Questions about Carthage

[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.

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

Hope that helps...

[Blazing141]

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.

[CCadaver]

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.

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_damian]

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.

[Denixen]

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...

[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. 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

[Lvcretivs]

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.

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: 

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

[antisocialmunky]

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.

[Denixen]

@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

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.

[antisocialmunky]

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

[vartan]

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

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.

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

And modern ones with an even smaller pinch...