Phoenician–Punic literature

Voyage of Hanno the Navigator, the translation of which is one of the few surviving Phoenician accounts.

Phoenician–Punic literature is literature written in Phoenician, the language of the ancient civilization of Phoenicia, or in the Punic language that developed from Phoenician and was used in Ancient Carthage. Phoenician literature is surrounded by a halo of mystery due to the fact that only a few vestiges of it have been preserved: all that remains is a series of inscriptions, few of which are of a purely literary nature (e.g. historical narrative, poems, etc.). The majority of preserved works consists of items such as coins, fragments of the History of Sanchuniathon and the Treatise of Mago, the Greek translation of the voyage of Hanno the Navigator and the text of Poenulus of Plautus. However, it is a proven fact that there were libraries in both Phoenicia and Carthage and that the Phoenicians had a rich literary production inherited from their Canaanite past, of which works such as the ones written by Philo of Byblos or Menander of Ephesus are just a small part.

History and sources

Main Phoenician trade routes, which linked the metropolis with its colonies.

The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus alludes to the Phoenician or Tyrian annals that he supposedly consulted to write his historical works. Herodotus also speaks of the existence of books from Byblos and a History of Tyre preserved in the temple of Hercules-Melqart in Tyre. In addition, it is possible to find some remnants of the influence exerted by certain writings of Ugarit in some biblical books, such as Genesis or the book of Ruth, in which there are traces of poetic compositions of religious themes, as well as others of a political nature with a marked propagandistic profile or of a philosophical nature. Rufus Festus Avienus also alludes to some old Punic annals from which he would have extracted his reports on the voyage of Himilco. In fact, the Greco-Roman sources speak of some Punic books saved in extremis from the looting and burning to which Carthage was subjected for several days by the legions of Scipio Africanus in the spring of 146 B.C. Pliny indicates in his Natural History that at the fall of Carthage many of these works passed to the Numidian rulers and that the Roman Senate ordered the translation into Latin of some of them, in particular the agricultural work of Mago, for which a commission was created under the direction of Decimus Junius Pison.

According to the Byzantine encyclopedia called Suda there was in antiquity a certain Charon of Carthage who was a historian who wrote several works; "Lives of Illustrious Men", "Lives of Illustrious Women" and "Tyrants".

Extent of Carthaginian territory before the First Punic War.

Augustine of Hippo, who lived between the third and fourth centuries A.D., considered Punic as one of the main "sapiential" languages, together with Hebrew, Canaanite, Latin and Greek. About literature in Punic he commented in one of his letters: Quae lingua si improbatur abs te, nega Punicis Libris, ut a viris doctissimus proditur, multa sapienter esse mandata memoriae ("If you reject this language, you are denying what many learned men have admitted: there are many things that have been wisely preserved from oblivion thanks to books written in Punic"). For Augustine this literature was not only ancient, but also contemporary. He speaks of abecedaria and psalms composed in Punic and that, in fact, both Donatists and Neo-Punic Catholics write little books in Punic that bring together testimonies of the sacred scriptures. It has even been thought that an important part of the Bible was translated into Neopunic.

Subjects

Treatises on agriculture

It is one of the fields about which we have more data, since it is known that once the Third Punic War was over, the Senate of Rome decided to translate into Latin an encyclopedic treatise on agronomy written by Mago, who was considered by Columella as the father of Agronomy. This treatise was composed of 28 books of which 66 fragments have been preserved. Its contents include aspects of viticulture, topography, veterinary medicine, beekeeping and fruit arboriculture, as well as indications in which he defends that the properties should not be very extensive and that the owner should not be absent from the place. In any case, Mago must not have been the only Carthaginian treatise writer who focused on this same subject, since Columella expressly indicates that there were several writers who focused on this issue, although, except for a certain Hamilcar, he does not make any clarification as to who they might be or the depth of their work.

Philosophical writings

Although there is little evidence, it seems likely that writings on philosophical themes were written, since it is known that both in Carthage and in Gadir there were Platonic and Pythagorean schools, currents that seem to have enjoyed wide acceptance in the colonial Phoenician sphere. We only know of writings by Moderatus, of the Gaditan school, who wrote in Greek. Sanchuniathon is attributed with a treatise on philosophy of which there is no record other than a simple mention.

Religious writings

The fragments that have been preserved of Sanchuniathon's work form the most extensive known religious text on Phoenician mythology: a kind of Theogony that includes passages on cosmogony, heroic stories, the life of the gods and the use of rituals with snakes. There is also an allusion by Plutarch regarding a series of scrolls of sacred content that were rescued from Carthage and hidden underground, although the veracity of this information has not been confirmed. On the other hand, it is known that Phoenician religious literature profoundly influenced the biblical account of Job.

Treatises on history

Polybius, in his Histories clearly speaks of Carthaginian historians and Sallust claims to have documented himself with the Punic books of the Numidian king Hiempsal. The historical work of Sanchuniathon, considered the most extensive work produced in Phoenician, was translated into Greek in the 2nd century B.C., although only a long fragment has been preserved, dealing mainly with religious themes. However, the authenticity of the texts attributed to Sanchuniathon has been questioned several times, without a clear consensus having been reached. In Greek literature until after the 3rd century B.C. there are abundant allusions to a Cosmogony written by Mochus of Sidon in the 14th century B.C. The probable existence of biographies of Hannibal has also been pointed out; according to Polybius and Titus Livy, he had such deeds recorded in Phoenician and Greek in 205 B.C. in the temple of Hera in Lacinia, being quite probable that he was merely continuing an ancient tradition according to which the Carthaginian generals used to write their deeds by giving them to a sanctuary to preserve them. Another example of this type of literature is an inscription on the capture of Agrigento in 406 B.C., of which a small fragment of a text that must have been larger is preserved:

π€…β€π€‰β€π€‹β€π€Šβ€ π€“β€π€β€π€Œβ€ 𐀀‏𐀃‏𐀍‏𐀁‏𐀏‏𐀋‏ 𐀁‏𐀍‏ π€‚β€π€“β€π€Žβ€π€Šβ€π€β€ 𐀄‏𐀓‏𐀁‏ π€…β€π€‡β€π€Œβ€π€‹β€π€Šβ€π€•β€ 𐀁‏𐀍‏ 𐀇‏𐀍‏𐀀‏ 𐀄‏𐀓‏𐀁‏ 𐀏‏𐀋‏𐀔‏ π€…β€π€•β€π€Œβ€π€Šβ€ π€„β€π€Œβ€π€•β€π€€β€π€‰β€π€•β€ 𐀀‏𐀂‏𐀓‏𐀂‏𐀍‏𐀕‏ 𐀅‏𐀔‏𐀕‏ 𐀄‏(π€Œβ€)𐀕‏ π€”β€π€‹β€π€Œβ€ 𐀃‏𐀋‏ 𐀁‏𐀏‏𐀋‏ π€β€π€…β€π€Ž
wylk rbm ΚΎdnbΚΏl bn grskn hrb wαΈ₯mlkt bn αΈ₯nΚΎ hrb ΚΏlΕ‘ wtmk hmt ΚΎytΚΎgrgnt wΕ‘t h[m]t Ε‘lm dl bΚΏl nws
General Idnibal, son of Gisco the Great, and Himilco, son of Hanno the Great, set out at dawn, and took Agrigentum; and they [the Agrigentines] surrendered, including those who had fled.

Poetry

Ruins of the arch built by Trajan in Mactar (Tunisia).

Fragments of Phoenician poems have been found that indicate that among other genres, rhymed rhetorical prose and poetic narration of iambic rhythm were cultivated.

Badnim garasth is on,
mysyrthim, bal serm ra;
sab siben Mycne,
is ab syth sath syby;
in aab sa[l]e(m) lo sal:
Β«un ath ab[dach]a!Β»

From Adnim I brought forth the wicked fellow,
from the Sirthis, to him, of ill fame;
(when) our army surrounded Micne,
then I made that enemy [my] captive;
The enemy asked mercy for himself:
"Spare your slave!"

β€”Iulius Nasif, (Adnim, around 350 A.D.)
Hymn to αΈ€αΉ­r-Mescar, KAI 144 I
Punic dialect (Mactar, Tunisia)
π€‹β€π€€β€π€‹β€π€€β€π€Œβ€ 𐀄‏𐀒‏𐀉‏𐀃‏𐀔‏ 𐀋‏𐀔‏𐀀‏𐀕‏ 𐀀‏𐀇‏𐀕‏ π€”β€π€Œβ€π€Œβ€

π€β€π€Žβ€π€…β€π€β€ π€Œβ€π€‹β€π€Šβ€ π€‡β€π€ˆβ€π€“β€ π€Œβ€π€‰β€π€Žβ€π€Šβ€π€“β€ 𐀓‏𐀆‏𐀍‏ π€‰β€π€Œβ€π€Œβ€

𐀁‏𐀏‏𐀋‏ 𐀇‏𐀓‏𐀃‏𐀕‏ 𐀏‏𐀋‏ π€‚β€π€β€π€“β€π€•β€π€Œβ€

lilΔ«m iqqiddΔ«s laset ot semim

Biswb mΕ«lek αΈ€αΉ­r, Meskar rΕ«zen yammΔ«m

Bal aradot al gubΕ«ratim

Exalt the name of the holy god!

αΈ€αΉ­r, king of the land; Mescar, ruler of the seas,

the one who inspires fear because of his power.

Language and grammar

Hardly anything is known about the grammatical knowledge of the Phoenicians themselves. A Latin manuscript, the Berne codex 123 indicates that Phoenician had 12 parts of speech, the traditional eight (noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection) plus the article, the "impersonal mood", the infinitive and the "gerund". On the other hand, Eusebius of Caesarea attributes to Sanchuniathon the authorship of a treatise entitled About the Phoenician Alphabet.

Treatises on navigation and geography

Despite the fame of the Phoenicians as navigators and explorers, the only two writings that have survived to the present day are the accounts of Hanno the Navigator and Himilco. The original account of Hanno does not seem to be earlier than the second century B.C., so much so that it has even been questioned whether it was not written at the time of the destruction of Carthage. It is interesting to note that Greek and Latin historiography seems to be completely unaware of this journey before the fall of the Punic capital. Himilco's journey is only known from some comments made by Avienus, which, according to him, come from ancient Punic annals to which he would have had access. It has also been suggested that King Juba II based his geographical knowledge of the sources of the Nile on Punic books that he kept in his court, as Amianus Marcellinus reports, sources that indicated that the origin of this river was in a mountain in Mauritania. Something similar happens with the navigations that this monarch would have supposedly carried out in the Canary archipelago, an expedition that Pliny would have collected: although the way in which the Plinian text describes the islands makes it clear that there was a real trip to these waters, it is currently discussed whether this Atlantic expedition was carried out by Juba II or if, in reality, this monarch simply collected a series of data that he found in the Carthaginian books that he had inherited from his ancestors. For his part, Marinus of Tyre, who lived in the first century A.D., was considered in his time to be the first geographer worthy of the appellation of scientist. Although his original work has disappeared, Claudius Ptolemy used it extensively in the writing of his Geographia.

International and legislative treaties

There is no direct news on the matter, but it is known that the international treaties that Rome signed with Carthage were preserved in the Capitol on bronze tablets and it must be assumed that the Punics preserved them as well. It is known that the treaty made in 215 B.C. between Hannibal and Philip V of Macedon was written in Greek and Punic and alluded to various Carthaginian divinities in such a way as to recall the treaty signed centuries earlier between Esarhaddon and the king of Tyre, which has been interpreted as a sign of state conservatism that can only be explained by the conservation over the centuries of these documents.

Translated literature

Plautus, Roman comediographer who included texts in Punic in one of his works, the Poenulus.

Many classical authors and even some contemporary authors have defended the idea that in antiquity only the Romans had developed their culture sufficiently to understand and translate Greek plays. Paradoxically, it is precisely in the work Poenulus by the comediographer Plautus that one of the few places where there is evidence of translations of Greek plays into Punic. With the rise of Carthage in the 5th century B.C., Phoenician became a prestigious language in the Mediterranean, competing with Latin and Greek, which led to this translation work. Below are quoted two fragments from the Poenulus ("The Little Punic"), a translation of the Greek work ὁ ΞšΞ±ΟΟ‡Ξ·Ξ΄ΟŒΞ½ΞΉΞΏΟ‚ (ho KarkhΔ“dΓ³nios, "the Carthaginian"), possibly by the poet Alexis of Thurii (ca. 375-275 B.C. ) and in which Plautus included fragments from the translation of this same work into Punic, as well as from several other translations of which he was aware, in order both to amuse the audience with the strange sound of a language and to serve as a foothold for puns and mistranslations:

Acharistocles: Mu?
Milphio: Ponnim sycartim
Acharistocles: Bal umer! Iadata?

Acharistocles: What?
Milphio: Do you remember anything about [the] Punic [language]?
Acharistocles: Not a word! Do you?

β€”Punic translation of Karkhedonios (by Alexis?), included in the Poenulus by Plautus.

Megadorus: Neste ien. Neste dum et
Euclio: Al. Anec este mem

Megadorus: Let us drink wine; let us drink the blood of the vine.
Euclio: No, I will drink water!

β€”Punic translation of the Aulularia by Menander, included in Plautus's Poenulus.

See also


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