The Obituary
Tanit was the chief goddess of Carthage, consort of Baal Hammon and patron of the city’s fertility, war, and the heavens. Her distinctive emblem, a triangle crowned by a disc and crescent, was carved on countless votive stelae across the Punic world. After Rome destroyed Carthage in 146 BCE and refounded it, she was assimilated to the Roman Dea Caelestis and worshipped for centuries more, until Christianity supplanted the old Punic cult across North Africa.
Worth remembering
- Her emblem, a stylized figure of a disc above a triangle with raised arms, appears on thousands of Punic stelae.
- Under Rome she was reborn as Dea Caelestis, the Heavenly Goddess, with a temple at Carthage.
Sources
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.