06-08-2007, 01:40 AM
Two more interesting aspects of portraying Carthage are the shield emblems and unit standards.
When I first started looking into this I came across a web site the had a picture of a Carthaginian coin which portrayed a ship with a battle standard on the deck. Unfortunately I didn't bookmark the page or save a copy of the picture and naturally now I cannot find it again. It was a fairly basic standard though - a disk topped by a crescent with its concave side facing up. The standard also had two streamers which I believe were attached to either tip of the crescent.
The only other representations of standards that I have found come from websites dealing with Carthaginian shield emblems. The standard on these sites is very similar to the one I mentioned above, but beneath the large disk is a smaller disk which is itself resting on top of a small crescent with its concave side pointed down. A very similar look to a signum.
Two other very common symbols are: a circle resting inside a crescent on top of a triangle, and a sort of stick figure with a triangular body with its arms pointed upwards. The second one, which apparently is a symbol for the Carthaginian goddess Tanit, bears a striking resemblance to some of the Mycenean female figurines. There are, of course, only so many ways one can stylize a human female figure so the similarity could very well be a coincidence rather than any sort of cultural influence. At any rate, the first symbol could very easily made a standard with the individual elements attached to a staff while the second I see as being more something that would be painted or embroidered onto another surface which would in turn be attached to a staff. I have not seen an pictures that show this though so making standards based on those two symbols would be wild conjecture.
Using them as shield emblems on the other hand is much more likely. The Carthaginian Sacred Band used the symbol of Tanit (patron goddess of Carthage, goddess of the Moon, of the harvest, and apparently of all manner of good things including Mom and Apple Pie) on their shields. They were players in the First Punic War however and not any of the subsequent wars.
Carthage also seemed to be rather fond of putting horses and palm trees on their coins and the miniature sites suggest that these too would make likely shield emblems.
The Carthaginian army was a Hellenistic style army so shield emblems common to other Hellenistic armies would most likely be found on Carthaginian shields as well.
When I first started looking into this I came across a web site the had a picture of a Carthaginian coin which portrayed a ship with a battle standard on the deck. Unfortunately I didn't bookmark the page or save a copy of the picture and naturally now I cannot find it again. It was a fairly basic standard though - a disk topped by a crescent with its concave side facing up. The standard also had two streamers which I believe were attached to either tip of the crescent.
The only other representations of standards that I have found come from websites dealing with Carthaginian shield emblems. The standard on these sites is very similar to the one I mentioned above, but beneath the large disk is a smaller disk which is itself resting on top of a small crescent with its concave side pointed down. A very similar look to a signum.
Two other very common symbols are: a circle resting inside a crescent on top of a triangle, and a sort of stick figure with a triangular body with its arms pointed upwards. The second one, which apparently is a symbol for the Carthaginian goddess Tanit, bears a striking resemblance to some of the Mycenean female figurines. There are, of course, only so many ways one can stylize a human female figure so the similarity could very well be a coincidence rather than any sort of cultural influence. At any rate, the first symbol could very easily made a standard with the individual elements attached to a staff while the second I see as being more something that would be painted or embroidered onto another surface which would in turn be attached to a staff. I have not seen an pictures that show this though so making standards based on those two symbols would be wild conjecture.
Using them as shield emblems on the other hand is much more likely. The Carthaginian Sacred Band used the symbol of Tanit (patron goddess of Carthage, goddess of the Moon, of the harvest, and apparently of all manner of good things including Mom and Apple Pie) on their shields. They were players in the First Punic War however and not any of the subsequent wars.
Carthage also seemed to be rather fond of putting horses and palm trees on their coins and the miniature sites suggest that these too would make likely shield emblems.
The Carthaginian army was a Hellenistic style army so shield emblems common to other Hellenistic armies would most likely be found on Carthaginian shields as well.
Dan Zeidler
Legio XX
Legio XX
