metaphysikal:A Punic coin featuring Tanit, minted in Punic Carthage between 215-205 BC.Tanit, aka Ti
metaphysikal:A Punic coin featuring Tanit, minted in Punic Carthage between 215-205 BC.Tanit, aka Tinnit, Tannou or Tangou, was a Punic and Phoenician goddess, the chief deity of Carthage alongside her consort Ba`al Hammon. She was also adopted by the Punic Berber people. The name appears to have originated in Carthage (modern day Tunisia). She was equivalent to the moon-goddess Astarte, and later worshipped in Roman Carthage in her Romanized form as Dea Caelestis, Juno Caelestis or simply Caelestis. In modern-day Tunisian Arabic, it is customary to invoke “Omek Tannou” or “Oumouk Tangou” (Mother Tannou or Tangou depending on the region), in years of drought to bring rain.Tanit was worshiped in Punic contexts in the Western Mediterranean, from Malta to Gades into Hellenistic times. From the 5th century BC onwards, Tanit’s worship is associated with that of Ba`al Hammon. She is given the epithet pene baal (“face of Baal”) and the title rabat, the female form of rab (chief). In North Africa, where the inscriptions and material remains are more plentiful, she was a heavenly goddess of war, a virginal (not married) mother goddess and nurse, and, less specifically, a symbol of fertility. Several of the major Greek goddesses were identified with Tanit by the syncretic interpretatio graeca, which recognized as Greek deities in foreign guise the gods of most of the surrounding non-Hellene cultures. Her shrine excavated at Sarepta in southern Phoenicia revealed an inscription that identified her for the first time in her homeland and related her securely to the Phoenician goddess Astarte (Ishtar). One site where Tanit is uncovered is at Kerkouane, in the Cap Bon peninsula in Tunisia. -- source link
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