Punic. The Romans, who were in the habit of corrupting the names of all foreign nations, called the Carthaginians Poeni , in all likelihood because they traced their origins to Phoenicia; and anything associated with them was called punicus or punic . Thus the three wars, in the last of which the republic of the Carthaginians and the city of Carthage were totally destroyed and subdued by the Romans, were called the bella punica or Punic Wars ,.

Writers have been somewhat divided on the nature of the Punic language, that is to say the language spoken by the Carthaginians. Some believed that the Punic language and the Arabic language were the same; only a few fragments have survived, which were preserved in the comedy of Plautus, called poenulus or the little Carthaginian . The Romans made sure to destroy all the archives and historic monuments that could preserve the memory of a nation that was odious to them. Well-known critics have shown that originally that language was the same as that spoken in Phoenicia, that is to say in Tyre, from which Dido fled to found her new colony of Carthage. However, the language became altered with time, and did not preserve the purity of the Hebrew or Phoenician languages. Despite these variations one finds a very close resemblance between the majority of Carthaginian proper nouns that have come down to us and Hebrew or Phoenician nouns. This is how the Carthaginian names Sichaeus, Machaeus, Amilco or Himilco, Hamilcar, Hanno, Hannibal, Asdrubal, Mago, Anna, Adherbal , etc. have a close resemblance to the Hebrew and Phoenician names Zachaeus, Michaeus, Amalec, Melchior, Hinnom, or Hamon, Hana-baal, Ezra-baal, Magog, Hannah, Adar-baal, etc. Even the name Carthage seems to have been derived from the Phoenician word charta , city, and the proper noun Aco , which means the city of Aco . There was a port of that name near Tyre.

Saint Augustine, wh, as bishop of Hippo in Africa, lived in the country inhabited by the descendants of the Carthaginians, teaches us that the Punic language had in his time some relation to Syriac and Chaldean. In 1718, M. Majus, a professor at the university of Giessen, published a dissertation in which he proves that the language spoken today on the island of Malta has a strong connection to the Punic language. [1] The materials he made use of to write this dissertation were furnished to him by a Maltese Jesuit called Father Ribier or Riviere of Gattis; we see there that the Carthaginians were the masters of the island Malta for a very long time, and that their language, which differs from all other known languages has retained a very strong resemblance to the ancient Punic language. As shown in this dissertation, the numbers that the Maltese use even today for counting are the same as those in Chaldean or Phoenician. From another perspective, Jean Quintinius Heduus, an author who lived in Malta in the middle of the sixteenth century, says that in his time the African or Punic language was spoken there, that one still saw on the island columns with Punic inscriptions, and that the Maltese understood very well the Carthaginian words that are found in Plautus and Avicenna. The Maltese still have a Carthaginian proverb in their language, which was preserved for us by Saint Augustine: the plague needs a piece of silver, give it two, and it will leave you alone.

One sees from the above that the Punic language has similarities to Phoenician, Hebrew, and Chaldean, languages that have great affinities amongst themselves. Carthaginian coins have been found in Spain and Sicily; the characters one sees on them are quite similar to characters found on those of the Phoenicians and even the Hebrews and Assyrians. See the article Carthaginians, in the Histoire universelle d’une Société de gens de Lettres , published in English. [2]

1. The reference is to Johannes Heinrich Majus (1688-1732), Specimen Linguae Punicae in Hodierna Melitensium superstitis (Marburgi Cattarum, 1718).

2. Histoire universelle, depuis le commencement du monde jusqu’à présent (Amsterdam and Leipzig, 1770-91), a French translation of John Swinton, et al., An Universal History, from the Earliest Account of Time (London, 1747-68).