Punic stela

ITradition has it that the city of Carthage was founded in 814 B.C. by queen Dido, who had fled Phoenicia, her home country, as a political refugee. After only a short while, Carthage’s trade empire covered the coasts of the West Mediterranean, which of course resulted in conflicts with the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans. Eventually, after three bloody wars, Carthage was razed to the ground by general Scipio Aemilianus in 146 B.C.
The Phoenician religion, which the people from Carthage had brought along with them, comprised a few gory aspects. In times of need the Carthaginians sacrificed children to the gods. The stela depicted here is typical of the Tophet, the children’s burial site. Usually, the headstones feature the sign of Tanit, a stylized female figure with uplifted arms. Besides these, we find depictions of sacrificial animals and ritual symbols, like the raised praying hand. As a rule, the headstones are dedicated to Tanit and her husband Baal Hammon, the god supreme. The inscriptions are in Punic, a variant of the Phoenician script.
These stones were discovered in Carthage in 1817 by the Dutch engineer Jean Emile Humbert (1771-1839). They were the first indication of the location of the city of Carthage in ancient times. The destruction by the Romans had been so radical that Carthage’s exact location had not been definitely established till then.