African Kingdoms

Carthage / Africa (North African Colony)

Ancient Greek & Phoenician Cities & Colonies Bronze Age Anatolian States Canaanite States & Groups Persian & Greek Satrapies Rome

Relatively unscathed by the chaos of the Near East's social collapse at the end of the thirteenth century BC and the beginning of the twelfth, The Phoenicians quickly prospered in their fertile coastal home in the Levant. Replacing the region's previous dominant trading power, Ugarit, they created an even greater trading empire of their own which stretched across the Mediterranean.

The conquest of the homeland in the seventh century BC by Assyria forced many of the colonies to develop into self-governing city states of their own. Phoenician colonisation of ancient North Africa became more intense with the establishment of Carthage on the modern Tunisian coast in the late ninth century BC.

Once there, they received presents and greetings from nearby Utica, but the increased Phoenician concentration in the western Mediterranean caused intense competition there. At first it was with Greeks who had founded their own colonies along the northern Mediterranean and, centuries later, it was with emergent Rome, which sacked Carthage in the mid-second century BC.

Following the fall of an independent Carthage, the local North African region was reorganised under Roman control as Africa Proconsularis. The city state of Utica was the initial capital but it quickly became apparent that Carthage had to be rebuilt. In AD 439 Carthage and Utica were conquered by the invading Vandali, who then formed their own powerful kingdom along the North African coast.

A century later, in response to the usurpation of the Vandal throne by Gelimer, it was Eastern Roman General Belisarius who was sent to North Africa with an army. In one campaigning season the previously invulnerable Vandali were conquered. North Africa then remained firmly in Roman hands, first as the 'Prefecture of Africa' (a civil district) and then as the 'Exarchate of Africa' (a military district), until it was conquered by the Islamic empire in the seventh century to become Ifriqiyya.

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(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from Geography, Strabo, the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, William Smith, from the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, from The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, Volume III: AD 527-641, John R Martindale, A H M Jones, & John Morris (Cambridge University Press, 1992), from The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium: Niketas, Walter Emil Kaegi (Alexander P Kazhdan, Ed, Oxford University Press, 1991), from Unger's Bible Dictionary, Merrill F Unger (1957), from A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron, S Gitin, T Dothan, & J Naveh (Israel Exploration Journal 47, 1997), from The History of Esarhaddon (Son of Sennacherib) King of Assyria, BC 681-688, Ernest A Budge, from Easton's Bible Dictionary, Matthew George Easton (1897), from Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times, Donald Redford (Princeton University Press, 1992), from Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations, A H Sayce, from The Amarna Letters, William L Moran, 1992, from the Illustrated Dictionary & Concordance of the Bible, Geoffrey Wigoder (Gen Ed, 1986), from The Cambridge Ancient History, John Boardman, N G L Hammond, D M Lewis, & M Ostwald (Eds), from The History and Archaeology of Phoenicia, Hélène Sader (SBL Press, 2019), and from External Links: Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Bible Atlas, and Carthage (Ancient History Encyclopaedia).)