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Punic people
The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians (and sometimes as Western Phoenicians), were a Semitic people who migrated from Phoenicia to the Western Mediterranean 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, 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 eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, Malta, and Ibiza. Their language, Punic, was a variety of Phoenician, one of the Northwest Semitic languages originating in the Levant.
Literary sources report two moments of Tyrian[citation needed] settlements in the west, the first in the 12th century BC (the cities Utica, Lixus, and Gadir) that hasn't been confirmed by archaeology, and a second at the end of the 9th century BC, documented in written references in both east and west, which culminated in the foundation of colonies in northwest Africa (the cities Auza, Carthage, and Kition on the southern coast of Cyprus) and formed part of trading networks linked to Tyre, Arvad, Byblos, Berytus, Ekron, and Sidon in the Phoenician homeland. Although links with Phoenicia were retained throughout their history, they also developed close trading relations with other peoples of the western Mediterranean, such as Sicilians, Sardinians, Berbers, Greeks, and Iberians, and developed some cultural traits distinct from those of their Phoenician homeland. Some of these were shared by all western Phoenicians, while others were restricted to individual regions within the Punic sphere.
The western Phoenicians were arranged into a multitude of self-governing city-states. Carthage had grown to be the largest and most powerful of these city-states by the 5th century BC and gained increasingly close control over Punic Sicily and Sardinia in the 4th century BC, but communities in Iberia remained outside their control until the second half of the 3rd century BC. In the course of the Punic wars (264–146 BC), the Romans challenged Carthaginian hegemony in the western Mediterranean, culminating in the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, but the Punic language and Punic culture endured under Roman rule, surviving in some places until late antiquity.
The English adjective "Punic" is used in modern academic writing to refer to the western Phoenicians. The proper nouns "Punics" and "Punes" were used in the 16th century, but are obsolete and there is no proper noun in current use. "Punic" derives from the Latin poenus and punicus, which were used mostly to refer to the Carthaginians and other western Phoenicians. These terms derived from the Ancient Greek word Φοῖνιξ ("Phoinix"), plural form Φοίνικες ("Phoinikes"), which was used indiscriminately to refer to both western and eastern Phoenicians. Latin later borrowed the Greek term a second time as "Phoenix", plural form "Phoenices", also used indiscriminately.
Numismatic evidence from Sicily shows that some western Phoenicians made use of the term "Phoinix", but it is not clear what term (if any) they used for themselves; they may have called themselves 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍𐤌 (knʿnm, "Canaanites"). A passage from Augustine has often been interpreted as indicating that they called themselves Canaanites (Chanani in Latin), Augustine writes:
When our rural peasants are asked what they are, they reply, in Punic, "Chanani", which is only a corruption by one letter of the alphabet of what we would expect: What else should they reply except that they are "Chananei"?
It has been argued by J.C. Quinn that this is a misreading, since although this term is "applied to Levantine people" in the Hebrew Bible, "there is no other evidence for self-identification as Canaanite, and so we might suspect him of learned optimism." However, this opinion is not shared by all scholars.
In modern academic writing, the term Punic exclusively refers to Phoenicians in the western Mediterranean. Specific Punic groups are often referred to with hyphenated names, like Siculo-Punic or Sardo-Punic. (This practice has ancient roots: Hellenistic Greek authors sometimes referred to the Punic inhabitants of central northern Africa (Libya) as Liby-Phoenicians.)
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Punic people
The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians (and sometimes as Western Phoenicians), were a Semitic people who migrated from Phoenicia to the Western Mediterranean 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, 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 eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, Malta, and Ibiza. Their language, Punic, was a variety of Phoenician, one of the Northwest Semitic languages originating in the Levant.
Literary sources report two moments of Tyrian[citation needed] settlements in the west, the first in the 12th century BC (the cities Utica, Lixus, and Gadir) that hasn't been confirmed by archaeology, and a second at the end of the 9th century BC, documented in written references in both east and west, which culminated in the foundation of colonies in northwest Africa (the cities Auza, Carthage, and Kition on the southern coast of Cyprus) and formed part of trading networks linked to Tyre, Arvad, Byblos, Berytus, Ekron, and Sidon in the Phoenician homeland. Although links with Phoenicia were retained throughout their history, they also developed close trading relations with other peoples of the western Mediterranean, such as Sicilians, Sardinians, Berbers, Greeks, and Iberians, and developed some cultural traits distinct from those of their Phoenician homeland. Some of these were shared by all western Phoenicians, while others were restricted to individual regions within the Punic sphere.
The western Phoenicians were arranged into a multitude of self-governing city-states. Carthage had grown to be the largest and most powerful of these city-states by the 5th century BC and gained increasingly close control over Punic Sicily and Sardinia in the 4th century BC, but communities in Iberia remained outside their control until the second half of the 3rd century BC. In the course of the Punic wars (264–146 BC), the Romans challenged Carthaginian hegemony in the western Mediterranean, culminating in the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, but the Punic language and Punic culture endured under Roman rule, surviving in some places until late antiquity.
The English adjective "Punic" is used in modern academic writing to refer to the western Phoenicians. The proper nouns "Punics" and "Punes" were used in the 16th century, but are obsolete and there is no proper noun in current use. "Punic" derives from the Latin poenus and punicus, which were used mostly to refer to the Carthaginians and other western Phoenicians. These terms derived from the Ancient Greek word Φοῖνιξ ("Phoinix"), plural form Φοίνικες ("Phoinikes"), which was used indiscriminately to refer to both western and eastern Phoenicians. Latin later borrowed the Greek term a second time as "Phoenix", plural form "Phoenices", also used indiscriminately.
Numismatic evidence from Sicily shows that some western Phoenicians made use of the term "Phoinix", but it is not clear what term (if any) they used for themselves; they may have called themselves 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍𐤌 (knʿnm, "Canaanites"). A passage from Augustine has often been interpreted as indicating that they called themselves Canaanites (Chanani in Latin), Augustine writes:
When our rural peasants are asked what they are, they reply, in Punic, "Chanani", which is only a corruption by one letter of the alphabet of what we would expect: What else should they reply except that they are "Chananei"?
It has been argued by J.C. Quinn that this is a misreading, since although this term is "applied to Levantine people" in the Hebrew Bible, "there is no other evidence for self-identification as Canaanite, and so we might suspect him of learned optimism." However, this opinion is not shared by all scholars.
In modern academic writing, the term Punic exclusively refers to Phoenicians in the western Mediterranean. Specific Punic groups are often referred to with hyphenated names, like Siculo-Punic or Sardo-Punic. (This practice has ancient roots: Hellenistic Greek authors sometimes referred to the Punic inhabitants of central northern Africa (Libya) as Liby-Phoenicians.)