Kerkouane – An Authentic Picture of Phoenician-Punic Life
By: Habeeb Salloum/Arab America Contributing Writer
I came across Kerkouane, the Phoenician-Punic/Carthaginian, town situated on the northern Tunisian peninsula of Cap Bon, quite by accident. While on a tour of Cap Bon on the coast of the Mediterranean we had stopped at the ruins of this ancient city.
The first thing that caught my eye was the not-too-far away hip bath in the ruins of a home. It appeared like a bathtub from our modern age. I examined it amazed. Despite the centuries that have passed, it seemed to be still in A-one condition. This was one of many, and surveying the ruins of Kerkouane, I came to realize that the houses were built according to a systematic Phoenician-Punic town plan, almost every courtyard-style house having its own private bath.
Who were these people of Kerkouane? They were the descendants of the Canaanites of the Syrian-Lebanese coast who eventually were named by the Greeks Phoenicians. These Phoenicians were a seafaring people who made their fame in commerce in the manufacture and trade in a purple dye from the murex shellfish. As they expanded, they settled in the western part of the Mediterranean mainly in what is now known as Sicily, Malta, Tunisia, and southern Spain. But it was their capital city of Carthage where these Phoenicians developed what came to be referred to as ‘Punic’ civilization. In 1985 UNESCO declared Kerkouane and its necropolis a World Heritage Site based on the unrestored structures of this Phoenician-Punic town. It was never re-inhabited after it was abandoned and never rebuilt after it was destroyed. It is the only example, until today that provides a picture of a Phoenician-Punic city and its architecture from at least the 6th century B.C., the time when it was founded, to the middle of the 3rd century B.C. From the site, we learn that Punic small-town urban planning was highly developed. We also learn about Punic architecture, the lifestyle of the inhabitants, merchants, and craftsmen, their economic life, and how they relaxed in the comfort of their own homes, industrial-based on the production of dyes and even figurines. From the necropolis, we learn of Punic funerary architecture, along with Punic religious and burial customs.
The first invasion of the city was by Agathocles, referred to as the ‘tyrant of Syracuse’, who plundered the city around 310 B.C. Just as the city was recovering, there was another attack, this time by Regulus and the Romans who sacked and destroyed the city leveling it to the ground during the First Punic War (264-241 B.C.). The Romans, however, did not occupy nor rebuild it. Kerkouane was most likely abandoned in the mid-3rd century B.C. during the war. Today, it survives as it was left, remnants of the once Phoenician-Punic city, its once port sadly facing the waves of the Mediterranean.
As I began my tour of the site, the guide led our group to an e pinkish-reddish terracotta hip bath that he explained was a feature for most of the homes of Kerkouane. This fascinated me. Located in a separate room of the house, what I was surveying was actually a bathroom. I never in my life imagined that ancient peoples would have such sanitary methods for bathing. According to our guide, there was even a structured piping system where water from the bathtub would drain through pipes and gutters to the exterior of the home.
Baths and bathrooms were connected to an advanced sewage and drainage system for rain and wastewater, the pipes carved from stone and other materials. Hygiene obviously was important so as to cause this method of transporting rainwater to the household water basins and baths while allowing the wastewater out. The baths, themselves, are raised above floor level usually with a type of bench or seat at the back of the tub with an armrest. Almost all houses contained these small elaborate bathtubs signifying that bathing was important in the daily lives of Kerkouane’s people. It was a private affair and reserved for the home. Perhaps this is what stemmed my fascination as this was contrary to what I knew of the public baths of Rome and even other civilizations such as the Greek and Arab.
Inside the walls of the city Punic domestic residential town planning is clearly evident. The wide and straight-lined gridiron of streets crisscrosses with private residences on both sides intermingled with public squares and courtyards. The walls of many of Kerkouane’s neatly-outlined well-built houses still stand outlining homes, many large-size and possibly attributed to a high standard of living. The houses are quadrilateral in shape. The front door opens to a vestibule and the corridor has one to four porticoes. Some houses have an internal courtyard with various rooms arranged around it, while others have corridors that enter rooms. Almost every residence has a rectangular or circular-shape indoor well which, interestingly, had a removable type of lid to keep the groundwater safe and uncontaminated. There would be a drain for liquid waste that would run alongside the corridor or vestibule. There is also typically a staircase leading to an upper section or terrace of the house. There are even built-in ovens used to make bread in many of the private residences and storage areas with cupboards.
There are those houses that have opus signum floors, a building material made into a pattern of pink and white mosaics and mixed with mortar. It is a form of pavement that originated in North Africa and common in the western Mediterranean, then spread to Sicily then to the Italian peninsula. In Kerkouane the domestic flooring of tesserae mosaics was made waterproof with the addition of ground potsherbs, and thus evident in some of the private baths. Even the Phoenician goddess Tanit is immortalized in some of the floorings with the symbol of her, no doubt to ward off evil.
The once prominent temple of Kerkouane’s deities, Melqart, Sid, and Tanit, is preserved today by only some of its columns that once stood in the temple’s central hall surrounded by several rooms. This plus the remnants of shops, and pottery workshops and kilns, for an onlooker like me, stood still in time. As I observed the extensive site of ruins before me, I felt I had stepped back into the time of one of ancient Carthage’s coastal Phoenician-Punic cities.
French archeologists Charles Saumagne and Pierre Cintas are credited with discovering the ruins of Kerkouane in 1952. Earlier, in 1929, a local resident had come across the nearby necropolis and unfortunately plundered and sold the artifacts he found, until the authorities stopped him. However, it was the 1952 digging that would reveal the scope of Punic architecture, how cities were planned, and the settlement of Kerkouane, something that had been little known up until the discovery.
In 1956 Tunisia gained its independence from France and thanks to the newly formed Tunisian Archaeology Institute Kerkouane became an excavation project of major importance. Although a part of the city had been washed away by the sea, excavations today continue to unveil more secrets of this hidden gem from history.
The Kerkouane Archaeological Museum on the site exhibits relics from every day Punic life in the city. There are some pieces of jewelry and amulets, vases, statues, and some pottery and from Areg al-Ghazouani, the necropolis, the ‘Lady’ or ‘Princess of Kerkouane’, a Punic wooden sarcophagus with the face of the goddess Astarte. The necropolis itself consists of a series of vaults, chamber tombs, and surrounding burial sites and lies almost a mile from Kerkouane.
After examining what Kerkouane had to offer, I returned back to my hotel that evening filled with a wide knowledge of what Punic civilization has given the world.