Questions about Carthage

Hey guys,

I am very interested in Canaanite history, especially Carthage. I was wondering if you guys could answer a few questions for me?

First of all, what does Safot Softim biQarthadast mean? I get that bi- means "Of", and that Qarthadast is the city, but the other two words are a mystery to me.

Also, what were the two legislative bodies of carthage called?

And what about the nature of worship. How did they worship their gods, and did certain temples really practice prostitution?

Finally, what was their wine like?

Thanks in advance for the time, guys. I really like EB, and I am looking forward to playing EBII

You might want to check out books and sources from the EB-bibliography about this topic.

XSamatan

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Originally Posted by CCadaver

(...) First of all, what does Safot Softim biQarthadast mean? I get that bi- means "Of", and that Qarthadast is the city, but the other two words are a mystery to me. (...)

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Don't take my words for granted, but 'Safot' likely refers to the Carthaginian suffetes - the highest ranking Punic/Phoenician magistrates roughly equivalent to the Roman consules, while 'Softim' (cf. Hebrew 'Shoftim') are the 'judges', the Carthaginian 'counterpart'(?) to the Roman senate (see e.g. 'The Phoenicians and the West: politics, colonies and trade')

'Safot Softim biQarthadast' would therefore (see Teleklos Archelaou's ancient post at TWC) be a rather formal title of the Carthaginian state equivalent to the latin 'senatus populusque romanus'.

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Originally Posted by Lvcretivs

Don't take my words for granted, but 'Safot' likely refers to the Carthaginian suffetes - the highest ranking Punic/Phoenician magistrates roughly equivalent to the Roman consules, while 'Softim' (cf. Hebrew 'Shoftim') are the 'judges', the Carthaginian 'counterpart'(?) to the Roman senate (see e.g. 'The Phoenicians and the West: politics, colonies and trade')

'Safot Softim biQarthadast' would therefore (see Teleklos Archelaou's ancient post at TWC) be a rather formal title of the Carthaginian state equivalent to the latin 'senatus populusque romanus'.

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I believe that Suffet was just a latinization of Shophet. Both mean judges. But your idea does seem pretty good, and I think you may be right.

@XSamatan, I have ordered the only book that my library carries, but it's not arrived yet. So far I have read everything I can find for free on the internet.

My guess would be that Safot is a corruption of the Hebrew word Tsva'ot, which means "armies" or "hosts" and I agree that the reference to Softim is a plural form of Shophet, a judge or consul type magistrate....thus safot softim should/could really be written as "tsva'ot shoftim be Qart Hadasht..." which would mean "the Hosts of the Judges of Carthage." This derived from the very close linguistic relationship between Hebrew and the Carthaginian language.

As an aside...Qarthadasht is a conflation of Qartah Hadasha (again from Hebrew) meaning new land...

Hope that helps...

As a further aside, my above formulation comports with history in that the Carthaginian army was not, in fact, Carthaginian in composition, but rather, the suphetes relied primarily on mercenary armies to do their bidding. Hence, the distinction between the judges and their armies is apt.

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Originally Posted by Lvcretivs

Don't take my words for granted, but 'Safot' likely refers to the Carthaginian suffetes - the highest ranking Punic/Phoenician magistrates roughly equivalent to the Roman consules, while 'Softim' (cf. Hebrew 'Shoftim') are the 'judges', the Carthaginian 'counterpart'(?) to the Roman senate (see e.g. 'The Phoenicians and the West: politics, colonies and trade')

'Safot Softim biQarthadast' would therefore (see Teleklos Archelaou's ancient post at TWC) be a rather formal title of the Carthaginian state equivalent to the latin 'senatus populusque romanus'.

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This is pretty much it from what I've studied of the words. I forget but Safot might also be related to the word in Punic for 'province' (ofc these would be governed by a political officer and there are cases in many languages in which the words for provincial governor and 'province' are similar/related). I'd imagine it to be quite futile though to try and create an English translation of the title and am also curious if there is any inscription with this title or if it was artificially formed.

so "army magister of kart hadast" ?

best translation or transliteration to english i can make

altough if we use the roman notion of "public man" then politician/general = leader so we can/could consider the term magister as leader of the armies of kart hadast as well as the 1st man or one of the best men / or the 1st amongst his pears of the great city of carthage

The princeps wasn't really a notion in Carthage...as far as I'm aware.

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Originally Posted by Blazing141

My guess would be that Safot is a corruption of the Hebrew word Tsva'ot, which means "armies" or "hosts" and I agree that the reference to Softim is a plural form of Shophet, a judge or consul type magistrate....thus safot softim should/could really be written as "tsva'ot shoftim be Qart Hadasht..." which would mean "the Hosts of the Judges of Carthage." This derived from the very close linguistic relationship between Hebrew and the Carthaginian language.

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This is probably my favorite explaination so far. Also, in case anyone is interested, I did figure out how Carthaginian wine was like. It was probably very similar to greek wine, but with a resin-like taste which seemed to be very polarizing. Either you loved it or hated it, but I haven't seen any evidence of anyone thinking it was just "okay".

I believe it stands for AAAAAAAAARGH MOTHERLAND! But don't quote me on that because my knowledge of Carthage is sketchy, I've only read one book. I don't recall the name of the book but it was blue.

I just thought I should mention that it is probably important to take the state-structure of carthage into account.

I believe that carthage was more like a closely nit trade union more than anything else. For that reason I think that the translation to "the Hosts of the Judges of Carthage" is quite accurate. It would be like how we describe USA to day, United States of America. Only it would be like: the United Trade-Cities of Carthage, if we used our modern way of thinking. Where hosts would represent United, judges represent states and Carthage represents, well, Carthage.

It is probably important to remember that they didn't think of states and nations like we do today, I believe that the concept of nation wasn't invented until a few hundred years ago in France or something.

Note that I have no advanced knowledge of Carthage, or even basic, Everything I claim I have read in the carthaginian preview (which was quite some time ago), or is a simple analysis from what I have read in this thread. But this is the conclusion that I have made from my analysis.

Please let me know if you think this is good, or if i'm completely off.

Oh, and does anyone have anything to say about the practice of prostitution in temples? Sound like yet another Roman-spread rumor/lie just like the sacrifice of children. (I saw a BBC(?) documentary that claimed they actually did sacrifice children, but did it extremely rarely and that the Romans did so themselves too, rarely, and that the romans where just giving "bad press" and tried to justify their aggression against Carthage. Though I can't remember what it was called, if there is interest i can try and look it up)

Sry for the long reply...

Lots of people performed human sacrifice. Romans did it with the 2 Vestals after Carnae. The Gauls had an epic burning man thing every so often too. You should not strive to white wash Carthage with your modern sensibilities just because the Romans tried to claim moral superiority. IIRC, temple prostitutes were somewhat common in the near east as well as other parts of the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_...on#Mesopotamia

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Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

Lots of people performed human sacrifice. Romans did it with the 2 Vestals after Carnae. The Gauls had an epic burning man thing every so often too. You should not strive to white wash Carthage with your modern sensibilities just because the Romans tried to claim moral superiority.

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That's an absolutely correct stance on back-projecting modern values, sensibilities and sentiments - but there actually is IMO fairly conclusive and quite solid evidence which identifies the 'tophets' of Carthage and other Western Phoenician colonies (cf.Motya) not as sacred burial grounds of human sacrificial victims but as rather pragmatic products of an extremely high infant mortality rate - not entirely atypical for the ancient Mediterranean civilizations and their disease-fostering 'high-density urbanism' (cf. the cities of the Phoenician motherland, especially Arwad and Byblos)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

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The identification of prenatal individuals in the Carthaginian Tophet sample is consistent with current data from modern-day studies on the incidence of stillbirth and spontaneous abortion as being the primary contributors to “reproductive wastage” [62], as well as with recent data on infant mortality [48], [49]. For example, in England and Wales from 1969 to 1976, 48.4% of 6517 deaths within two weeks of live birth occurred between 30 minutes and 24 hours and 39.3% between 7 and 13 days [61]. These statistics easily accommodate our results.

Infectious diseases known to lead to stillbirth include smallpox, vaccinia, and listeriosis; those resulting in prematurity and perinatal mortality include severe viral infections and malaria [49]. Noninfectious diseases resulting in stillbirth, abortion, or preterm delivery include cholestasis, hypertension, toxemia, and renal disease [50]. The Carthaginians were probably exposed to and susceptible to all of these afflictions. If conditions of sanitation at Carthage, including management of water supply and human and animal excreta, were similar to those at Pompeii, Ostia, and Rome [63], the Carthaginians would also have been potential victims to and vectors of cholera, dysentery, gastroenteritis, infectious hepatitis, leptospirosis, typhoid, and parasitic intestinal infestations, most of which result in severe dehydration, which is a common cause of infant death [50].

In sum, while the Carthaginians may occasionally have practiced human sacrifice, as did other circum-Mediterranean societies [1], [63], [64], our analyses do not support the contention that all humans interred in the Tophet had been sacrificed. Rather, it would appear that the Carthaginian Tophet, and by extension Tophets at Carthaginian settlements in general, were cemeteries for the remains of human prenates and infants who died from a variety of causes and then cremated and whose remains, sometimes on a catch-as-catch-can basis, interred in urns. Following widespread practice at this time in history, it is likely that at least some, if not all, of the cremated animal remains represent sacrificial offerings.

Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage Do Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of Infants

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His logic was Carthage's A was exaggerated therefore A is a lie and B which is much more likely than A is false.

That's like reasoning that a criminal is acquitted of murder therefore the charge of robbery is false. :p A does not imply B.

antisocialmonkey, absolutely right, but I didn't want to too frankly point out Denixen's flawed logic - just post interesting background information for him to read.
Think of my post as of a somewhat contorted and awkward 'reply by proxy', which I'm very often guilty of ;)

Oh guys don't worry about my logic, I'm not offended in anyway. I had no idea about whether or not these things were true or false, I was just saying that Romans have a history of creating bad rumors for other people in order to justify there own actions. The Romans won the Punic wars, and therefor were allowed to write history. With those two things in consideration, I would be very careful in what I believe about the Carthaginians, especially if it might be considered bad, from their point of view, or ours. I'm not making a conclusion as to whether it is true or not, I'm just saying that history is written by man, who can't always be trusted.

But back to topic, the source about "sacred prostitution" has a number of flaws in my opinion. First of all it doesn't mention Carthage or Carthaginians anywhere, am I missing something?

Second, all the statments are made by one culture "accusing" another, for example the Greek historian Herodotus: "The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger once in her life." I wouldn't call that a very objective observation. It is one man writing someone else's culture's history. We all know how often the Greek and Roman historians misunderstand and misinterpret other cultures. The myth about us swedes made by roman are innumerable.

These two "flaws" are enough for me to reject your source that claims that Carthaginians have sacred prostitution, considering there really isn't any firm proof. Of course considering that Wikipedia is more of a summery of sources rather than a source, I can't really be certain that the sources wiki refers to doesn't contain proof.
Of course this all assumes that Wikipedia would be a reliable source.

I must apologize for that I'm completely unable to make short posts.

@antisocialmunky First of all, I forgot to direct my previous post to you. Second of all, I seem to have misread your reply. I'm sorry for that. You were not claiming that the link prove that Carthaginian temples harbored prostitutes. You were making an entirely different point indeed :beam:

But i think that the beginning of my post is still valid. The rest is perhaps not very relevant to your reply but it does signify my position. No conclusive proof --> no conclusion should be make. And taking in how often written history is wrong, and that Romans have a history of doing just that, i think that Carthaginian temple prostitutes rumor should be rejected until further proof has been found. In other word, I'm not white washing Carthage, I'm just saying there is no proof, just rumors as far as I can tell.

@Lvcretivs You are actually reinforcing my point. The best lies are the one that's half true.
Now this does not prove that Carthaginians did have human sacrifice. Nor does it prove that the Roman spread the rumors, and if they did, this does not prove that they based it on truth, half truth or nothing. The only thing I wish to say is that Rome did many bad things, so did Carthage, but Rome won the war and wrote history. And what did they write? All the things bad about Carthage, true or false, and nothing bad about themselves. I would probably do the same. My point is that history can not be trusted as long as i comes form one old, unreliable and nonobjective source.

It is helpful to remember that Herodutus is full of **** not in the usual but in the way that he wrote down every single story told to him. He was a story-teller historian so you can't really accuse him of purposefully having any real agenda or an objective viewpoint. Though, usually there was some sort of truth behind the stuff he wrote.

Edit: Please don't use these kind of words on this forum. Thanks

He, yeah, I suppose you're right. One should always take what the old historians said with a pinch of salt.

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Originally Posted by Denixen

My point is that history can not be trusted as long as i comes form one old, unreliable and nonobjective source.

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Remember that old or new, reliable or not, history always comes from subjective sources. Man creates history. But none of the negativity is completely useless, as a good historian can even gain insight through all that, to see what it might mean besides the trivial.

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Originally Posted by Denixen

He, yeah, I suppose you're right. One should always take what the old historians said with a pinch of salt.

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And modern ones with an even smaller pinch...

I think you mean larger pinch? lol.

anyways, yes, the child sacrifice issue continues to be a major source of academic conflict, but personally after reading the works of Serge Lancel, I err on the side of sacrifice being uncommon. However, the very academic, and I must say very polite, discussion here is a prime example of how it is best to examine the source material personally before forming any opinions.

In regards to the original question of this thread, Safot Softim biQarthadast, as far as I recall from working with our translator, Kikkosemmek, who received input from Charles Krahmalkov himself, it means 'The Magistrates (Suffets) and assembly (common people?) of Qart-Hadast (The New City)' But that is a loose translation, one would have to ask Krahmalkov or Kikkosemmek to get a better answer.

The Carthaginian governmental body consisted of a mutli-tiered and fail-safe system similar to the manner in which ancient Sparta was governed. The different elements were the Shophets, the Council of 5, the council of Judges (the famous 104), the Inner council of 30, and the general assembly of citizens. What exactly each governing body was responsible for is a little unclear, especially as roles changed throughout time. For example, at certain times it seems it might have been normal for a Shophet to command an army, whereas at other times this would never happen. The two Shophets were primarily in charge of city matters, and seemed to be the highest authority in the empire, yet they were an elected position. At certain times in Carthage's history men tried to hold such power for a lifetime, but it usually didn't work out. One of the Shophets was eponymous, that is to say he gave his name to the year. The Judges and other council members were lifeling positions, and were essentially a purely political role. The Inner Council of 30 were also members of the 104 as far as we can tell. Exactly what the 5 did is very unclear as they are rarely mentioned, but it can be assumed they were connected to the Judges or Inner Council as well. Finally, the common assembly of citizens had power to vote on various matters and elect certain officials. Generals were elected as well, presumably by the Judges or Inner Council since they were appointed quickly, while the people seemingly elected the Shophets. Other positions of unclear description existed in the government such as the State Treasurer and the Moral Censor. There is more that could be gone into about theories based on recovered terms, voting groups in the city, positions among colonies/outposts(governors), etc... But that is a discussion for another time.

The reason I described it as a fail-safe system is because the Shophet could only do a thing with the approval of the people or the Judges, the people had power, but only to approve or disapprove a thing in their government. The Judges were regulated by the Inner Council, who in turn could be frustrated by the Shophet or Assembly.

I have a couple questions to add on to this old thread - sorry for grave-digging! I was about to start a new one, but I did a search and luckily found this one, which answered some of my questions about this wacky-looking name.

First, why not name the faction simply Qart-Hadast (or any variation of the spelling)? Was "Safot Softim biQarthadast" actually used, in the way that SPQR was an official emblem? Or is it simply a phrase that was translated and put together by the developers?

Second, I'm curious about the spacing. biQarthadast isn't a typo surely, so why is it strung together, as opposed to bi Qarthadast? It just looks so off-putting; can't something be done to make it easier for modern eyes, if the entire 'Safot Softim....' phrase is indeed historical?

I mean, pointing again to the SPQR example, "Senatus Populusque Romanus" seems clearly tuned for a modern audience, with the u's and spaces and lowercase letters, none of which should have been typical of the time (correct me if I am mistaken).

Last, the faction name uses a Q and the city name a K. Is that inconsistency there by design; if so, why? Variety?

I'll close by saying that this mod kicks serious butt, I'm loving it, and it's piqued my curiosity about a lot of the nomenclature used -- hope my questions can be answered!

Hi Aston71!

I think I have a clue for one or two of those.

It's spelled with U because that's how you would write down what an ancient senator(according to historians) would have called it. Aka, The Faction names use the modern Latin alphabet with J U and W and lowercase letters, while the ancient romans used the ancient version (duh) without... Afterall the names of the Hellenic factions are also transscribed into the modern latin alphabet and don't come along in Ionic Greek or even modern greek.

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Originally Posted by aston71

biQarthadast isn't a typo surely, so why is it strung together, as opposed to bi Qarthadast? It just looks so off-putting; can't something be done to make it easier for modern eyes, if the entire 'Safot Softim....' phrase is indeed historical?

I mean, pointing again to the SPQR example, "Senatus Populusque Romanus" seems clearly tuned for a modern audience, with the u's and spaces and lowercase letters, none of which should have been typical of the time (correct me if I am mistaken).

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Then you'll be amazed to find out that Populusque is just the same thing XD
The noun "populus" and the conjunction "atque" are united and atque loses "at"...
Phoenician is simply structured differently and in this case "bi" is a preposition...
Those are just linguistic forms, that they are off-putting to an audience distanced by 2000 years is only right :P

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Last, the faction name uses a Q and the city name a K. Is that inconsistency there by design; if so, why? Variety?

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Afaik both are interchangeable, as it's the same guttural sound...
But it could be whether the word stands for "New City" or just the name itself, rather than the meaning...