The Locus of Carthage: Compounding Geographical Logic

The Locus of Carthage: Compounding Geographical LogicAuthor(s): Patrick HuntSource: The African Archaeological Review, Vol. 26, No. 2 (June 2009), pp. 137-154Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40645436 .

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Afr Archaeol Rev (2009) 26:137-154 DOI 10.1007/s 10437-009-905 1-7

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The Locus of Carthage: Compounding Geographical Logic

Patrick Hunt

Published online: 30 May 2009 O Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract North Africa's Phoenician city of Carthage was above all a logical place from which the well-informed maritime Phoenicians colonized and controlled the Western Mediterranean. The leading important factors affecting the founding of Carthage were mostly geographical: overall centrality along the southern coast of the Western Mediterranean; proximity to the island bridge of Italy via Sicily; nascent océanographie knowledge of water currents and wind gyres as well as shoals such as the Gulf of Sidra and the shelter of the Gulf of Tunis itself; and important local topography and religious landmarks.

Keywords Carthage • Geography • North Africa • Maritime • Topography • Mediterranean • Wind and current gyres • Navigation • Sacred landmarks

Introduction

How did the Phoenicians choose the location of Carthage on the coastline of North Africa, a settlement that would become their most important colony? The location of Carthage - Qart Hadas ht or "new city" in Punic (as a colony of Tyre, the "old city") - was no accident, chosen only after several centuries of maritime travel and considered observations of maritime and coastal topography. Few cities in history shared the inseparable relationship of Carthage to the sea; as Strabo (n.d.) said, "Carthage is a ship at anchor." Although Carthage was not the oldest landfall or Phoenician colony in North Africa, it certainly became the most important. The Punic Wars proved that if anyone could break Carthage's command of the Western Mediterranean Sea, its empire could not long survive. But ships and navies need good ports, and in antiquity few harbors and their surrounding urban locations have been so carefully chosen.

P. Hunt (IS!) Stanford University, Stanford, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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What makes this new study timely - building upon but departing from worthy prior studies (Warmington 1960; Février 1964; Bullard 1978; Moscati 1992; Lancei 1992; Aubet 2001; Barkaoui 2003; Niemeyer 2006) - is the detailed consideration given to the factor of oceanography. The Phoenicians would have known experientially the marine environment of sea currents and winds relative to Carthage in its double gulf. Also new is a historic rationale for local topography that also incorporates sacred landscape reminiscent of Phoenicia and Ba'al traditions of sacred mountains, where Ba'al was victorious over the sea god Yam.

Geography is often a powerful force in shaping history, but this factor is not always properly credited. The famous Classical story tells of emigrant queen Dido claiming the Byrsa hill above the bay, and tricking the local people, who grudgingly allowed her only the amount of land an ox hide {byrsa in Greek) would cover. In legend she managed to cut the ox hide into one long strip to measure out a much more sizable demesne than her Libyan neighbors preferred (Virgil, n.d. Aeneid 1.335-68; Diodorus Siculus n.d. XVII, 40.3; Strabo n.d. XVII.3.15). The tales- cobbled from many myths and Classical accounts such as Timaeus, Pompeius Trogus, Marcus Junianus Justin (Pease 1935) - reveal the enterprise and craft for which the Phoenicians were respected or envied, but they reveal little of geographical history (Gifford et al. 1992; Little and Yorke 1975; Yorke et al. 1976). The second century BCE Greek historian Polybius (n.d.) records the position and geography of Carthage in its local coordinates, implying without amplifying some geographical factors in the founding of Carthage (Polybius n.d., History 1.73.3-6):

Carthage is situated at the inmost point of a gulf into which it protrudes on a strip of land, almost entirely surrounded on one side by the sea and on the other by a lake. The corridor of land linking [Carthage] to Africa is 25 stades (4.5 km). The "inmost point" and other details such as "almost entirely surrounded [by

sea]" do not seem to be lost on Polybius (n.d.) for defensibility, but it is reasonable to expect that a historian who went specifically to the places about which he wrote would know this "inmost point" was the optimum location for both weather protection, and natural safety by being protected by water on several sides. The geographer Strabo (n.d.) (XVII.3.14) also noted that Carthage was "situated on a kind of peninsula," which would be a natural defensive advantage if ever attacked by a land-based invasion. Scipio Africanus illustrates this by invading nearby Utica in 204-203 BCE and attacking it first rather than the larger and more defensible Carthage, as Polybius (n.d.) noted (XIV 1.1-5. 15).

Carthage was apparently founded around 814 BCE by refugees from Tyre if the ancient sources like C. Velleius Paterculus (n.d.) {Roman History I. 6.4) are chronologically reliable. Velleius Paterculus (n.d.), 1st century CE Roman historiographer, says Carthage was founded 65 years before Rome, which can be fairly reliably dated to around 750 BCE. "In this period, 65 years before the founding of Rome, Carthage was established by the Tyrian Elissa, by some authors called Dido." Carthage's founding is also recorded in many other ancient Classical texts including Flavius Josephus in the 1st century CE, Against Apion 1.108, where he says Carthage was founded 143 years after Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem - which Solomonic legend placed around 960 BCE, thus dating it around

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817 BCE. In Apion 11.17 Josephus then says, in contradiction, that Carthage began in the first year of the seventh Olympiad, placing it about 748 BCE, but most historians accept the earlier circa 814 date.

Although some now debate the earlier date, suggesting Utica is not much older than Carthage, Classical sources state earlier Phoenicians had colonized the already-mentioned Utica as a landfall in North Africa as much as 275 years before just to the north of Carthage, but it was technically just outside the protected inner Gulf of Tunis. While Utica was also only a smaller trade emporion for centuries, it was soon outstripped by Carthage as a full-fledged commercial city (Fantar 2007: 25). In every way, the carefully-chosen location of Carthage was an improvement over Utica.

Geographical Factors

Although the ancient sources are not explicit on geographical factors - and the author does not espouse simplistic geographic determinism - antiquity does reveal considerable knowledge of geography. In fact, the historical and geographic reasons for locating Carthage are fairly feasible on examination. First, Carthage's position of centrality along the southern coast of the Western Mediterranean gave it a springboard into both the sea trade lanes of Western Europe as well as the rest of the Mediterranean eastward (Fig. 1). Second, Carthage's proximity to the island bridge of Italy via Sicily was another

Fig. 1 Map of Mediterranean. Note Carthage's position in Western Mediterranean and proximity to Sicily. (Credit: Al Duncan)

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geographic advantage. Third, the Phoenicians already possessed nascent but extensive knowledge of océanographie water currents and gyres as well as wind gyres. The shelter of the Gulf of Tunis itself - a double gulf with outer and inner dimensions - was important for the protection of shipping in inclement or unpredictable weather. Fourth, local topography also played a role in memorable features that may have reminded the original Tyrians of some of their own native landmarks in their homeland, including longstanding sacred topography. These were all important factors that led to founding Carthage where it was, and where it became second only to the Tyrian mother city and eventually primary city after the fourth century BCE when Alexander conquered Tyre. Warmington noted in his now dated summary (Warmington 1960: 13-14):

"When the Phoenicians came to choose sites for their settlements, whether trading posts or watering and victualling stations for their ships, they looked first for places easily accessible from the sea but not from a potentially hostile hinterland, such as off-shore islands or rocky peninsulas with a sandy bay on which the ships could be beached."

Linder also confirms some of this deliberate harbor strategy (1972: 163^) Recent research, however, such as that of Ballard and McCann and others off the Skerki Bank northwest of Sicily and elsewhere, has shown that maritime trade from Phoenician and Punic sea traffic and continuing through the Roman era also used direct open deep sea trade, not merely based from island hopping harbors alone as Warmington noted (McCann et al. 1994; Parker 1996; Ballard et al. 2000). The Skerki Bank is a subterranean northern extension of the marine North African shelf where recent underwater surveys and archaeological research has extracted amphorae and other artifacts from fourth century CE merchant trading ships at 800 m depths. Ballard and others have amply demonstrated that trade moved directly from Carthage to Rome along the Skerki Bank where north-south and east-west routes converged, but also where counter-currents meet, suggesting similar trade routes in antiquity. Maritime trade as early as the eighth century BCE also shows that Phoenician ships often sailed in deep water beyond sight of land, evidenced in the Eastern Mediterranean with Phoenician shipwrecks at 400 m depth between Israel and Egypt (Ballard et al. 2002).

As debarkation points and termini for sea travel, the earlier Phoenician pattern of naturally sheltered or modified manmade harbors, as Warmington summarized, or island fortress cities can be found wherever the Phoenicians had their Levant ports at Tyre, Sidon and old Byblos, or at Karpaz in Cyprus. The Carthaginians repeated this at ports like Motya (Sicily), Tharros (Sardinia), Sabratha (Libya), Mahdia (Tunisia), Cartagena (Spain), Benaim (Spain), Ampurias (Spain) and others (Blackman 1982a, b; A. Haggai 2006). Based in some way on the Punic appreciation for the natural double gulf of Tunis, the Phoenicians must have been impressed with the options for harbor selection at Cartagena. Here a perfect deep natural harbor was accessible to Hasdrubal, who founded a port colony there around 227 BCE in deep water surrounded by high hills with easy access to nearby silver mines. For anyone sailing in and out of the port of Cartagena, this provides overall modern corroboration for Hasdrubal's pragmatism and Carthaginian wisdom in topography and geography (Negueruela 2000). Accessibility and safety were the most important criteria; the best sea lanes and overall convenience were not far behind. For example, when

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Thutmose III conquered the Levant around 1450 BCE, his first move toward consolidation was in controlling the harbors: "His first step was to secure undisputed control of the harbors along the Phoenician coast" (Casson 1991: 30).

The specific factors mentioned above that helped in determining Carthage's location deserve amplification as follows.

Position in Mediterranean Center

First, the geographic centrality of this African headland in the Mediterranean at the "crossroads" made it possible for Carthaginians to move equidistantly east and west. Centrality also assisted in controlling maritime traffic in the Mediterranean along the safer stretches of African coast, especially important for sea hegemony on the Western Mediterranean where access to lesser known mineral resources was vital, as opposed to the Eastern Mediterranean mineral resources for which competition was intense with Greek, Egyptian and Levantine claims (Krings 1998).

Ancient geographers like Strabo (n.d.) knew the Mediterranean was basically divided into two basins, the east and west, and Carthage was at the junction of the two. One could also travel east or west through the Libyan Sea along the coast of Libya until Carthage (Strabo n.d., II. 5. 19) in the strait between Libya and Sicily, northwest around Sicily's northern coast, or westward with the western Mediterranean also beginning and opening at this same junction.

From Carthage it is also an "equidistant" direction - or at least time spent as counted in sailing days - westward to the metal-rich colony of silver and lead producing Tartessos in Southern Spain (Diodorus Siculus n.d., V.35) or eastward to the old Phoenician homeland of the Levant in the east. Even against contrary winds, meaning that Spain is closer than Phoenicia in space if not in time, it was normally around a week's journey in both directions in the primary Mediterranean sailing season from April to September. Casson records "seven days and seven nights" journey from Carthage to the Pillars of Herakles at the Atlantic mouth (Casson 1995: 282-3). Also setting out eastward from Carthage along southern Sicily with favorable westerly winds, it was about the same length of journey to Egypt. Centrality of Carthage was a significant necessity to expanding Punic culture, which sent out its own colonies along the African coast both east and west as well as, for example, the important mineral source colonies like Cartagena, in Eastern Spain.

Proximity to Sicily, Steppingstone to Europe

Second, by its proximity to Sicily as a connecting island mass, Carthage was the logical location from which to employ this large island as a land bridge to possible trade resources and markets in Italy and Europe. As Soren et al. note, Carthage was deliberately situated at the "crossroads of the central Mediterranean" (1990: 13). The direct distance to southwestern Sicily (Cape Lilybaeum) from the outer edge of the Gulf of Tunis at Cape Bon is only about 80+ miles, and a larger total of "1,000 stadia" from Lilybaeum to the city of Carthage further inside the gulf as antiquity

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records it (Polybius n.d. 1.42.6). This distance is also recorded in Strabo (n.d.) (XVII.3.16 and II.5.19), although Strabo (n.d.) exaggerated the actual total distance from Lilybaeum to Carthage by at least 30% as Strabo (n.d.) names "1,500 stadia." The distance from Carthage to Lilybaeum should be about 120 miles, from Cape Bon to Lilybaeum about 80+ miles. From Sicily one usually sails with a strong head wind if sailing southwestward as I experienced in summer 2008, and although Sicily could not be seen from the tip of Cape Bon and vice versa, it is easily less than a day by ship from Carthage to Sicily in propitious winds normally blowing from the west. Conversely, Africa was just as easily accessible from Sicily according to Polybius (n.d.) (1.26.1-2), presumably by a ship tacking diagonally into the wind.

Just west of Trapani (ancient Drapana) in Sicily, the Phoenician colony of Motya on the small island of the same name was the debarkation point eastward for the long northern coast of Sicily and eventual colonies like Panormus (later Palermo) and other trading stations. Motya was also the debarkation point northward for Sardinia, where Phoenician colonies such as Tharros on Sardinia, and others on Corsica, would be the logical springboards for trade with Etruria, using the Skerki Bank coastal shelf that extends northwards underwater. Additionally, sailing eastward along the northern coast of Sicily would eventually lead to mainland Italy across the Strait of Messina and what would be the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia in South Italy including Rhegion and Neapolis. Like Carthage, each of these Phoenician colonies mentioned had an advantageous, geographically savvy location as a debarkation point for trade and a logical port for fresh water and safe harboring.

Additionally, Carthage not only juts northward to almost touch Sicily along the Skerki Bank, but this is also the ideal practical location from which to control trade westward with the Balearic islands, Iberia, and access to the Pillars of Herakles (western Gibraltar), and beyond. This is seen in the recorded voyage of Hanno the Navigator, where African exploration was marked by daily reckoning of distance and other phenomena by a habitually maritime culture, with all distances marked relative to Carthage (Schoff 1912: 4). Note the Phoenician custom of founding colonies on islands in protected bays, for example Cerne in the East Atlantic of West Africa, as far from the Pillars of Herakles as Carthage was itself.

Thus the strategic location of Carthage was well thought out as a place safe from eastern marauders as well as less contested by the newly expanding Greek colonies, especially Phocaeans and Corinthians (Fantar 2007: 31) in South Italy and Sicily. Part of Carthage's advantage in being less contested must have been due to its location in Africa to the south of most Greek and early Roman interests. But Carthage's location was also optimum because it was close to newer, western trade markets and metal resources like Spanish tin, lead and especially silver (Diodorus Siculus, n.d. V.38.2), and access to the Atlantic and Cornish tin (Casson 1991: 124- 25). Carthage also had access to Italy and Etruscan bronze as well as the new centers of the murex dye trade established in North Africa (Oren 1986; Master 2003; Ruscillo 2007). Around 540 BCE, Phocaean Greeks tried to push westward beyond Corsica with a fleet of sixty ships but met with a disastrous defeat at the hands of Carthage and its allies, severely curbing Greek colonizing westward for awhile:

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Fig. 2 Gulf of Tunis. Note location of Jebel Boukornine ("Djebel bou Kournine") at bottom of gulf. (Credit: Al Duncan)

"Greek knowledge of the coasts of Iberia seems to have gone into decline after this event" (Nesselrath 2005: 159; Krings 1998: 229 ff). Diodorus Siculus (n.d.) and Herodotus, a bit grudgingly, record how enterprising the Phoenicians were in both discovery and optimizing trade by craftiness:

The Phoenicians from ancient times were unparalleled in their skill at making discoveries motivated for their own profit. (Diodorus Siculus n.d. V.38.3)

Comparable commercial zeal could describe almost any trading society but the Phoenicians may deserve the reputation of being the most accomplished traders of antiquity, seemingly rarely losing a deal through negotiations at which they were unmatched. The Carthaginian commercial monopoly and dominance over all other western Phoenician colonies (Scullard 2005: 487) was a natural extension of geographical advantages.

In all the Punic mercantile activities, the needed presence of Sicily close at hand is hard to ignore. Losing Sicily to the Romans at the end of the first Punic War so enraged Hamilcar Barca, father of Hannibal, that he never forgave Rome, knowing what a blow it would be to Carthage (Polybius n.d. III. 10.4).

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Oceanography: Currents, Winds and Shoals

Third, the Phoenicians knew their oceans better than anyone in the ancient world due to their essentially commercial explorations. Several accounts survive in various late texts of the voyages of the Phoenicians Hanno and Himilco, among others. Himilco's voyages - roughly contemporary with Hanno 's - are mentioned in Pliny's Historia Naturalis 11.169 and also preserved in anonymous accounts and those of Rufus Avienus' Ora Marítima, 4th. c. CE (Murphy 2003). Although Phoenician under- standing of oceanography was nascent, their navigation experience was considerable, more than the contemporary Greeks, some of whose descriptions of voyages in the Mediterranean and elsewhere survived later in the voyage of Pytheas and also in the works of Herodotus (III.91) (Rainey 2001; Cunliffe 2002). Cunliffe also discusses the probable "Massiliot Periplus," a Greek account of sea travel and Atlantic exploration, and the voyages of Himilco. The Phoenicians had centuries of navigation with detailed maritime observation and had long recorded currents and winds (Fig. 3).

Thus, several océanographie factors were also critical for locating Carthage. The Gulf of Tunis lies just west of the Strait of Sicily between Ras el Tib of Africa and Sicily, an important strategic location. At the southwest shore along the Gulf of Tunis, itself about 70 km wide at its northern mouth between the capes, Carthage lies, as mentioned, in a broad double gulf protected from western Mediterranean storms by its extensive capes like Cape Bon (Ras el-Tib) on the east and Cape Farina (Ras et-Tarf) on the west (Shackleton et al. 1984). Wind and water action in the Mediterranean basin normally has observable concurrent cycles, especially noted by mariners from antiquity but now fairly quantifiable (Pinardi et al. 1997, 2005; Burlando 2008).

As an evaporitic basin for millions of years, the Mediterranean Sea annually loses more water to evaporation than it gains from river outflow from Europe and Africa (Couper 1983; Earle and Glover 2008: 133). A constant replenishing surface current enters the Mediterranean from the Atlantic. This surface current is stronger in the Western Mediterranean as it flows eastward, gradually weakening until it reaches the

Fig. 3 Mediterranean Currents and Winds in June. Current gyres noted by solid arrows. Wind direction noted by dotted arrows. (Credit: Mike Williams)

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Levant. Accordingly, there are two major anticlockwise hydrologie gyres in the Mediterranean, one in each major basin, west and east, but with many smaller gyres or "eddies." The main current channel connecting the two sub-basins flows between North Africa and Sicily, specifically along Cape Bon (Ras el-Tib) in North Africa and southwest Sicily, and therefore directly passing the Gulf of Tunis and Carthage. Because the main eastward surface current - originally from the Atlantic - bifurcates along the western coast of Sicily, the now-divided northern anticlockwise surface current also flows eastward along the northern coast of Sicily in the best sailing months (Pinet 2006). Carthage is thus perfectly situated at the main tunneling division to take advantage of both these anticlockwise hydrologie gyres along North Africa and along Sicily.

Although the prevailing wind direction is also generally from the west, the surface westerly winds that sailing vessels would use also follow the same basic cyclonic pattern, bifurcating at Sicily and creating three gyres or circulation patterns that again touch at the Gulf of Tunis. These are: 1) the western Mediterranean gyre between Gibraltar and Sicily, 2) the Libyan gyre between southern Sicily and North African's Gulf of Sidra in Libya, and 3) the Tyrrhenian basin above Sicily. The first two gyres rotate roughly anticlockwise and meet along the North African continental shelf just above the Bay of Tunis (Soloviev et al. 2000; Petit-Maire and Vrielinck 2005; Pirazzoli 2005). New Mediterranean wind velocity studies using the HIPOCAS database show that the Strait of Sicily outside the Gulf of Tunis is also situated in a predictable "wind extreme event": high prevailing wind velocity region from the Algerian coast to the west continuing along the coast of Sicily and into the Gulf of Sidra to the east. The average HIPOCAS wind velocity in the Strait of Sicily appears annually to be about ±25 ms"1 over an extrapolated 100-year period. The Gulf of Tunis itself, however, is in a protected zone not subject to such extreme wind events whereas the Gulf of Sidra is subject to them (Sotillo et al. 2006) and is a known graveyard for ships since antiquity. These prevailing westerly wind patterns are also consistent since antiquity (Haywood and Cook 2007). Phoenician trade monopolies and mercantilist routes are well known, taking centuries to develop to near perfection (Docter 2007), ultimately only ceasing with eventual Roman military domination over competing interests about who would control the Mediterranean (Wolff 1986). Polybius (n.d.) noted that "Carthaginians commanded the sea" (1.7.6; also 1.15.1) to the apprehension of the Romans before the First Punic War (264-241 BCE).

Because as mentioned the Mediterranean surface winds here are predominantly westerlies, depending on whether ships used sails for the wind, or shallow or deep oars for the currents, the general eastward surface wind flow would be useful for traveling east, southeast or northeast, bringing Western goods to the East and vice versa. Moving westward would require tacking into these prevailing winds and would take longer (Tilley 1994; Roberts 1995). This general eastward cyclonic weather model prevails during summer, high season for maritime traffic in antiquity as now, although warm scirocco winds - called ghibli in Libya and much of the North African Maghreb - in early spring and late fall bring Saharan dust and storms into the Mediterranean from the southwest. Having sailed westward into this strong westerly wind in summer 2008 circumnavigating Sicily, I can vouch for its force. Tacking into it can also utilize this same factor to some advantage.

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Often at the mercy of winds and storms - like the disaster recorded in the literary account of Paul's shipwreck in Acts of the Apostles 27:2-44 (Casson 1994: 157-59; Buhagiar 1997, 2007) - certain areas along North Africa added dangers like the infamous Gulf of Sidra. For safest shipping traffic, placement of Carthage also needed to be west of the treacherous shoals of the Gulf of Sidra to the east. Tossed by winds, fighting contrary currents, surprised by rocks and shoals and circumstances often beyond control, sailing was not an easy venture in antiquity, especially in the open sea. Casson 's useful texts are still the best studies of maritime enterprise in the ancient world, followed by Cline's research (Casson 1991: 12ff; Cline 1994). Sailing, whether along a coast or in open sea, was usually for the experienced or brave in the window between April and September, yet never a guarantee of safety even for the veteran merchant sailors. As Warmington said (Warmington 1960: 14):

...Sailing in antiquity was a hazardous venture, and it was the rule whenever possible to keep within sight of land and anchor or beach the ships at night.

On the other hand, as shown above, venturing into open-sea trade was also a practice as early as the eighth century BCE, as mentioned off the Skerki Banks and also off the Levant Coast (Ballard et al. 2000, 2002). As mentioned, the Libyan Gulf of Sidra as we now name it was a ship graveyard from early antiquity onward because it had so many unpredictably shifting sand bars. It was even known in mythology as the Syrtes, a monster lying in wait under the suddenly shallow water, as in Virgil (n.d.) (Aeneid VII.3O3) "how have the Syrtes helped me, monster Charybdis?" (Swain 2000: 155). These dangers were true especially of the western Gulf of Sidra where the cross currents piled up sand invisible to sailors just under the surface if one ventured too far south or too close to land. Alluviation - the factor most responsible for the shoals, along with seasonally changing currents - has diminished from now mostly dry rivers flowing into the Mediterranean from the Atlas Mountains and its eastern subdivisions like the Tunisian Chemtou range of North Africa. This is mostly due to desertification from Sanaran extension northward, but this phenomenon of unexpected shoals can still be easily evidenced from bathymétrie maps where the shallow African continental shelf extends considerably outward, almost 300 km with an average depth of 70- 150 m and often far less on the shallow submarine Tunis Plateau of the western gulf of Sidra (Pinardi et al. 2005: 15). Because ancient shipping often hugged coasts, marine traffic had to cross the open water of the gulf without landmarks along a fairly flat coast, so it was best to stay in open water as far north of the Gulf as possible before heading for land. In this case landfall would have been the capes on the east end of the protected Gulf of Tunis, also where the Libyan Sea would meet Sicily and where its currents then rotate east around the southern coast of Sicily.

Local Topography

Finally, not just the general location on the African coast but also the exact location of Carthage was planned in many respects. Even local topography became integral to the development of Carthage. The Gulf of Tunis is, as mentioned, a double gulf with an inner and outer protected body of water (Figs. 3 and 4), fairly unusual in coastal topography but not lost on the Phoenicians. As mentioned, the mouth of the larger,

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outer gulf is about 70 km wide from outer Cape Farina to Cape Bon, and the smaller, inner gulf only about 30 km wide from Cape Carthago to Ras Dourdas. The bathymetry of the entire gulf itself is shallow, with a depth never exceeding 200 m (Pinardi et al. 2005: Fig. 1). The Byrsa hill where the original Tyrian colony that became Carthage had its first settlement was the highest point of land. The Byrsa is about 75 m high in the somewhat peninsular bayside promontory plain set apart and protected on the north by another headland of Cape Carthago below Cape Farina (Ras-et-Tarf). That Carthage was on the western side of the Gulf of Tunis is also deliberate and logical, where it would not face the brunt of westerly winter winds and was also protected by the headland of Cape Carthago from the northerly winds off the Mediterranean.

This intentional protective aim at Carthage was something many Roman harbors often lacked even centuries later: the early port on the coast where the Tiber River flowed out at Ostia, before Claudius inaugurated an artificial harbor - Portus -

beginning in 42 CE, had no protection against wind and waves (Casson 1965; Royal 2008). On the other hand, as a better parallel to Carthage's shelter in the inner part of the double Gulf of Tunis, the natural Campanian harbor of Puteoli (Pozzuoli) was noted and chosen by Roman naval engineers for some of the same criteria as at Carthage due to its fine deepwater natural harbor, where it was "this shoreline and all its facilities which made Puteoli the great port" in the late Republic (Rickman 1988; Oleson 1988; Hohlfelder 2008). Carthage's excellent natural location, however, was greatly enhanced by the Cothon manmade harbor whereas Roman Puteoli added

Fig. 4 Carthage from Byrsa Hill. Note visual prominence of Jebel Boukornine across gulf. (Credit: P. Hunt)

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moles similar to modern breakwaters. The Greeks at Piraeus had followed a similar Phoenician pattern of an optimum, mostly natural location but increasingly artificially modified harbors with the growth of the 5th century BCE Athenian league and the need for a larger naval fleet (Hunt 1990).

Not only originally on an isthmus, Carthage was protected on several sides by different bodies of water (Fantar 2007: 34). Again, this can be no accident. Just on the south of Carthage, a narrow isthmus of land separated the gulf from an ancient lagoon called Taenia and terminating in Lake Tunis (El Bahira) today, so Carthage was the optimum spot of protected land where a city could rise around a fortress and still be close to arable farmland (Soren et al. 1990: 18), especially the nearby fertile and then fairly well-watered Megara plain in antiquity (Ennabli 2008: 32).

Even though the immediate coastal area was protected by its position in the inner dual gulf and the higher headland of Cape Carthago to the north, the Carthaginians ultimately created an added artificial double harbor just inland by digging out below the Byrsa the cothon or later manmade port. This was so-called 'Secret Harbor' because it was invisible from the gulf with its interior circular military harbor and its exterior rectilinear commercial harbor (Yorke 1976; Hurst and Stager 1978; Garcia 1998). The Punic word cothon probably derived from qt, the Semitic verb root "to cut out" (Fantar 2007: 40^1). Early Phoenician harbor studies (Poidebard 1939) are now superseded by Marriner and Morhange, whose research on ports, especially Phoenician, is both seminal and the most comprehensive to date (Marriner and Morhange 2006, 2007; Marriner et al. 2006a). The most recent study of 2007 just noted shows Mediterranean harbors including Phoenician ports at Byblos, Tyre, Sidon, Carthage and Cartagena, all of which excepting Carthage were essentially buried in different stages whereas the cothon of Carthage is eroded, for possible reasons explained below.

An added advantage that may have been known to Carthaginian nautical engineers of harbors from centuries of experience, the artificial cothon port of Carthage with its dual berthing options has not silted up over the millennia like so many other ancient Mediterranean ports, but has merely eroded instead. This is in contrast to Utica, which is now 12 km inland due to silting of the Medjerda River, as Wilson reviews from a recent study of Tunisia's mostly eroded coastline (Wilson 2006). Carthage's difference might be explained by several possible factors, some of which were presumably known since antiquity. Its location on the western inner double gulf means that it was protected from powerful Mediterranean currents moving eastward even more than Utica would have been. Also, a smaller eddying gyre would flow from the Mediterranean into the Gulf of Tunis in a clockwise direction. After being diverted into the outer gulf by the Zembra island group, any eddying current would flow first along the eastern side of the gulf, which is thus less protected than the western side that received diminished current force. If this weakened gyre then flowed anticlockwise west to Cape Carthago at the base of the outer gulf, it would have been even more reduced by the fact of the duality of gulfs, thus very little current would move into the even shallower inner gulf where Carthage lies.

Although some silting in the inner gulf could have been inescapable from several rivers flowing into it, like the Meliane River (now mostly a wadi) (Margat 2004), the cothon may have had the added advantage of a probable breakwater on the projecting eastern point of the entrance according to most reconstructions. While

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current surface discharge from the region of Carthage is 0.85 km3/year, past or ancient flows as "former natural surface discharge" (before montane deforestation circa 8th century CE ?) are estimated at 3 km3/year and possibly greater. Furthermore, wind patterns are mostly from the west so that any wind-aided silting would go away from the harbor rather than toward it. In some sense, these observable phenomena must have aided a deliberated choice by the water- and wind- observant Phoenicians who had already long established Utica and thus predicted the potential advantages of Carthage over the earlier landfall, not the least of which was its inner gulf position.

It was not merely commercial pragmatism, maritime logic and access to natural resources, however, as the sole geographical factors in Carthage's founding. The Phoenicians and their antecedents in Canaan also had a long history of identifying advantages of local topography and correlating immediate landmarks with religious significance.

One of the first things modern visitors to Carthage still notice looking south from the Byrsa toward the double harbor is the striking landscape (Fig. 4). The broad Gulf of Tunis stretches away to a line of southern and eastern mountains. One peak in particular rises from the water, the southern mountain of Ba'al, known as Jebel Boukornine, or "Bull's Head Mountain" dominating the gulf with a steep rise and prominent double horns at over 495 m elevation. This would have almost certainly been a landmark reminder of either of the dynamic "bull" images of the Phoenician gods El and Ba'al. This is corroborated by a known temple to the gods on the mountain Jebel Boukornine (Ennabli 2008: 10). Although the name may be an ancient toponym, it is difficult to establish how old. On the other hand, the original word boukarnine has clear Greek and Semitic antecedents earlier than Arabic that may reflect or retain elements of its Punic toponym (Lipinski 1982). The earlier colony of Utica had no such distinctive montane landmark hypothetically feasible as a dramatic element of sacred topography.

Somewhat subordinating weather to religious beliefs, the ancestors of the Phoenicians were very cognizant of Mediterranean winds as factored weather elements, although for them this was indicative of Ba'al's power in the Ba'al cycle, seen especially in the Tales of Yamm from the KTU texts, where Ba'al, the storm god is partly responsible for weather patterns that condition maritime traffic in the westerly winds (Smith 1994: 98). Additionally, Ba'al was an atmospheric rather than an earth god whose participation in seasonal change was vital for travel across water and replenishing of water from sea to sky to earth (Green 2003).

For several reasons, "Bull's Head Mountain" is likely reminiscent of a distant, much earlier topographic landmark above ancient Ugarit and now northern coastal Syria. Even though it is south of the city rather than north, Jebel Boukornine was probably celebrated as an extension of the old cult of Ba'al-Saphon (Eissfeldt 1932; Lambdin 1962; Green 2003: 190-93). This earlier toponym was well known to Phoenicians as Mt. Saphon, also the word for "north" in Phoenician and other Semitic languages like Hebrew. It is well-known that "Phoenician sailors were beholden to such deities as Ba'[a]l Saphon for safe passage over the waters," (Ballard et al. 2002: 163; Pope 1955) since Mt. Saphon was Ba'al's "hill of victory" and visible locus of this god's victory over Yam the sea (Gibson 1977). This original Syrian coastal mountain is today known as Jebel Akra, combining the words for high

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place in two languages, Arabic and Greek. It rose immediately from the Levant coast up to almost 1,700 m elevation or around a mile high. Because of this physical prominence, it caught the moisture-laden winds coming from the Mediterranean as an evaporitic basin, and as the moist air ascended it reached dew point and condensed in what climatologists call orographie precipitation, caused by mountains. Naturally, the prototype landmark of Mt. Saphon in the Levant was often covered in clouds and was the logical mountain of Ba'al because it had the highest rainfall of the region (Hunt 1991) to signify Ba'al's blessed presence.

Jebel Boukornine, sacred mountain for the Punic city, exhibits the same topographic and climatic phenomena as Mt. Saphon in Syria, including enhanced orographie precipitation; it would have been the local home of Ba'al, one the most important gods in the Punic pantheon in a long tradition of associations of this old Semitic storm god with high places and sacred mountains (Fleming 1992: 214-17). Plus, as the most prominent local mountain rising from the gulf, it will be cloudy first of anywhere in the region and even functioning as a prognosticator of weather change with sudden cumulus clouds gathering. So it should not be surprising it has the highest local rainfall to garner it the epithet of "Ba'al's Mountain" for Carthage. Its dramatic crest of double peaks lies directly across the bay from Carthage in a line of sight that reflects the double harbor, pride of Carthage, with the sacred precincts of Ba'al and Tanit to the immediate south. This seems hardly a coincidence in a culture where religious topography and the civic sense of Punic urban planning were intertwined. Furthermore, just as Mt. Saphon to the east was a mariner's landmark on the Mediterranean horizon when sailing from Cyprus, so was Jebel Boukornine, Ba'al's new Punic mountain. It was likely to be a mariner's landmark to the south when rounding Cape Bon or Cape Farina into the Gulf of Tunis, as well as symbolic of Ba'al's victory over Yam the sea, as it rises directly over the water when seen both from the gulf and the city of Carthage itself.

Thus, local topography is an important consideration for locating Carthage. It illustrates the best possible use of the landscape in both a physical and spiritual sense, echoing prior Phoenician cultural landmarks that had both geographical and religious significance to this wealthy, pragmatic city that exploited its urban planning to new levels of interpreting its relationship with its gods. Local topography was certainly influential in further defining the exact location of Carthage within the double Gulf of Tunis. In contrast, locations of earlier trading emporia like Utica might also derive from the other factors like Mediterranean centrality and proximity to Sicily, but lack the local topographic factor (including sacred topography) which helps explain the ultimate rise of Carthage over Utica.

Conclusion

All these physical, geographic and topographic factors appear to have been empirically observed and deliberated upon by the nautically savvy Phoenicians over centuries as they explored and traversed the Western Mediterranean from the tenth century BCE onward. Other ancient cultures have also exercised topographical canniness in choices of locating settlements for maritime colonies, and Carthage may not be unique in this aspect. It is feasible, however, to attempt a reconstruction of

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how the Phoenicians regarded geography and topography of land and sea in this instance. Although other early locations might or might not have flourished equally at times, when the Phoenicians chose Carthage in North Africa as their new base of operations, they had very good rationales from their extensive knowledge of the Mediterranean. This knowledge was based on centuries of maritime exploration and geographical observation of everything from accessibility to potential defensive shelter, and even local and regional wind and water currents as well as desired sacred topography. Carthage's location in North Africa was thus the result of compounding geographical logic.

Acknowledgements Acknowledgements are made to the National Geographic Society Expeditions Council for supporting my Tunisian fieldwork in 2007-2008, especially to Rebecca Martin, Director, also to Adda La Violette and to the careful readers of drafts of this article as well as to Al Duncan at Stanford for images.

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