Carthage as an Interwoven Context Focusing on The Sign of Tanit

These days our societies, beliefs, culture and almost all aspects of our lives and our consciousness are affected and being changed through the process of globalization and migration. Although “The international migration of people lies at the core of the ongoing process of globalization.” But, in fact these two phenomena are derived from each other and play an affective role in generating one another. These two phenomena have made everything that are related to them so dynamic and intertwined, that most terms and concepts that were used in the past such as culture, society, and context, need to be redefined and clarified again. One useful way to study these issues is to do research and find the most similar and relevant examples that have occurred in the historical context to refer to in our study. Therefore, we decided to go back to the ancient time, when one of the most well-known powers and even more dominant than Roman empire, for at least one hundred years, had been existed across the Mediterranean. Like the process of globalization, which is directly in connection with trading, from goods to technology, thank to the advances in communication systems; the Carthage foundation and its context, had been also influenced and based on the trade, maritime transport, and migration among the three continents of Asia, Europe, and Africa. But since we do not have access anymore to those people, who used to live in that place, and sources of accessible texts and documentations are not adequate and clear enough for conducting our research based on that, so focusing on primary sources like Material Culture, would be helpful for this study. To achieve this goal, we have chosen one of the most famous symbols that have appeared in various forms, from carvings on stelae to pendants, in various places and monuments. This motive is known as the sign of Tanit. To find out how this sign gains meaning as a motive and turn to a symbol in its context, first we are going to give a description about this sign, and then try to do a comparative study of The sign of Tanit, in its varieties of manifestation in different parts of ancient Carthage territory and Phoenician cities in the time between approximately ۸۰۰ BCE, that was built by Phoenician and the time when Carthage was destroyed by the Romans in ۱۴۶ BC. Furthermore, how the beliefs and religious traditions and faith of the people, who used to be living in ancient Carthage, were influenced by the changes in their complex and interwoven context, due to the process of migration, will be investigated through Semiotics. Semiotics is used as a methodology in our research because it considers how humans give meaning to signs in relation to the world . By using this methodology and contextualising The Sign of Tanit with the help of Material Culture studies, we can find out how this symbol can be conceived as a text, and how it was making dialogue among the Carthaginian in a multiculturality and multireligious context. Through the study of The Sign of Tanit, we are going to understand how the process of migration had been influencing on the lives of people in a complex and dynamic context of ancient Carthage.

Keywords:

Carthage , Worldview , Migration , Culture , Religion , The Sign of Tanit