PHOENCIAN AND PUNIC REMNANTS are, alas, rather scarce in Cartagena. There was Phoenician activity there for centuries before the war, but Hasdrubal the Fair founded the city only a decade before its sack by the Romans. And from then on it was a Roman city.
There is, however, a museum for the Punic wall, the wall that failed in the end to protect the city from the Romans. This is the Centre for the interpretation of the Punic Rampart.
In it, you can see the remains of a small section of the Punic casemate wall. The museum estimates that it originally had two floors and was about 10 meters high, about twice the height of the surviving ruin.
Livy tells us that the wall was a big challenge for the Roman ground assault:
Whilst this was going on the Carthaginian general had manned the walls with his regular soldiers, and they were amply supplied with missiles, great heaps of which had been stored in readiness. But neither the men, nor their missiles, nor anything else proved such a sure defence as the walls themselves. Very few of the ladders were long enough to reach to the top of the wall, and the longer the ladders the weaker they were. The consequence was that whilst each man who reached the top was unable to get on to the wall, the others who came up behind him were unable to advance and the ladder was broken by the mere weight of men. Some who were on ladders which stood the strain grew dizzy from the height and fell to the ground. As men and ladders were crashing down in all directions and the spirits and courage of the enemy were rising with their success, the signal was sounded for retiring. This led the besieged to hope that they would not only gain a respite from their hard and wearisome struggle for the time being, but would also be safe for the future, as they believed that the city could not be taken by escalade and storm, whilst the construction of siege works would be a difficult matter and would allow time for succours to be sent. The noise and tumult of this first attempt had hardly subsided when Scipio ordered fresh troops to take the ladders from those who were exhausted and wounded and make a more determined attack upon the city. (26:45, Loeb translation)
An attack by these fresh infantry troops via the lagoon behind the city, wading through the low tide, allowed Scipio to enter it unnoticed and take it from the inside.
I found only one other piece of Punic architecture, that one at the Cartagena Roman Forum, which was reportedly the cleared-off site of Hasdrubal the Fair's palace. But it can wait until the next post. There's also a bit more on the Roman Forum Museum below.
The most promising Phoenician and Punic archaeology came from the underwater excavation of local shipwrecks, well documented and displayed at Cartagena's National Museum of Subaquatic Archaeology at the Port.
I have posted extensively for years on the recovery and restoration of the two seventh-century Phoenician boats, the Mazarrón I and Mazarrón II. (Note the variable spellings Mazzarón/Mazzaron and Mazarrón/Mazarron).
The Mazarrón I was restored at the museum and is now on display. It was a moving moment finally to stand next to it.
The Mazarrón II is currently being restored at the same museum. There has been some debate on whether it will go on display in Cartagena or Murcia. I chatted with one of the museum staff about this and I got the impression it will be Cartagena. But between my meager, rusty Spanish and her middling English, I couldn't quite tell if this was the plan or an aspiration.
There were lots of Phoenician and Punic remains on display too, some from the Mazarrón II and some from the Bajo de la Campana shipwreck, the latter from San Javier (Murcia) and dated to around 600 BCE. These included pottery and lead ingots.
Also some objects of apparently religious signficance for the Astarte cult.
Sadly, it was hard to find any Phoenician or Punic epigraphic remains. The only substantial one was an inscription repeated on some ivory tusks from the Bajo de la Campana shipwreck. The best photo I could get was from the ivory tusk in the foreground.
Close-up:
The inscription reads: "Bod‘ashtart, servant" (bd‘Å¡trt ‘bd / בדעשתרת עבד). I'm not sure how Bod‘ashtart was connected to the object.
The only other possible Punic inscription I encountered was in the Roman Forum Museum, on which more in the next post. The object is labeled as an "Operculum (amphora stopper) with seal" and is dated to the second-to-first century BCE. No one seems to have noticed that it is inscribed. There's just a fragment. If it is in fact Punic, I see three letters: a damaged shin, or possibly tav; a two-barred het; and a damaged but clear ayin (t/Å¡-ḥ-‘ = ש/ת–×—–×¢). That doesn't come out to any word or part of a word that I can identify, but I think that's what it says.
There were other bits and pieces from the shipwreck remains that might have been inscribed, but nothing I was sure about.
In the next post we will move on to the much more abundant post-Punic Roman remains.
Previous posts in the series are here, here, and here.
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