Cartennae or Cartenna.. was an ancient Berber, Carthaginian, and

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

port at present-day

Ténès Ténès ( ar, تنس; from Berber TNS 'camping') is a town in Algeria located around 200 kilometers west of the capital Algiers. , it has a population of 65,000 people. History Ténès was founded as a Phoenician port in or before the 8th cen ...

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...

. Under the Romans, it was part of the

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman '' provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

of Mauretania Caesariensis.

Name

Cartenna's name was variously recorded by the

Greeks The Greeks or Hellenes (; el, Έλληνες, ''Éllines'' ) are an ethnic group and nation indigenous to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea regions, namely Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, and, to a lesser extent, oth ...

as ''Karténna'' ( grc-gre, Καρτέννα), ''Kártina'' (), ''Kártinna'' (), and ''Karténnai'' ( grc-gre, Καρτένναι). It was usually Latinized as Cartennae or Cartenna, but appears as Cartinna in Mela. These names seem to combine the

Punic 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 t ...

word for "city" () with a Berber placename element (), also seen in the Phoenician names for

Cirta Cirta, also known by various other names in antiquity, was the ancient Berber and Roman settlement which later became Constantine, Algeria. Cirta was the capital city of the Berber kingdom of Numidia; its strategically important port city ...

Tipasa Tipasa, sometimes distinguished as Tipasa in Mauretania, was a colonia in the Roman province Mauretania Caesariensis, nowadays called Tipaza, and located in coastal central Algeria. Since 1982, it has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Si ...

, and

Sabratha Sabratha ( ar, صبراتة, Ṣabrāta; also ''Sabratah'', ''Siburata''), in the Zawiya DistrictCape Tenes. The plural form Cartennae seems to allude to a second Berber settlement that existed upstream. Notionally refounded as a Roman colony, it was also known as after its imperial patron.

History

Phoenician colony

Cartennae was established as a Phoenician

colony In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state' ...

by the 8th centuryBC. It lay at the mouth of the Wadi Allala (the classical Cartennus). In addition to trading in the usual

ivory Ivory is a hard, white material from the tusks (traditionally from elephants) and teeth of animals, that consists mainly of dentine, one of the physical structures of teeth and tusks. The chemical structure of the teeth and tusks of mammals i ...

, hides, and

cedar Cedar may refer to: Trees and plants *''Cedrus'', common English name cedar, an Old-World genus of coniferous trees in the plant family Pinaceae *Cedar (plant), a list of trees and plants known as cedar Places United States * Cedar, Arizona * ...

of the interior, Cartennae was apparently the site of an important

copper mine Copper extraction refers to the methods used to obtain copper from its ores. The conversion of copper consists of a series of physical and electrochemical processes. Methods have evolved and vary with country depending on the ore source, loca ...

.. Like other colonies in the western Mediterranean, Cartennae eventually fell under Carthaginian control.

Roman colony

After the Punic Wars, Cartennae was dominated by the Romans. The first emperor

Augustus Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pr ...

established a

of veterans from the 2nd Legion there. in 30BC and the city started to grow in importance. Augustus even founded in what is now coastal

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...

the following Roman colonies:

Igilgili Igilgili was a Berber town and a Phoenician, Carthaginian, and Roman colony in located in present-day Jijel, Algeria. History Igilgili was initially a small Carthaginian colony and trading port ( xpu, 𐤀𐤉𐤂𐤋𐤂𐤋 , , or , ). This ...

, Saldae, Tubusuctu, Rusazu, Rusguniae, Aquae Calidae, Zuccabar and Gunugu. All these colonies were connected to Cartennae in a military way with strong commercial links. During the centuries of Roman domination Cartennae was a rich city with a forum, theater, baths,

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

and aqueducts, but it was devastated during the revolt of

Firmus According to the '' Historia Augusta'', Firmus (died 273) was a usurper during the reign of Aurelian. The contradictory accounts of his life and the man himself are considered to be a complete fabrication, perhaps based on the later Firmus. H ...

in the years 372–375. Despite the continuation of its name in modern

, identification of the site was long delayed by misinformation in surviving geographical accounts of Roman North Africa, including

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importance ...

the

Antonine Itineraries The Antonine Itinerary ( la, Itinerarium Antonini Augusti, "The Itinerary of the Emperor Antoninus") is a famous ''itinerarium'', a register of the stations and distances along various roads. Seemingly based on official documents, possibly ...

. Distances in the gazetteers were apparently thrown off by Ptolemy's misreckoning of longitude and by the lack of

Roman roads Roman roads ( la, viae Romanae ; singular: ; meaning "Roman way") were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, and were built from about 300 BC through the expansion and consolidation of the Roman Re ...

in the area, requiring distances to be estimated by sailors. The French first confused Cartennae with

Mostaganem Mostaganem ( ber, Mustɣanem; ar, مستغانم) is a port city in and capital of Mostaganem province, in the northwest of Algeria. The city, founded in the 11th century lies on the Gulf of Arzew, Mediterranean Sea and is 72 km ENE of O ...

, to the west, but the discovery of epitaphs a few years later in Ténès helped solve the mistake. A necropolis has been excavated and formerly served as a public park.

Later history

Cartennae was sacked by the

Vandals The Vandals were a Germanic people who first inhabited what is now southern Poland. They established Vandal kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean islands, and North Africa in the fifth century. The Vandals migrated to the area betw ...

during their 5th-century invasion of

Roman North Africa Africa Proconsularis was a Roman province on the northern African coast that was established in 146 BC following the defeat of Carthage in the Third Punic War. It roughly comprised the territory of present-day Tunisia, the northeast of Algeria, ...

and presumably reconquered by the Byzantines during their resumption of control over the area. It was almost entirely destroyed following the conquest of the area by the

Umayyad Caliphate The Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE; , ; ar, ٱلْخِلَافَة ٱلْأُمَوِيَّة, al-Khilāfah al-ʾUmawīyah) was the second of the four major caliphates established after the death of Muhammad. The caliphate was ruled by th ...

. The bleakness of its situation militated against resettlement; medieval Tenes was a separate settlement about away, settled by

Spaniards Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance ethnic group native to Spain. Within Spain, there are a number of national and regional ethnic identities that reflect the country's complex history, including a number of different languages, both in ...

in the 9th century. Following the town's surrender to the invading French in 1843, the former site of Cartennae became the center of the new French town established in 1847..

Religion

Cartennae was a Christian

bishopric In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided provinces were administratively associate ...

in antiquity and the early medieval period and was reëstablished as a

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

titular see A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese". The ordinary or hierarch of such a see may be styled a "titular metropolitan" (highest rank), "titular archbis ...

in the 20th century. The earliest known bishops of Cartennae were Rogatus and Vincentius, who espoused the schismatic or heretical belief (" Rogatism") that the church should not use force to compel orthodox belief, particularly against the Donatists; their arguments survive only in the form of StAugustine's invective against them.Stefano Antonio Morcelli
''Africa christiana''
Volume I, Brescia 1816, pp. 122–123 Anatole-Joseph Toulotte
''Géographie de l'Afrique chrétienne. Maurétanies''
Montreuil-sur-mer 1894, pp. 54-57 Other known bishops are Rusticus, who in 418 assisted at the disputation between

Saint Augustine Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afr ...

and the Donatist Emeritus in Caesarea in Mauretania; Victor, a contemporary of

Genseric Gaiseric ( – 25 January 477), also known as Geiseric or Genseric ( la, Gaisericus, Geisericus; reconstructed Vandalic: ) was King of the Vandals and Alans (428–477), ruling a kingdom he established, and was one of the key players in the di ...

(and therefore of the mid-5th century) and the author of several works; and Lucidus, one of the Catholic bishops whom

Huneric Huneric, Hunneric or Honeric (died December 23, 484) was King of the (North African) Vandal Kingdom (477–484) and the oldest son of Gaiseric. He abandoned the imperial politics of his father and concentrated mainly on internal affairs. He was m ...

summoned to Carthage in 484 and then exiled.Pius Bonifacius Gams
''Series episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae''
Leipzig 1931, p. 465

References

Citations

Bibliography

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