Archeologists Battle Developers, Looters to Save Ruins : Carthage, Destroyed by Romans, Rises Again

With the repeated cry “Carthago Delenda Est”-- Carthage Must Be Destroyed--ancient Rome’s Senator Cato in 146 BC demanded the end of an enemy that had dominated the western Mediterranean for five centuries.

The victorious Roman legions did their work thoroughly. The city was burned to the ground and its half a million inhabitants killed or transported into slavery.

The Romans thought they had obliterated Carthage, but they did not count on the scientific methods devised by archeologists 21 centuries later.

Today, parts of ancient Carthage are emerging from the ruins--at least those parts not buried under modern luxury villas and railroad tracks or destroyed anew by looters and bulldozers.

In 1974, the Punic, or Carthaginian, remains were designated as part of mankind’s universal heritage by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Since then, archeological missions from the United States, Britain, France, Sweden, Canada, Italy and other countries have made massive efforts to save what still can be salvaged of the ancient city.

Said Mohammed Fantar, director of Tunisia’s National Institute of Archeology: “A century ago, archeologists believed that the Romans destroyed the city so thoroughly that literally nothing of it was left. Since then, whole sections of it have been unearthed and most is still waiting to be dug out of the rubble.”

The sinister site known as the Tophet (sacred pyre) has recently yielded new insight into the human sacrifice practiced in ancient Carthage. Urns buried nearby contain the charred bone fragments of at least 20,000 children sacrificed to the gods Baal and Tanit to ward off evil fate.

The victims’ families erected small stone monuments to commemorate each sacrifice. The inscriptions, in one of the world’s first phonetic alphabets, show that sheep often were substituted for children when danger seemed remote.

But as the Roman legions approached the gates, the slaughter of human victims reached its zenith.

The circular harbor from which Punic galleons sailed the oceans of the entire known world has been partially excavated. There, traders landed tin from Cornwall, spices from the Orient and elephants for Hannibal’s legions from West Africa.

Fantar believes a 2,500-year-old cargo-laden Punic sailing ship may be lying in mud at the bottom of the harbor.

With the exception of one ship preserved in Marsala, in nearby Sicily, no seagoing Punic vessel has ever been found.

Many specialists consider that what is being done to save Carthage is too little and too late, particularly since UNESCO wound up its active contribution four years ago.

Much of the 1,235-acre site of ancient Carthage fell victim to vandals, fanatics and speculators. For centuries, the ruins were used as a quarry, where local inhabitants dug up finely carved Carthaginian stone for use as building material.

In 1270, France’s King Louis IX--later canonized by the Roman Catholic Church as St. Louis--died of the plague here on his way back from the Crusades. After Tunisia became a French colony in 1881, a huge Roman Catholic cathedral dedicated to St. Louis was built on the summit of the Byrsa hill that was the center of ancient Carthage.

Tunisia’s population is 97% Islamic and felt no need for a cathedral. The building was deconsecrated long ago and converted into a museum of Punic remains. Unknown treasures lie buried under its foundations, says Abdelmajid Ennabli, curator of the Carthage archeological museum.

The Romans buried the ruins under up to 22 feet of rubble and spread salt over the ground so nothing could ever grow there. Less than a century later, they built a city of their own on the site.

Most of the structures now admired by tourists are of Roman or Byzantine origin.

In the 7th Century, the Arabs overran North Africa and destroyed Carthage a second time.

Now a fashionable suburb of Tunis, Carthage is connected to the Tunisian capital by a commuter railroad that runs for 10 miles over the buried ruins.