SANCTUARY OF TANIT PROROK 573 



THE INSCRIPTIONS 



The excavation of this floor is perhaps one of the most important 

 of North African archeological researches, for these inscriptions 

 are clues to the epigraphy of a lost empire, to new artistic designs, 

 to new religious customs, and to the new names of Carthaginians 

 of Hannibal and Hanno's days. 



We dug up several beautiful stelae in a very fine grain of stone 

 and the designs were of great variety and workmanship. Temple 

 columns, the tree of life, lotus flowers, Carthaginian priests, the 

 sacred plates, uplifted palms, dolphins, and other mystic symbols, 

 have rewarded the excavators' eft'orts. One of the most interesting 

 discoveries was made at the base of a great wall. While supervis- 

 ing the digging from floor C, one of the students of the British 

 school at Rome, who collaborated with us in this work, came run- 

 ning from that section of the excavations selected for his minute 

 supervision, to report the finding of a beautifully sculptured stele. 

 In a few moments willing hands had dug away the soil and reached 

 an entirely new type of Punic stele showing a priest with uplifted 

 hands finel}'^ sculptured at its face. The Abbe Chabot at once 

 took a squeeze, an important action that is taken the moment a 

 new inscription is located. (The archeologists and students were 

 all sujjplied with squeezers to be able to take an impression at a 

 moment's notice.) The Abbe Chabot at once announced a new 

 form of Punic epigraphy. It was a maledictory curse of Baal 

 Ammon — " Whoever overthrows this stone shall be shattered by 

 Baal " * * * it commenced. 



A few minutes later another inscription appeared with a maledic- 

 tion of Tanit '" at the violators of the sacred silence of the area of 

 the Temple of Tanit." A fine Punic inscription placed in the new 

 museum for safety's sake, bears a genealogy of 15 generations, or 

 approximately r»00 years of a Carthaginian family whose origin goes 

 back to the Phoenician founding of this Tyrian colony. This field 

 of stehe has only been "tapped," and it is impossible to calculate 

 the amount of information we may derive from this excavation in 

 regard to the history of Carthage. 



The inscriptions of Carthage differ slightly from those of ancient 

 Phoenicia and they are important additions to the epigraphy which 

 forms the first known alphabet of man. There is certainly a great 

 field of scientific knowledge to be published for the benefit of the 

 history of the ancient metropolis of North Africa, and from this 

 ancient sanctuary, near which laps the sea of the ancients, some of 

 the mystery that still surrounds the site of Carthage may in the near 

 future be penetrated. 



