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Punics
The Punic people, or western Phoenicians, were a Semitic people in the Western Mediterranean who migrated from Tyre, Phoenicia to North Africa during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'' – the Latin equivalent of the Greek-derived term ''Phoenician'' – is exclusively used to refer to Phoenicians in the western Mediterranean, following the line of the Greek East and Latin West. The largest Punic settlement was Ancient Carthage (essentially modern Tunis), but there were 300 other settlements along the North African coast from Leptis Magna in modern Libya to Mogador in southern Morocco, as well as western Sicily, southern Sardinia, the southern and western coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, Malta, and Ibiza. Their language, Punic, was a dialect of Phoenician, one of the Northwest Semitic languages originating in the Levant. Literary sources report two moments of Tyrian settlements in the west, the first in the 12th century BCE (the cities Utica, Lix ...
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Ancient Carthage
Carthage () was a settlement in modern Tunisia that later became a city-state and then an empire. Founded by the Phoenicians in the ninth century BC, Carthage reached its height in the fourth century BC as one of the largest metropolises in the worldGeorge Modelski, ''World Cities: –3000 to 2000'', Washington DC: FAROS 2000, 2003. . Figures in main tables are preferentially cited. Part of former estimates can be read at Evolutionary World Politics Homepage Archived 2008-12-28 at the Wayback Machine and the centre of the Carthaginian Empire, a major power in the ancient world that dominated the western Mediterranean. Following the Punic Wars, Carthage was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC, who later rebuilt the city lavishly. Carthage was settled around 814 BC by colonists from Tyre, a leading Phoenician city-state located in present-day Lebanon. In the seventh century BC, following Phoenicia's conquest by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Carthage became independent, gradually ex ...
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Punic Building, Żurrieq
The remains of an unidentified Punic building exist incorporated into several properties in Żurrieq, Malta. They include a well-preserved structure commonly known as the Punic Tower or the Żurrieq Tower which is found inside the private garden of the Domus Curialis, the house of the town's archpriest, and which is the most substantial surviving example of Punic architecture on the island. Description The site consists of a well-preserved -high tower with a square plan topped by a cavetto cornice showing inspiration from ancient Egyptian architecture, along with some adjacent walls which are believed to have originally formed part of a larger building. Both the tower and the walls are constructed out of ashlar limestone masonry without mortar, with each block having dimensions of up to . The building's age and purpose are not known, but it might date back to around the late 6th century BC. The tower's architecture suggests that it formed part of a prominent building, and it ...
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Sardinia
Sardinia ( ; it, Sardegna, label=Italian, Corsican and Tabarchino ; sc, Sardigna , sdc, Sardhigna; french: Sardaigne; sdn, Saldigna; ca, Sardenya, label=Algherese and Catalan) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia and immediately south of the French island of Corsica. It is one of the five Italian regions with some degree of domestic autonomy being granted by a special statute. Its official name, Autonomous Region of Sardinia, is bilingual in Italian and Sardinian: / . It is divided into four provinces and a metropolitan city. The capital of the region of Sardinia — and its largest city — is Cagliari. Sardinia's indigenous language and Algherese Catalan are referred to by both the regional and national law as two of Italy's twelve officially recognized linguistic minorities, albeit gravely endangered, while the regional law provides ...
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Carthage
Carthage was the capital city of Ancient Carthage, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classical world. The city developed from a Canaanite Phoenician colony into the capital of a Punic empire which dominated large parts of the Southwest Mediterranean during the first millennium BC. The legendary Queen Alyssa or Dido, originally from Tyre, is regarded as the founder of the city, though her historicity has been questioned. According to accounts by Timaeus of Tauromenium, she purchased from a local tribe the amount of land that could be covered by an oxhide. As Carthage prospered at home, the polity sent colonists abroad as well as magistrates to rule the colonies. The ancient city was destroyed in the nearly-three year siege of Carthage by the Roman Republic during the Third Punic War in 146 BC and then re-developed as Roman Car ...
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Punic Language
The Punic language, also called Phoenicio-Punic or Carthaginian, is an extinct variety of the Phoenician language, a Canaanite language of the Northwest Semitic branch of the Semitic languages. An offshoot of the Phoenician language of coastal West Asia (modern Lebanon and western Syria), it was principally spoken on the Mediterranean coast of Northwest Africa, and the Iberian peninsula and several Mediterranean islands such as Malta, Sicily and Sardinia by the Punic people, or western Phoenicians, throughout classical antiquity, from the 8th century BC to the 6th century AD. Punic is considered to have separated from its Phoenician parent around the time that Carthage became the leading Phoenician city under Mago I, but scholarly attempts to delineate the dialects lack precision and generally disagree on the classification. History The Punics stayed in contact with the homeland of Phoenicia until the destruction of Carthage by the Roman Republic in 146 BC. At first, there was ...
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Phoenicia
Phoenicia () was an ancient thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-states extended and shrank throughout their history, and they possessed several enclaves such as Arwad and Tell Sukas (modern Syria). The core region in which the Phoenician culture developed and thrived stretched from Tripoli and Byblos in northern Lebanon to Mount Carmel in modern Israel. At their height, the Phoenician possessions in the Eastern Mediterranean stretched from the Orontes River mouth to Ashkelon. Beyond its homeland, the Phoenician civilization extended to the Mediterranean from Cyprus to the Iberian Peninsula. The Phoenicians were a Semitic-speaking people of somewhat unknown origin who emerged in the Levant around 3000 BC. The term ''Phoenicia'' is an ancient Greek exonym that most likely described one of their most famous exports, a dye also known as Tyrian purpl ...
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Lixus (ancient City)
Lixus is an ancient city founded by Phoenicians (8th-7th century BCE) before the city of Carthage. Its distinguishing feature is that it was continuously occupied from antiquity to the Islamic Era, and has ruins dating to the Phoenician (8th–6th centuries BCE), Punic (5th–3rd centuries BCE), Mauretanian (2nd century BCE–CE 50), Roman (CE 50–6th century CE) and Islamic (12th–15th centuries CE) periods. Tentative World Heritage Status Lixus was submitted to the UNESCO World Heritage on July 1, 1995, by the Ministry of Culture of Morocco, on the basis of three cultural selection criteria. In a 2019 press release, the Ministry of Culture stated that it was implementing a cultural and economic development strategy, with the intent on working towards Lixus being officially listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Geography The archaeological site of Lixus is located in Morocco northeast of Larache city ( south of Tangier) on the right bank of the Loukkos river, from the c ...
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Phoenician Language
Phoenician ( ) is an extinct language, extinct Canaanite languages, Canaanite Semitic languages, Semitic language originally spoken in the region surrounding the cities of Tyre, Lebanon, Tyre and Sidon. Extensive Tyro-Sidonian trade and commercial dominance led to Phoenician becoming a lingua franca of the maritime Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean during the Iron Age. The Phoenician alphabet History of the Greek alphabet, spread to Greece during this period, where it became the source of all modern Alphabet#European_alphabets, European scripts. The area in which Phoenician was spoken includes the northern Levant and, at least as a prestige language, Anatolia, specifically the areas now including Syria, Lebanon, parts of Cyprus and some adjacent areas of Turkey. It was also spoken in the area of Phoenician colonies, Phoenician colonization along the coasts of the southwestern Mediterranean Sea, including those of modern Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Algeria as well as Malta, the we ...
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Malta
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies south of Sicily (Italy), east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The official languages are Maltese and English, and 66% of the current Maltese population is at least conversational in the Italian language. Malta has been inhabited since approximately 5900 BC. Its location in the centre of the Mediterranean has historically given it great strategic importance as a naval base, with a succession of powers having contested and ruled the islands, including the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, Knights of St. John, French, and British, amongst others. With a population of about 516,000 over an area of , Malta is the world's tenth-smallest country in area and fourth most densely populated sovereign cou ...
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Ibiza
Ibiza (natively and officially in ca, Eivissa, ) is a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. It is from the city of Valencia. It is the third largest of the Balearic Islands, in Spain. Its largest settlements are Ibiza Town ( ca, Vila d'Eivissa, or simply ), Santa Eulària des Riu, and Sant Antoni de Portmany. Its highest point, called Sa Talaiassa (or Sa Talaia), is above sea level. Ibiza is well known for its nightlife and electronic dance music club scene in the summer, which attract large numbers of tourists. The island's government and the Spanish Tourist Office have worked toward promoting more family-oriented tourism. Ibiza is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Ibiza and the nearby island of Formentera to its south are called the Pine Islands, or " Pityuses". Names The official, Catalan name is ''Eivissa'' (). Its name in Spanish is ''Ibiza'' (). In British English, the name is usually pronounced in an approximatio ...
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Sardonic Grin
To be sardonic is to be disdainfully or cynically humorous, or scornfully mocking. A form of wit or humour, being sardonic often involves expressing an uncomfortable truth in a clever and not necessarily malicious way, often with a degree of skepticism. Origin Both the concept and the etymology of the word, while being of uncertain origin, appear to stem from the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. The 10th-century Byzantine Greek encyclopedia ''Suda'' traces the word's earliest roots to the notion of grinning ( grc, σαίρω, sairō) in the face of danger, or curling one's lips back at evil. One explanation for the later alteration to its more familiar form and connection to laughter (supported by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'') appears to stem from an ancient belief that ingesting the ''sardonion'' (σαρδόνιον) plant from Sardinia (Σαρδώ) would result in convulsions resembling laughter and, ultimately, death. In ''Theory and History of Folklore'', Vladimir P ...
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Northwest Semitic Language
Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite in the Middle Bronze Age. The oldest coherent texts are in Ugaritic, dating to the Late Bronze Age, which by the time of the Bronze Age collapse are joined by Old Aramaic, and by the Iron Age by Sutean and the Canaanite languages ( Phoenician/Punic, Edomite, Moabite and Hebrew). The term was coined by Carl Brockelmann in 1908,The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook, Chapter V
page 425
who separated ' ...
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