punisch

Punisch, or Punic, denotes the Punic language and the associated culture of Carthage and its sphere in the western Mediterranean. It is a variety of Phoenician, part of the Northwest Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, spoken from roughly the 8th century BCE to the early centuries CE. Punisch originated among the Carthaginians in North Africa and spread to other Punic communities across coastal Iberia, Sicily, Sardinia, and parts of Malta.

Linguistically, Punisch is closely related to Phoenician and is typically treated as a distinct but mutually intelligible dialect or as a closely allied language within the Phoenician-Punic subgroup. It was written in a variant of the Phoenician alphabet, the Punic script, used for inscriptions on tombs, monuments, and coins. The surviving corpus is modest, and much of what is known comes from epigraphic material and a few bilingual texts with Greek or Latin.

Geographically, Punisch inscriptions are concentrated in ancient Carthage and other North African sites, with finds on Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, and the Balearics reflecting Carthaginian presence. The language gradually declined after the Roman conquest of Carthage in 146 BCE and subsequent Romanization; by late antiquity it had largely fallen out of everyday use, though some religious and cultural remnants persisted, and last inscriptions date to around the 5th century CE.

Punisch provides important insight into Carthaginian religion, trade, and daily life. Deities such as Baal Hammon and Tanit are attested, and inscriptions and coin legends illuminate Punic identity within a Roman-dominated world. Modern scholarship treats Punisch as a valuable but fragmentary source for understanding Phoenician heritage and the history of the western Mediterranean.