page_title: Carthage
section_title: Layout
hierarchical_section_title: Carthage / Topography, layout and society / Layout
caption_attribution_description: English: Archaeological Site of Carthage (Tunisia) Français&#160;: Site archéologique de Carthage (Tunisie) Español: Sitio arqueológico de Cartago 日本語: カルタゴ遺跡 中文: 迦太基遗址 Nederlands: Archeologische stad Carthago Русский: Руины Карфагена العربية: موقع قرطاج الأثري Română: Situl arheologic al Cartaginei (Tunisia)
context_page_description: Carthage was the center or capital city of the ancient Carthaginian civilization, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now the Tunis Governorate in Tunisia. Carthage was widely considered the most important trading hub of the Ancient Mediterranean and was arguably one of the most affluent cities of the classical world.
  The city developed from a 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 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. Cutting the skin into strips, she laid out her claim and founded an empire that would become, through the Punic Wars, the only existential threat to Rome until the coming of the Vandals several centuries later.
  The ancient city was destroyed by the Roman Republic in the Third Punic War in 146 BC and then re-developed as Roman Carthage, which became the major city of the Roman Empire in the province of Africa.
context_section_description: The Punic Carthage was divided into four equally sized residential areas with the same layout, had religious areas, market places, council house, towers, a theater, and a huge necropolis; roughly in the middle of the city stood a high citadel called the Byrsa. Surrounding Carthage were walls "of great strength" said in places to rise above 13 m, being nearly 10 m thick, according to ancient authors. To the west, three parallel walls were built. The walls altogether ran for about 33 kilometres (21 miles) to encircle the city. The heights of the Byrsa were additionally fortified; this area being the last to succumb to the Romans in 146 BC. Originally the Romans had landed their army on the strip of land extending southward from the city.
  Outside the city walls of Carthage is the Chora or farm lands of Carthage. Chora encompassed a limited area: the north coastal tell, the lower Bagradas river valley (inland from Utica), Cape Bon, and the adjacent sahel on the east coast. Punic culture here achieved the introduction of agricultural sciences first developed for lands of the eastern Mediterranean, and their adaptation to local African conditions.
  The urban landscape of Carthage is known in part from ancient authors, augmented by modern digs and surveys conducted by archeologists. The "first urban nucleus" dating to the seventh century, in area about 10 hectares (25 acres), was apparently located on low-lying lands along the coast (north of the later harbors). As confirmed by archaeological excavations, Carthage was a "creation ex nihilo", built on 'virgin' land, and situated at what was then the end of a peninsula. Here among "mud brick walls and beaten clay floors" (recently uncovered) were also found extensive cemeteries, which yielded evocative grave goods like clay masks. "Thanks to this burial archaeology we know more about archaic Carthage than about any other contemporary city in the western Mediterranean." Already in the eighth century, fabric dyeing operations had been established, evident from crushed shells of murex (from which the 'Phoenician purple' was derived). Nonetheless, only a "meager picture" of the cultural life of the earliest pioneers in the city can be conjectured, and not much about housing, monuments or defenses. The Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BC) imagined early Carthage, when his legendary character Aeneas had arrived there:
  "Aeneas found, where lately huts had been,
  
  marvelous buildings, gateways, cobbled ways,
  
  and din of wagons. There the Tyrians
  
  were hard at work: laying courses for walls,
  
  rolling up stones to build the citadel,
  
  while others picked out building sites and plowed
  
  a boundary furrow. Laws were being enacted,
  
  magistrates and a sacred senate chosen.
  
  Here men were dredging harbors, there they laid
  
  the deep foundations of a theatre,
  
  and quarried massive pillars... ."
  The two inner harbours, named cothon in Punic, were located in the southeast; one being commercial, and the other for war. Their definite functions are not entirely known, probably for the construction, outfitting, or repair of ships, perhaps also loading and unloading cargo. Larger anchorages existed to the north and south of the city. North and west of the cothon were located several industrial areas, e.g., metalworking and pottery (e.g., for amphora), which could serve both inner harbours, and ships anchored to the south of the city.
  About the Byrsa, the citadel area to the north, considering its importance our knowledge of it is patchy. Its prominent heights were the scene of fierce combat during the fiery destruction of the city in 146 BC. The Byrsa was the reported site of the Temple of Eshmun (the healing god), at the top of a stairway of sixty steps. A temple of Tanit (the city's queen goddess) was likely situated on the slope of the 'lesser Byrsa' immediately to the east, which runs down toward the sea. Also situated on the Byrsa were luxury homes.
  South of the citadel, near the cothon was the tophet, a special and very old cemetery, which when begun lay outside the city's boundaries. Here the Salammbô was lo
caption: Archaeological Site of Carthage
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