#punic

A Tunisian bride wearing traditional clothes.

Note : Her posture is called Jilwa which is originally an imitation of the Tanit sign . Tanit was the mother goddess in Ancient Carthaginian religion and she was also associated with fertility.

Excavation of a Punic sarcophagus in Carthage, Tunisia

Shalōm 𐤔𐤋𐤌, all. I do apologize for being so absent, it's been fairly hellish trying to handle keeping the lights on and making sure I have food lately 🙃 In any case, this post is about something I've spent my downtime working on: a Phoenician-based ritual calendar! This is actually something I've been wanting to do for a while, but I was spurred on with some discussion in the recently-founded Semitic Paganism Discord server (an awesome little growing community if I may say). Some of my friends there were kind enough to share pages of Festivals and Calendars of the Ancient Near East (2015) by Mark E. Cohen with me, and that served as the most helpful resource for this, although it's also indebted in part to Tess Dawson's Ugaritic-based calendar, which I worked with before.

The actual calendrical function is quite simple: The new year begins with the first Full Moon (𐤇𐤃𐤔 Ḥudish) after the Vernal Equinox; I settled on this as a sort of "line of best fit" going off comparable Ancient Near Eastern calendars as such particular detail of the original Phoenician calendar hasn't survived to us. There are twelve months in a year, each one starting on Ḥudish, with an intercalary month inserted when necessary to keep the new year where it should be relative to the Equinox. The year numbers are simply moved forward to Spring from the Autumn new year of the Ugaritic-based calendar. The lunation as shown here is based in Ṣidon, and I've shared the original spreadsheet files here so it can be customized for one's own locale (I use this site for determining dates myself).

Every month has a patron Deity; only three of these are attested in antiquity, the Gods Ḥiyar (at Ủgarit) and Kirar and ʾEshmun as Baʿal-Marpeʾ (both in Phoenician sources), so I filled in the rest based on relevant festivals and the like. The vocalizations of most of the months are from Learn Phoenician-Punic Language (2024) by Mohamed Amine Slimani with the Phoenician-Punic Dictionary (2000) by Charles R. Krahmalkov supplying most of the other Phoenician names here.

Aside from the New and Full Moon (𐤊𐤎𐤀 Keseʾ), I've also included the Lunar Quarters as a matter of preference. Most of the Festivals and other noted dates simply fall on Ḥudish or Keseʾ of their respective months, the exceptions being the Day of Lamentation for the Temple of Baʿal-Shamin (Peʿlut 9), the Festival of Oil (Ḥiyar 7), Rediscovery of Ủgarit Day (Marpeʾ 22), and of course the Solstice and Equinox Festivals. The Festivals of God's Burial Day and the Awakenings of Milqart and ʾEshmun are new additions based on ancient sources. I set Milqart's Festival as seven days based on the Carthage festival inscription, something I intend to work something out of in time for the even itself this year.

Pendant made of glass paste found in the archaeological site of the 4th-century BC Iberian town of Turó del Montgrós (el Brull, Central Catalonia).

It is in the shape of a bearded man's head and only the left side of the face is preserved. Another fragment recovered at the site corresponds to the rear. At the top of the artefacts that are found complete there is a small ring to thread the pendant on a necklace.

These types of objects were produced by Phoenician and Punic populations and were highly prized in the Mediterranean. They were probably used as amulets to protect their owners from misfortune and to bring good luck. The indigenous people of what nowadays are the Catalan Countries had been in close contact with the Phoenicians and Punics since the early Iron Age, and they remained their main foreign influence in much of the territory until the arrival of Romans centuries later.