
 
158 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 whether whole or in a decayed condition, or the 
 little stone coffers containing the calcined bones. 
 These, with the funereal urns, make four distinct 
 types of burial in the later necropolis of St. 
 Monica's Hill, otherwise called Bord-el-Djedid. 
 
 Here the funereal accompaniments are of a most 
 heterogeneous description ; the potteries may be 
 said to assume almost every known shape, the 
 amulets are exhaustive in the ideas and deities 
 they symbolize, the masks evince an extraordinarily 
 original and fantastic variety ; the statuettes and 
 figurines show a certain affinity to Sidonian 
 and Egyptian archetypes, but are never actually 
 identical. The coins, however, invariably retain 
 either the Phoenician horse, or the palm-tree and 
 the classic head of Astarte or Persephone. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 A VERY curious fact is shown in the abundant 
 presence of the handles of Rhodian amphorae, and 
 the handles only. The potter's mark is there 
 clearly enough, and the symbol of the Rose, but 
 never the rest of the vessel either whole or broken. 
 There are one or two problems advanced by these 
 necropoleis which by no means admit of a prompt 
 solution and dismissal. We do not nearly possess 
 the whole facts concerning the presence, for instance, 
 of the numerous potteries in the tombs. It is 
 certain the Carthaginians had other than domestic 
 uses for the various fabrications evolved from the 
 potter's wheel. The wall of amphorae filled with 
 earth and bearing inscribed in red and black ink 
 the date of the consular year in which the wine 
 was made, is a unique example of how far removed 
 are our ordinary domestic ways from their ways, our 
 every-day economical thoughts from their thoughts. 
 The razors too are there with the meaning of their 
 presence to be solved. It is generally admitted 
 that they constitute the most characteristic and, 
 at the same time, the most charming of results of 
 the Carthage excavations. It seems certain that 
 
 159 
 
i6o CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 these bronze blades, which in some cases retain 
 traces of gilding-, and which have received the most 
 delicate and artistic engraving, are the prototypes 
 of certain razors used to-day in Equatorial Africa. 
 Quite recently Monseigneur Lechaptois, returning 
 from a mission in the Upper Congo, and seeing 
 these razors at Carthage, expressed the opinion 
 that they showed an unmistakable affinity to 
 those used by the natives of Tanganyika to-day. 
 Though virtually and apparently all alike in form, 
 but differing in the subjects of their engravings, 
 there are, however, certain subtle differences not 
 easily demonstrated, though readily perceived when 
 they are placed side by side, and they have that 
 peculiar and indescribable attribute of being pos- 
 sessed of, in a curious manner, a personality. 
 Possibly this attribute may be noticed and felt as 
 regards any of man's handiwork, of any description, 
 more especially as distinguished from machine- 
 made objects, but whether, in the case of these 
 hallowed implements of the consecrated barbers, a 
 larger portion of the maker's spirit poured into the 
 object of his creation, certain it is that they possess 
 a fascination and attraction for minds attuned to 
 appreciate them. In every instance the incised 
 decorations bear an unmistakably Egyptian 
 character, and the handle is invariably shaped in 
 the form of a swan's head and neck. To the 
 unskilled eye these flaky blades, notwithstanding 
 their delicacy of form, appear to be little more than 
 a mass of verdigris. And such they would in 
 many instances have remained, with nothing but 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID i6i 
 
 their external shape and the vivid green of oxidized 
 copper or bronze, beautiful in itself as a colour, but 
 wholly disastrous to the existence of the metal — to 
 be admired. 
 
 But happily for the science of archaeology, a 
 patient and minute antiquary, the Marquis 
 d'Anselme de Puisaye, has brought to light the 
 true meaning of the scarcely discernible lines. 
 
 A very perfect specimen bears on one side a 
 man's upright form turned to the right, the left leg 
 advanced, dressed in a kind of skirt decorated with 
 patterns in the form of crosses. The neck is 
 adorned with a collar. In the left hand he bears a 
 palm towards which he is holding up his right hand 
 in a gesture of adoration. 
 
 Beneath his feet a line of oval shapes completes 
 the scheme of decoration. 
 
 The reverse bears the form of another person 
 wearing the double Egyptian crown, and a collar 
 also adorns his neck. He too lifts his hand in 
 adoration, but in this instance the palm is an 
 entire tree, and is placed at some distance from 
 him. The following is the description of another 
 specimen given by Pere Delattre himself : — 
 
 " Here is a new specimen. It is a razor found 
 more than ten years since in the Punic Necropolis 
 at Byrsa. 
 
 " On one face it bears a sort of palm or water- 
 lily with lotus flowers, surmounted by two hawks 
 bearing Egyptian crowns, and facing each other. 
 At the foot of the sacred tree are two birds 
 resembling herons, cranes or ibises. 
 
 L 
 
i62 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 " The reverse bears a representation of peculiar 
 interest which is further augmented by a Punic 
 inscription comprising a dozen letters." 
 
 On presenting the photograph of this precious 
 piece of archaeology to the Academic des Inscrip- 
 tions et Belles Lettres at the meeting of September 
 22, 1899, M. Heron deVillefosse gave the following 
 description of it, which he accompanied with the 
 following learned commentary : — 
 
 " Beneath the inscription is depicted a bull, lying 
 with his two front legs folded under his body. A 
 bird attacking a serpent is perched on the back of 
 the animal, who seems otherwise pre-occupied. 
 
 "The origin of this curious representation is to 
 be sought for in the East and no doubt as far as 
 Chaldaea. Some bone combs decorated with an 
 analogous scene were found at Carthage and in 
 the south of Spain. Thus do we find attested 
 the commercial predominance of the Phoenicians 
 throughout the basin of the Mediterranean. 
 
 "It is certainly very interesting a propos of the 
 bird perched on the bull's back to recall the cele- 
 brated bas-relief of TA VR VS TRIGARANVS, 
 which decorates one of the altars discovered in 
 Paris in 171 1, under the choir of Notre Dame, and 
 preserved to-day in the Musee de Cluny. One 
 sees there, cranes perched on the back of a bull, 
 but instead of the animal lying down, it is upright 
 and adorned for sacrifice. On the blade at Carthage 
 a bee or large fly is engraved at the left of the 
 inscription — one of its wings being overlapped by 
 the tail of the bird. 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 163 
 
 " This bronze blade was found at Byrsa on July 
 31, 1889. Preserved in the Musee de St. Louis at 
 Carthage, it there hid its secret for ten years under 
 a thick oxidized coating. It was the skilful and 
 delicate hand of the Marquis d'Anselme de Puisaye 
 which knew how to reveal it to us." 
 
 As to the inscription, M. Philippe Berger notices 
 that the writing is archaic and analogous to some 
 ancient Phoenician inscriptions of Egypt of the 
 epoch of Psammetichus. 
 
 "The learned epigraphist there deciphered the 
 name Arbarbaal son of Azar, preceded by a word, 
 the meaning of which he could not determine. We 
 are asked whether it is possible to attribute to these 
 little monuments a votive character or simply 
 recognize in them an instrument of special use. 
 Many of my confreres who have sojourned in the 
 interior of Africa, particularly the equatorial regions 
 of the Upper Congo and Tanganyika, have assured 
 me that the negroes of this district use razors 
 having the form of our little hatchets. This asser- 
 tion has led me to see in these objects genuine 
 razors, and this opinion has been admitted by the 
 savants. Possibly these instruments formed part 
 of the paraphernalia of Phoenician worship, since 
 these have been discovered in the ruins of Carthage, 
 Votive Offerings of the Sacred Barbers, and in 
 an inscription from Cyprus we see tonsores form- 
 ing part of the personnel of the Temple of 
 Astarte. 
 
 " We have here perhaps an explanation both of 
 our razors in the form of a hatchet and of the 
 
i64 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 frequent presence of those scissors {forcipes) in the 
 tombs of the Necropolis which we are exploring." 
 
 The razors are perhaps the most interesting, as 
 they are indeed among the rarest of the finds. 
 
 A certain tribute of Carthaginian spoils finds its 
 way to the Museum at Bardo, the Official Palace 
 of the Bey of Tunis, and here one notes, as in the 
 Musde St. Louis, that there is no plethora of these 
 little bright green hatchet razors. 
 
 One very oxidized specimen remained for a long 
 time covered with its bright green coating, no one 
 having suspected that the vivid powdery covering 
 had any incisions. However, the Marquis de 
 Puisaye succeeded in rescuing the engraving from 
 obliteration, with the result that one side reveals an 
 upright figure turned to the right, dressed in a plaited 
 Egyptian tunic. Below on the segment of the arc 
 which forms the edge of the razor a bull is depicted 
 with the unmistakable touch lent by the hand of 
 a Greek artist. The other side of the blade shows 
 the upright figure of a woman also in profile, but 
 turned towards the left, and lifting her hands in the 
 attitude of adoration, while in the lower portion 
 near the edge a wild boar has been engraved 
 likewise in Greek style. 
 
 Another specimen shows on the blade beneath 
 the invariable swan's head, a crescent moon em- 
 bracing a disc, a bird and a large full-blown lotus 
 with two budding stems at each side. The reverse 
 shows two fishes facing each other, and some unin- 
 telligible flourishing lines. A curious example is 
 one in which on each side of the blade an upright 
 
TERRA-COTTA FIGURE {Bord-el-Djedid) 
 
 [Seep. 171 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 165 
 
 figure with a vulture's head is shown. The right 
 hand is raised in adoration, and in each case the 
 head is crowned by a circle enclosing the urceus^ 
 with the difference that in one instance it is single 
 and in the other doubled-headed. Another is 
 decorated with a lion springing towards a plant or 
 tree, and a creature with a large fish's or dragon's 
 tail, and the upper part of the body in the form of 
 a horse. One especially finely-worked example 
 has the figure of a man seated on a rock having 
 for a garment the skin of a wild beast, probably a 
 lion, the head of which serves as a head-dress. In 
 his left hand he holds a bow. At his feet a dog is 
 seated on his hind-legs awaiting his master's orders. 
 Near the man's head appears the solar disc and 
 crescent moon. On the reverse a seated figure 
 leans against the back of his chair, and holds in his 
 left hand a flowering, undulating stem. The face 
 and figure is in profile, looking towards the right. 
 The right hand hangs down towards a bird which 
 stands behind the chair. That part of his vesture 
 which covers the lower part of the body is decor- 
 ated with circles formed by dots, and a scheme of 
 dotting at the top of the head indicates a crisply- 
 curled head of hair. Again, another razor shows 
 an upright figure with the usual raised right hand, 
 and a full and somewhat flowing garment. The 
 reverse simply shows a symmetrical palm-tree. 
 
 The foregoing examples embrace a represent- 
 ative collection ; others there are which differ only 
 in detail, but follow the main lines of thought in 
 the scheme of decoration by representing the up- 
 
i66 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 right figures in attitudes of adoration, the crescent 
 and disc, the palm in one form or another, and the 
 lotus flowers either budding or in bloom. It re- 
 mains to be seen how much light they will come 
 in the course of time to throw on the origins of the 
 Holy Prophet's work — "the sacred profession of 
 Barbery." 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Of the Pottery and Potters' marks, the subject 
 is so wide that only a brief summing up can be 
 indulged in here of a matter which to be treated 
 exhaustively must be dealt with in a work apart 
 from the description of other objects. 
 
 Of potters' marks, the Chaplain of St. Louis 
 
 writes : — " We collect and publish with care these 
 
 little monuments which at first sight appear 
 
 insignificant, but in archaeology there is nothing 
 
 insignificant, the smallest potsherd, as soon as one 
 
 can by dint of a long series of observations 
 
 recognize its origin and assign to it a date, becomes 
 
 a scientific element enlightening a discovery in a 
 
 manner often remarkable and giving to it its whole 
 
 value. The Mus6e Lavigerie de St. Louis 
 
 possesses hundreds of potters' marks of all epochs. 
 
 When these inscriptions shall have become 
 
 embodied in the Corpus Inscriptionum of Berlin, 
 
 which publishes all Greek and Roman Ceramic 
 
 texts collected throughout the world, some 
 
 interesting conclusions will be opened out, not 
 
 only as touching the history of pottery and 
 
 epigraphy, but also, and above all, that of the great 
 
 commercial currents of which Carthage constituted 
 
 the point of departure." 
 
 167 
 
i68 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 Of the Ceramics it will for the present suffice to 
 repeat the description of one interesting specimen 
 of which the Rev. Pere Delattre gives in his 
 account of the work done during April, May and 
 June, 1898, in this Necropolis at Bord-el-Djedid. 
 
 "The most remarkable finds were two terra- 
 cotta pieces, a small vase and a figurine, both of 
 them decorated with painting. 
 
 " The vase is a lecythos of very fine earth ; the 
 body, of oval form, is surmounted by a narrow 
 neck. A slender handle takes up the back of the 
 vase, which is decorated with a palm-leaf met by 
 two half-leaves which surpass it in height. 
 
 '* But it is the painting on the front of this vase 
 which is especially interesting. 
 
 "One sees here, a woman seated on a stool 
 receiving from a slave the finishing touches to her 
 toilet. The coiffure is completed, the arms are 
 already adorned with bracelets, the right ear has 
 its earring, and the maid is helping her mistress to 
 pass the second pendant into the left ear. 
 
 " The slave herself, placed on the left and seen in 
 profile, also wears bracelets and earrings. On the 
 right in the background appears a band of stuff 
 finished at each end by a fringe, and some lines. 
 
 " The artist, perhaps, wished to represent a girdle. 
 This scene has an astonishing realism. The 
 drawing is perfect ; the pose and movements have 
 a quite remarkable naturalness ; the expression 
 is living. The matron, her gaze fixed on the slave, 
 seems to betray an apprehension of pain, and to 
 say to the one helping her, ' Oh don't hurt me ! ' 
 
 " One could not wish for a picture more full of 
 
* • 
 > > 
 
 [Seep. 173. 
 TERRA-COTTA STATUETTE {Dord-el-Djedid) 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 169 
 
 life. At first sight the two figures appear to be 
 painted in a light tone on a black ground of 
 metallic reflectiveness. Nothing of the kind. The 
 artist, after having determined by drawing the 
 position of his models, has painted the outline in 
 black. He has done the same with the palm 
 leaves, filling with the same colour the whole 
 remaining ground. 
 
 " The black colour has again served him to fix 
 with excessively fine touches and lines the features 
 of the faces and the details of the garments. This 
 system of painting in reserve upon the light tone 
 of the clay displays great art in the painter who 
 has decorated this vase. To complete the effect 
 he has employed white. With this he has entirely 
 painted the stool on which the matron is sitting. 
 The same colour has served to indicate slight caps 
 on the heads of the two women, likewise the 
 earrings, bracelets, borders, fringes and lines which 
 finished the two ends of the band of stuff 
 mentioned further back. 
 
 "Finally, behind the slave in the background 
 appear six or seven little touches arranged in a 
 vertical line and diminishing in size until the 
 lowest and last is scarcely perceptible. The scene 
 depicted on our lecythos is truly a work of art. 
 Several savants have thought that the greater part 
 of the painting thus executed on antique vases, 
 particularly on Greek ceramics, reproduced the 
 pictures of celebrated painters. The painting on 
 our vase, dating back to more than 2,000 years, has 
 perhaps preserved to us the copy of a picture of 
 one of those great masters." 
 
170 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 The paterae or saucers placed under the bicorn 
 Punic lamps likewise bear paintings which are 
 sometimes very striking. On one of these is 
 painted the profile of a refined queen-like head 
 crowned, and with the hair parted each side of the 
 brows. This profile curiously bears a certain 
 marked resemblance to Queen Victoria, sufficient 
 to cause it, in suitable environments, to be mistaken 
 for a portrait of her late Majesty. Another disc 
 which was not a patera, but apparently the cover 
 of a cylindrical capsule, has on it painted the 
 figure of a woman of uncanny, sibylline aspect, 
 seated, her feet crossed, the index finger of her left 
 hand pointing towards her lips, her right hand 
 extended loosely in front of her. Both the above- 
 mentioned patera and this medallion are of 
 Etruscan design, though widely differing in the 
 type and treatment of the subject. The seated 
 figure somewhat recalls that of an Eleusinian 
 priestess, while the Phrygian cap and fingers 
 pointing to the lip, suggest a resemblance to the 
 bust of Paris at the base of the Portland Vase. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 The statuettes of this funereal region though 
 not remarkably plentiful are various and interest- 
 ing. Telesphorus, a pagan divinity not frequently 
 met with, is found here. The God of Convalescence, 
 he is represented as a young man of short stature, 
 wearing a heavy, monk-like cloak, which falls 
 around him in thick folds and reaching to his feet, 
 having entirely covered his thick-set form and 
 leaving revealed only the large solid face, gives 
 a particularly clumsy appearance to his entire pre- 
 sence. The Arab burnous when completely fast- 
 ened in front, is somewhat similar in appearance to 
 the garment indicated. The learned Benedictine 
 Bernard of Montfaucon, on seeing this statuette, 
 believed this mantle to symbolize an allegorical 
 mystery easily divined, namely, that those who are 
 recovering from an illness must be extremely care- 
 ful of their health, and keep themselves well 
 covered. This Telephorus, God of Convalescence, 
 was sometimes associated with the God of Medicine, 
 iEsculapius, whose rich and celebrated temple is 
 mentioned both by Strabo and Appian, and who 
 was regarded by the Carthaginians as their titular 
 deity. A statue was found of this god, in de- 
 tachments. Pere Delattre states how he first 
 
 171 
 
\^2 CARTHAGE OF THE PHCENICIANS 
 
 exhumed a Telesphorus, then the portion of an 
 arm and head of ^sculapius, fragments which 
 went towards nearly completing a statue of the 
 God of Medicine found several years before and 
 preserved in the Garden Museum of St. Louis. 
 To-day nothing is missing but the right forearm. 
 A statuette of the Goddess Tanith, often met with 
 at Carthage, but never found in exact counterpart 
 anywhere else, is one in which the traditional mantle 
 envelopes the figure and surrounds the back and 
 head in a conventional shell-like shape. The 
 head is adorned with a high and elaborate head- 
 dress analogous to those of certain figurines of 
 Cyprus. Two masses of hair cover the temples, 
 while the neck and chest are covered with neck- 
 laces of the ornate character shown in the instance 
 of the wonderful lady of Elche, preserved in the 
 Louvre, and not unlike a certain kind of adornment 
 worn by the women of indigenous tribes of Algeria 
 and Tunis. At her feet were found two amulets, 
 one representing the urcBus enclosing the oudjah 
 or eye of Osiris and the other the sacred sparrow- 
 hawk surmounted by a kind of crown. One of 
 the few terra-cotta figurines obtained from the 
 tombs in a perfect condition is that of a young 
 woman, upright, draped in a tunic and mantle. 
 The head is slightly bent forward. The right hand 
 hanging by her side, lightly grasps the edge of 
 her mantle, while the left hand rests on her hip in 
 an attitude of ease so remarkably striking as to 
 recall the terra cottas of Tanagra. 
 
 A unique little terra-cotta figurine represents a 
 little winged cupid extended full length, face down- 
 
> , » , > > J> 
 ' 1 > J J > ' > 
 
 TERRA-COTTA HEAD {Bord-el-Djedid) 
 
 iScep. 171 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 173 
 
 wards, in a kind of square barque or cradle. This 
 well-modelled little child's figure reposes carelessly 
 and easily on a clear brilliant blue drapery which 
 emerges and lies in folds around the body, covering 
 a part of the legs. The wings are half opened 
 and completely free from contact with the sides of 
 the vessel. The head, raised and turned to the 
 right, leans with ease on the folded left arm, whilst 
 the right arm stretched forward reaches over the 
 edge of the barque where it hangs softly. The 
 colour is even more striking than the modelling, 
 being of the most vivid, brilliant description. The 
 body is rather pale red, while the hair is of a 
 darker red, almost brown ; the wings are white. 
 On the back a fine golden net extends down the 
 spinal colume dividing as it passes over the thighs 
 and legs. As it lies in its glass case in the Museum, 
 among the antiquities of the Phoenician age — it is 
 difficult to realize that it is the product of a Punic 
 tomb, so absolutely Greek is it in design and 
 effect. 
 
 It has been described as comparable to the best 
 terra cottas of Cyrenaica. It is thought to belong 
 to the third century B.C. 
 
 A figure of reddish clay represents a girl play- 
 ing on a dulcimer dressed in a tunic and with a 
 veil held in place on the head by a Stephanos 
 decorated with flowers forming a crown. She 
 holds her instrument with ease, by the left hand, 
 leaning it slightly on her shoulder. The right 
 hand, whose fingers, save the middle and ring 
 finger, are parted, appears ready to play on the 
 disc so lightly held. Another figure likewise of 
 
174 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 red clay and painted, represents a woman holding 
 in her left hand a lyre decorated with birds' heads, 
 while at the same time she appears to be offering 
 with her right hand some sort of sacrifice in a 
 kind of patera which she is about to deposit on an 
 altar placed near her feet. The two chief god- 
 desses of Carthage are likewise represented in 
 terra cotta, the mother goddess, Tanith, holding in 
 her arms her daughter Astarte or Astaroth. The 
 mother goddess holds her daughter in her left arm 
 and supports her with her right in such a pose as 
 seems to present her for worship to the beholders, 
 a pose adopted so frequently in later centuries to 
 represent the Virgin and infant Christ. Curiously 
 the daughter, though of diminished proportions, 
 represents an adult in the arms of her mother, and 
 is dressed and adorned in a similar manner, with a 
 long tunic and earrings and a double row of neck- 
 laces, forming a deep pectoral. Both are sur- 
 rounded by the shell-like folds of the sacred 
 mantle, though that of the daughter is propor- 
 tionately small, and the latter wears a high head- 
 dress which reaches above the folds of her mantle. 
 
 Near the bones of an infant, together with a 
 drinking vessel known as bazzuola and ten un- 
 guentaria^ a terra-cotta figurine was found repre- 
 senting a man on horseback. He guides his horse 
 towards the right and is dressed in a short tunic 
 fastened by a girdle, and a tall conic cap or 
 casquette. 
 
 Several examples are found of an upright 
 female figure whose arms are vigorously extended 
 horizontally with the fists closed — somewhat the 
 
NECROPOLIS OF BORD-EL-DJEDID 175 
 
 attitude of one indulging in gymnastic exercises, 
 but those who have witnessed the Spanish Basques 
 dancing the Fandango, will probably not fail to be 
 struck with the pose illustrated, and which, with the 
 foot slightly extended in front, is identical with 
 that adopted by the dancer when commencing to 
 dance. A beautiful little statue of a girl playing 
 a double flute represents an archaic style. Her 
 mantle flows round her with the shell-like curve 
 seen in the statues of the goddesses Tanith and 
 Astaroth (a mode of draping resuscitated by 
 Raphael in the case of the Sistine Madonna), while 
 her robe falls in fine flowing pleats around her feet. 
 
 Such, briefly, is the sum of the work accomplished 
 on the site of the richest city of ancient times ; 
 the archaeological harvest which has been gathered 
 from the three chief Necropoleis, whose reapers are 
 the devoted White Fathers of Carthage. The 
 good grain is not only stored in the Convent 
 Museum of St. Louis but scattered abroad in the 
 form of literature published from time to time, the 
 writing of the learned Chaplain whose valuable 
 brochures are sold for the benefit of the Excavation 
 Funds. Fortunately for the progress of his work 
 and the benefit of the archaeological world gener- 
 ally, the Academic des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres 
 has generously furnished grants from time to time 
 to facilitate the undertaking. 
 
 In view of the valuable work already accom- 
 plished not only in Carthage but also in Sardinia, 
 Malta, Sicily, Cyprus and Palestine, there seems to 
 be every reason to hope that the time is not very 
 
1/6 CARTHAGE OF THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 far distant when it will be possible for some 
 master-hand to gather together the gradually in- 
 creasing material, and by means of comparative 
 methods and research compile some such valuable 
 and illuminating literary and historical construction 
 concerning the whole Phoenician race in all its 
 aspects, as shall come near in usefulness and ex- 
 haustiveness to the works lately given to us from 
 the pens of our greatest living authorities on the 
 vast and majestic subject of Egyptology. 
 
 Happily Carthage, the living centre and pivot of 
 that Phoenician race, the pioneer of international 
 commerce and mistress of the seas, whose ruined 
 site and trampled remains have lain for so many 
 centuries unknown and neglected, has at last re- 
 ceived her visitation of peace, and in peace has 
 yielded up her share, and continues to yield, of 
 those secrets of the past which alone can throw 
 light on her origins and on the life and habits of 
 her people. Coevally with the Isles which in the 
 dim past she conquered and colonized, she now 
 begins to tell her story in a voice which, enfeebled 
 by great misfortune and long disuse, strengthens 
 perceptibly in due proportion to the tests laid 
 upon it. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Achilles, 50 
 
 Acropolis, 8, 113, 126 
 
 Agate, 45 
 
 Alabaster, 49, loi 
 
 Algiers, 68 
 
 Alpha, 74 
 
 Amathus, 63, 90 
 
 Amen Ra, 26 
 
 Amphorae, 78, 82, 83 
 
 Amphorae, Wall composed of, 
 
 76 
 Amphoras with stems, 34 
 Amilcar, 81 
 Amulets, 44, 48, 62, 78, 79, 
 
 81, 91, 92, 144 
 Anubis, 25, 45, 104, 144, 155. 
 Anthropoid, Sarcophagi, 138, 
 
 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 
 
 145,146,147, 148,149,150, 
 
 152 
 Aphrodite, 19 
 Appian, 59, 76, 171 
 Apses, 76 
 Arab destructiveness, 8, 66, 
 
 68 
 Arab menu of to-day, 150, 
 
 151 
 Arabs of Tunis, 34, 141 
 Arab women's adornment, 82, 
 
 91 
 Ashtaroth, 91 
 Ast, 25 
 
 Astarte, 19, 32, 43, 45, 141, 
 Astoreth, 19 
 
 Athtah, 19 
 
 Auriferous sand, 54, 55, 56, 
 57,58 
 
 Bail, 14, 80, 81, 136 
 
 Bail Hammon, 80, 81 
 
 Baal Moloch, 22, 45, 136, 
 
 156 
 Ba-Bel, Tower of, 15 
 Barbers, 43, 163, 166 
 Baskets, 74, 91 
 Bazzuola, 70, 83, 107, 129 
 Beads, 62, 78, 81, 83 
 Bel fires, 15 
 Bell, 83 
 Beltis, 20 
 Bes, 25,28, 45, 63, 81,83, 92, 
 
 104, 155 
 Bilit, 20 
 Birds, 73 
 Bordeaux, Hatchet chisel in 
 
 Natural History Museum 
 
 of, 41 
 Bou Khornam, 22, 104, 
 Bozra, 18, 72 
 British Museum, 40, 60, 72, 
 
 134 
 Bronze, 82, Ss, 88, 90, 98, 
 
 107 
 Budh Gaya, 14 
 Bull of Apis, 26 
 Byrsa, 8, 18, 61, 64, 69, 70, 
 
 80,93 
 Byzantine, 7, 71 
 
 177 
 
 M 
 
178 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Canaan, land of, i6 
 
 Canaanite race, lo 
 
 Cagliari, 36 
 
 Carthago^ Delenda est, 7 
 
 Castanets, 98 
 
 Cato, 7 
 
 Chaldaean types, 37 
 
 Chateaubriand, 7 
 
 Chronos, 22 
 
 Coins, 26, 107, 149, 155 
 
 Constantine, 68 
 
 Corinthian, proto-, 48 
 
 Cornelian, 45, 150 
 
 Corvreux Decauville, 92 
 
 Cow-worship, 21, 73 
 
 Cremation, 13, 33, 48, 49, 78, 
 
 136 
 Crescent, occurrence of, 26 
 Crescent, symbolism of, 21 
 Crocodiles, 26, 104 
 Cynocephalus, 26, 45 
 Cyprus, 65, 83, 145, 172 
 
 Dagon, 24 
 Darius, 12, 83 
 Devil's Tower, 21 
 Diana, 19 
 Dido, 18, 83 
 Disc of Tanith, 26, 80 
 Dolphin, 82 
 Dove, 26, III 
 
 Ea-Han, 24 
 Earrings, 89, 90 
 Ebony, 45, 
 Eden, Garden of, 10 
 Edrisi, Arab historian, 66 
 Egyptian Gods, 18, 25 
 Egyptian Pantheon, 25 
 Emerald, 24, 45, 
 Enamel, 45, 62 
 Equatorial Africa, 44, 160 
 Etruscan influence, 48 
 Etruscan race, 10 
 Ezekiel, 81 
 
 Fish, 26, 73, 79 
 Fishing hooks, 31, 32, 82 
 Flowers, 74 
 Fruit, 132, 150, 151 
 Funeral accompaniments, 29, 
 31,32 
 
 Genoa, 98 
 
 Glass, 45, 49, 98 
 
 Gold, 24, 45, 83, 97 
 
 Gods of Carthage, 19 
 
 Golden Calf, 21 
 
 Golden Candlestick, 117, 118 
 
 Goldsmiths, 81 
 
 Hadj-Aly, 85 
 
 Hammam Lif, 23 
 
 Hannibal, 11 
 
 Hanno, 13 
 
 Hebrew tombs, 84, 119, 123 
 
 Herodotus, 24. 47, 155 
 
 Hercules, 24, 79 
 
 Hieroglyphics, 48 
 
 Hiram's Pillars, 24 
 
 Horse, 26 
 
 Horus, 47 
 
 Inhumation, 13, 48 
 Inscriptions, 31, 49, 51, 54, 
 
 81, 121, 129, 130, 131 
 lo, Legends of, 21 
 Iron, 81 
 
 Italo-Greek influence, 48 
 Ishtah, 19 
 Isis, 21, 25, 104 
 Istah, 20 
 Ivory, 45, 82, 98 
 
 Jasper 45, 79 
 
 Jews, antipathy to, 17 
 
 Jews, presence in Tunis of, 
 
 124 
 Jews, race, 10 
 Jezebel, 154 
 John, origin of name, 24 
 
INDEX 
 
 179 
 
 Jonah, 74, 75 
 Justin, 83 
 
 Kamart, 115 
 
 Kirjath Hadeschath, 18, 42 
 
 Lamps, primitive Punic type, 
 
 34, 49, 163 
 Lamp, seven-branched type, 
 
 34, 35, 36, 37 
 Lapis lazuli, 45 
 Lava, 45 
 Lavigerie, Cardinal, 9, 68, 85, 
 
 92,114, 145 
 Lead, 45, 81 
 Lion, 26, 73, 92 
 Lotus, 26, 161 
 Louvre, 90, 152, 154 
 
 Magalia, 61 
 Magon, 52, 81 
 Malachite, ']'}i 
 Malta, 34, loi, 154 
 Manetho, 47 
 Masks, 33, 39, 73, 89 
 Masonic symbols, 16 
 Melcarth, 24 
 Menhirs, 16 
 Mesopotamia, 10, 40 
 Middle Ages, 66, 71 
 Midsummer Night, 15 
 Milan, 72 
 Military belt, 65 
 Military skill, 11, 65 
 Milk, traces of remains, 63 
 Minerva, 74 
 Mirrors, 91, 95 
 Moloch, 24 
 Monkey, 82 
 Mosaics, 73 
 Mother of Pearl, 45 
 Museums, 35, 72, 75, 79, loi, 
 
 172 
 Musulman Cemetery, 71 
 
 Nails, 128 
 
 Nature, Worship of vivifying 
 principle of, 14 
 
 Necklaces, 32, 78, 81, 92 
 
 Neter — Hieroglyphic sym- 
 bol, 43 
 
 Nizem^ 40 
 
 Nimrod the Hunter, 1 5 
 
 Cannes, 24 
 
 Onyx, 73 
 
 Osiris, 18, 25, 45, 83, 104 
 
 Oudjah, 26, 63, 81, 92 
 
 Palm, 26, 50, 82 
 
 Persephone, 19 
 
 Phallic Towers, 21 
 
 Phthah, 25, 28, 45, 46, 104 
 
 Plautus, 12, 51 
 
 Pliny, 13 
 
 Polyxena, 50 
 
 Porphyry, 73 
 
 Pottery, 32, 34, 49, 50, 51, 70, 
 
 78, 83, 87, 89, 92, 97, 100, 
 
 loi, 108, 158, 167 
 Proserpina, 19 
 Psammetichus, 46 
 Ptolemy, 109 
 Punica fides ^ 11 
 Punic characters, 31, 38, 51, 
 
 52, 53, 156 
 Pygmalion, 32 
 
 Queen of Heaven, 21 
 
 Ra, 25, 45 
 
 Razors, 41, 42, 43, 44, 64, 
 
 105, 144, 159, 160, 161, 162, 
 
 163, 164, 165, 166 
 Religious beliefs, 14 
 Rings, 51,82, 155 
 Roman cistern and wall, 71, 
 
 75,76 
 Rose, 53, 54 
 Rosenberg, 70 
 
i8o 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Rhodes, 53, 54, 83 
 
 Saida (ancient Sidon) 34, 83, 
 
 98 
 Saracen destruction, 7 
 Sardinia, 34, 40, 79, 80, 92, 
 
 154 
 Saturn, 22 
 Scarabsei, 26, 45, 46, 47, 48, 
 
 150 
 Schliemann, 69 
 Sekhet, 46, 47 
 Semitic race, 10 
 Serapis, 47 
 
 Serpents, 24, 26, 50, 73 
 Sethos, 46 
 Sicily, 109, 154 
 Sidonians, abomination of, 
 
 15 
 
 Silver, 45, 81, 82, 96, 98 
 Solomon's Temple, 24 
 Sparrowhawks, 26, 81, 104, 
 
 144 
 Sphinx, 20, 113 
 St. Augustine, 74 
 St. Jerome, 75 
 Stelse, 60, 80, 81, 137 
 Sun and Moon Worship, 
 
 14 
 Syria, 154 
 
 Tabnite, 32 
 Tadmelak, 34 
 Tanagra, 172 
 Tanganyika, 44, 160 
 Tanith, 20, 45, 60, 79, 80, 81, 
 
 no 
 Tarshish, 42, 75, 81 
 
 Tainat, 20 
 
 Terra cotta Statuettes, no, 
 158, 171, 172, 173, 174, 
 
 175 
 Telesephorus, 171, 172 
 Tello, 108 
 Tharchiche, 75 
 Tharros, 79 
 Tiberius, 75 
 Tin, 81 
 
 Triangle, 22, 26, 38, 79 
 Tripoli, 71 
 Triton, 24 
 Troilis, 50, 51 
 Troy, 69 
 
 Tunis, 12, 63, 71, 75 
 Turkey, 71 
 Tyre, 18,81, 98 
 
 Urasus, 26, 62, 81, 92 
 Utica, 18 
 
 Vases, 50, S;^, 90, 168, 169 
 
 Venice, 68 
 
 Venus Ccelestis, 19 
 
 Vermilion, 33 
 
 Viper, 62 
 
 Virgil, 83 
 
 Virgin — worship of virgin 
 
 goddess, 20, 21 
 Virgo, 19 
 Vulgate, 81 
 Vulture, 25, 147 
 
 Whale, remains of, 74 
 
 Zodiac, 19 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF THE WHITE FATHERS 
 
 (Mus^e Lavigerie of St. Louis of Carthage) 
 
 PARIS: IMPRIMERIE PAUL FERON-VRAU 
 
 5, RUE BAYARD, S 
 
 1 Lampes chr^tiennes de Carthage. 
 
 2 Inscriptions de Chemtou (Simittu). 
 
 3 Inscriptions de Ghardimaou. 
 
 4 Inscriptions de Tunis. 
 
 5 Nouvelle ddcouverte en Tunisie. 
 
 6 D^couverte d'un cimetiere chr6tien 
 
 dans les mines de Carthage. 
 
 7 Inscriptions de Chemtou (Simittu) 
 
 (suite). 
 
 8 Inscriptions de Rad^s (Maxula). 
 
 9 Nouvelles Inscriptions de Tunisie. 
 
 ID Marques de fabrique recueillies k 
 Carthage sur des vases de poterie 
 romaine, grecque et punique. 
 
 11 Inscriptions de El-Mohamdia et de 
 
 Zaghouan. 
 
 12 Inscriptions de Chemtou (Simittu) 
 
 (suite). 
 
 13 Fouilles et d^couvertes dans un 
 
 ancien cimetiere chr^tien de Car- 
 thage, situ6 pres de La Malga. 
 
 14 Ruines d'une antique synagogue k 
 
 Hammam-Lif. 
 
 15 Notes sur une monnaie vdnitienne. 
 
 16 Marques de potiers relev^es sur des 
 
 lampes trouvdes \ Carthage et 
 dans les environs. 
 
 17 Marques de fabrique recueillies \ 
 
 Carthage sur des vases de poterie 
 romaine, grecque et punique 
 (suite). 
 
 18 Poids antiques de bronze trouv^s \ 
 
 Carthage. 
 
 19 Carthage et la Tunisie au point de 
 
 vue archdologique. 
 
 20 Objets du Mus^e de Saint-Louis 
 
 envoy<is k I'exposition d'Amster- 
 dam. i^ 
 
 21 Epigraphie chritienne de Carthage. 
 
 22 Inscriptions de Carthage. 
 
 23 Quelques inscriptions de la Tunisie. 
 
 24 Marques de potiers relev6es ^ 
 
 Carthage. 
 
 25 Mosaiques chr^tiennes de Tabarca. 
 
 — sceaux et bagues trouv6s ^ 
 Carthage. 
 
 26 Les tombeaux puniques de Byrsa. 
 
 — Inscriptions chr^tiennes de 
 Carthage. — Marques de potiers 
 trouv^es k Hadrumete. 
 
 27 Inscriptions de Carthage. 
 
 28 Marques de portiers relev^es \ 
 
 Carthage (suite). 
 
 29 Le culte de la Tr^s Sainte Vierge \ 
 
 Carthage aux premiers si^cles. 
 
 30 Inscriptions chr6tiennes trouv^es 
 
 sur diff^rents points de I'ancienne 
 ville de Carthage en 1885-1886. 
 
 31 Fouilles dans la basilique de 
 
 Damous-el-Karita en 1884. 
 
 32 Inscriptions latines de Carthage ; 
 
 33 Inscriptions chr^tiennes trouv^es 
 
 de 1884 a 1886 dans les fouilles 
 d'une ancienne basilique. 
 
 34 Notice sur les plombs chr^tiens 
 
 trouvis k Carthage. 
 
 35 Exciursion dans le Zab occidental. 
 
 35 A. Sujets Chretiens figurds sur le 
 fond intdrieur de vases de belle 
 poterie rouge. 
 
 35 B. Divers fragments d'une liste 
 d'ethniques trouv6s k Carthage de 
 1879 k 1888. 
 
 35 C. Une caserne romaine dans le 
 Sahara. 
 
l82 
 
 PUBLICATIONS 
 
 36 Inscriptions chrdtiennes trouv^es 
 
 dans les foulles d'une ancienne 
 basilique (suite). 
 
 37 Inscriptions paiennes, latines et 
 
 grecques, trouvees a Carthage de 
 1886 k 1889. 
 
 38 Fouilles d'un cimetifere remain a 
 
 Carthage en 1888. 
 
 39 Lampes antiques du musde de Saint- 
 
 Louis de Carthage. 
 
 39 A. Note sur la d^couverte de 
 
 Ndftris. 
 
 40 Tunisie. Epigraphie chr6tienne. 
 
 41 Les tombeaux puniques de Carth- 
 
 age. 
 
 42 Les lampes chritiennes de Carth- 
 
 age. 
 
 43 Epigraphie chr^tienne de Carthage 
 
 de 1888 h. 1889. 
 
 44 Souvenirs de la croisade de saint 
 
 Louis, trouv6s k Carthage. 
 
 45 Inscriptions de Carthage. — Epi- 
 
 graphie paienne. 
 
 46 Les tombeaux puniques de Car- 
 
 thage ; la n^cropole de Saint- 
 Louis. 
 
 47 L'^pigraphie chr^tienne k'^Carthage. 
 
 48 Marques de vases grecs et romains 
 
 trouvees k Carthage en 1888- 
 1890. 
 
 49 Quelques marquesMoliaires trouvees 
 
 k Carthage en 1891. 
 
 50 Inscription de Tunisie. 
 
 51 La basilique de Damous-el-Karita, 
 
 k Carthage. 
 
 52 Epigraphie chr^tienne en Tunisie. 
 
 53 Inscriptions chr^tiennes de Bou- 
 
 Ficha. 
 
 34 Inscriptions de Carthage ; Epigra- 
 phie paienne, 1890-1892. 
 
 54 A. Inscriptions chr^tiennes prove- 
 
 nant de la basilique de Damous- 
 el-Karita, 1 890-1891. 
 
 55 Photographies envoydes k 1' exposi- 
 
 tion de Madrid. 
 
 56 ArchEologie chr^tienne de Carthage 
 
 1889-1892. 
 
 57 Amphore cachetde d'un cimetiere 
 
 Chretien de Taparura. 
 
 58 Tunisie. Epigraphie chrEtienne. 
 
 Inscriptions de Mactar et de 
 Kairouan. 
 
 59 Saint-Louis de Carthage. 
 
 60 Lampes et plats chr^tiens de 
 
 Carthage. < 
 
 61 Marques de vases grecs et romains 
 
 trouvEs a Carthage, 1 891 -1893. 
 
 62 Communicationla I'AcadEmie d'Hip- 
 
 pone, 1893. 
 
 63 Note sur El-Alia (Uzalis). 
 
 64 Tunisie.— Notes archdologiques. — 
 
 Le Bou-Kornain. 
 
 65 Fouilles arch^ologiques sur le flanc 
 
 de la coUine de Saint-Louis, en 
 1892. 
 
 66 Carthage.— Notes archdologiques, 
 
 1892-1893. 
 
 67 Souvenirs de I'ancienne Eglise 
 
 d'Afrique. 
 
 68 Catalogue du musEe arch^ologique 
 
 de Saint-Louis de Carthage 
 
 69 Inscriptions de Carthage (suite).— 
 
 - [fepigraphie paienne. 
 
 70 Le mur k amphores de la colline de 
 
 Saint-Louis. 
 
 71 Marques c^ramiques grecques et 
 
 romaines trouvdes k Carthage, 
 1893-1894. 
 
 71 A. Les citations bibliques dans 
 
 I'Epigraphie africaine. 
 
 72 Carthage. Inscriptions chr6tiennes. 
 
 72 A. Les Inscriptions romaines de 
 
 Carthage. 
 
 73 Gamart ou la ndcropole juive de 
 
 Carthage. 
 
 74 Petit guide du voyageur k Car- 
 
 thage. 
 
 74 A. Carthage. 
 
 75 Carthage autrefois, Carthage au- 
 
 jourd'hui. 
 
 75 A. L'antique chapelle souterraine 
 
 de la colline de Saint-Louis. 
 
 76 N6cropoIe punique de la colline de 
 
 Saint-Louis. 
 
 77 Notes sur les fouilles de I'Amphi- 
 
 th^atre. 
 
 78 Lampes romaines orn^es d'un sujet 
 
 trouvees a Carthage en 1896, 
 dans le cimetiere des Officiales. 
 
 79 Marques c^ramiques grecques et 
 
 romaines. 
 
 80 Quelques tombeaux de la n^cropolc 
 
 ue de Doulmes, 1892-1894. 
 
PUBLICATIONS 
 
 183 
 
 81 La n^cropole punique de Douim^s, 
 
 189 3-1894. 
 
 82 Un mois de fouilles dans la ndcro- 
 
 pole punique de Douim^s. 
 
 83 La n^cropole punique de Douimes, 
 
 1895-1896. 
 
 84 D^couverte de tombes pimiques. 
 
 85 Les grandes statues du Mus^e de 
 
 Saint-Louis. 
 
 86 Fouilles dans I'amphith^atre de 
 
 Carthage, 1896-1897. 
 
 87 Lettre k M. H^ron de Villefosse sur 
 
 les fouilles de la n^cropole punique 
 voisine de Sainte-Monique. 
 
 88 Lettre h. M. H6ron de Villefosse sur 
 
 les fouilles de la n^cropole punique 
 voisine de Sainte-Monique. 
 
 89 Lettre k M. H6ron de Villefosse sur 
 
 les fouilles de la n^cropole punique 
 voisine de Sainte-Monique. 
 
 90 Un fragment de lampe chr^tienne. 
 
 90 A. Lettres sur les fouilles de Car- 
 
 thage, octobre-d^cembre 1898. 
 
 91 Fouilles ex^cut^es k Carthage 
 
 pendant le premier trimestre de 
 1889, dans la n^cropole punique 
 voisine de Sainte-Monique. 
 
 92 Note sur I'emplacement du temple 
 
 de C6res k Carthage. 
 
 93 Les cimetieres remains superposes 
 
 de Carthage. 
 
 94 Les cimetieres remains superposes 
 
 de Carthage (suite). 
 
 95 Notes archtologiques : Thibaris, 
 
 Zembra, Gilium, Tunis. 
 
 95 A. Mus6e Lavigerie de Saint- 
 
 Louis de Carthage. 
 
 96 La n^cropole punique voisine de la 
 
 celline de Sainte-Monique. — Le 
 premier mois des fouilles, Janvier 
 1898. 
 
 97 Note sur le sable aurifere de Car- 
 
 thage et sur une collection de 
 plombs avec inscriptions trouv^s 
 k Carthage. 
 
 98 Marques c6ramiques grecques et 
 
 romaines recueillies h. Carthage. 
 
 99 Imprecation sur lamelle de plomb 
 
 trouvee a Carthage. 
 
 100 Rapport surles fouilles de Carthage. 
 
 101 Inscriptions chretiennes trouvees k 
 
 Carthage, 1 895-1 898, 
 
 102 Lettre sur les fouilles de la nicro- 
 
 pole voisine de Sainte-Monique, 
 h Carthage. 
 
 103 Necropole punique voisine de 
 
 Sainte-Monique. — Second mois 
 des fouilles, f^vrier 1898. 
 
 104 Necropole punique voisine de 
 
 Sainte - Monique. — Troisifeme 
 mois, mars 1898. 
 
 105 Inscriptions sur terres cuites et 
 
 menus objets trouv^s k Carthage, 
 I 899- I 900. 
 
 106 Poids de bronze antiques. 
 
 107 La ndcropole punique voisine de 
 
 Sainte-Monique, k Carthage. 
 
 108 Inscriptions c^ramiques trouv^es k 
 
 Carthage, 1900. 
 
 109 La n^cropole punique voisine de 
 
 Sainte-Monique. — 2» trimestre 
 des fouilles, avril-juin 1898. 
 
 no La colline de Saint-Louis, k Car- 
 thage. 
 
 111 Sarcophage en marbre blanc ornd 
 
 de peintures (epoque punique). 
 
 112 Necropole punique voisine de 
 
 Sainte-Monique k Carthage. — 
 2* semestre des fouilles, juillet* 
 ddcembre 1898. 
 
 113 Carthage autrefois, Carthage au- 
 
 jourd'hui. 
 
 114 Un peierinage aux ruines de Car- 
 
 thage et au Musde Lavigerie. 
 
 115 Fouilles ex^cutees dans la necro- 
 
 pole punique voisine de Sainte- 
 Monique. 
 
 116 Sarcophage de marbe blanc avec 
 
 couvercle ornd d'une statue, 
 trouve dans une tombe punique. 
 
 117 Une cachette de monnaies k Car- 
 
 thage au v* siecle. 
 
 118 Poids de bronze antiques du 
 
 Mus^e Lavigerie. 
 
 119 Le quatri^me sarcophage de 
 
 marbre blanc. 
 
 120 Poids carthaginois en plomb. 
 
 Disque de bronze, flan de mon- 
 naie ou poids. 
 
 121 Decouverte d'un cinqui^me sarco- 
 
 phage de marbe blanc. 
 
 122 Sixieme sarcophage de marbre 
 
 blanc peint. 
 
1 84 
 
 PUBLICATIONS 
 
 123 Marques c^ramiques grecques et 
 
 romaines trouv^es durant I'ann^e 
 1 901. 
 
 124 Septieme et huitieme sarcophage. 
 
 Deux sarcophages anthropoides. 
 
 125 Note sur une ndcropole punique 
 
 voisine de Sainte-Monique. 
 
 126 A I'amphith^atre de Carthage. 
 
 127 Figurines trouv^es a Carthage 
 
 dans une ndcropole punique. 
 
 128 Las grands sarcophages anthrop- 
 
 oides du Musde Lavigerie. 
 
 129 Deux hypog^es de Gamart. 
 
 130 Marques c^ramiqes trouv^es k 
 
 Carthage. 
 
 131 Inscriptions de Carthage, 
 
 132 Epitaphes puniques et sarcophage 
 
 de marbre, 
 
 133 La ndcropole des Rabs, pretres 
 
 et pretresses de Carthage. 
 
 134 Un cercueil de bois a couvercle 
 
 anthropoi'de. 
 
 135 Groupe de figurines. 
 
 136 Lettre a M. Phil. Berger (Textes 
 
 puniques). 
 
 Richard Clay &> Sons, Limited^ London and Bungay. 
 
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