Ancient & modern
TWO American film companies are evidently racing neck-and-neck to bring out a film about the great Carthaginian general Hannibal, and the word on the street is that one of the companies is proposing to cast a fashionable black actor in the lead. That's the stuff, boys. Africa! Cuddly Blacks v. Wicked AngloSaxon Romans! Great box-office! The truth is somewhat less, um, Hollywood.
To generalise, black Africans (the socalled Negroid type) in the ancient world lived south of the Sahara: to the east, that meant south of Aswan, and to the west, southern Morocco. Blacks, it seems, did not inhabit the coastline of north Africa — at any rate, when the Greeks and later the Romans established themselves there, they did not talk of the local inhabitants as Negroid in type. That was a description they reserved for Africans from elsewhere. This is not to say that there was no contact between black Africans and people further north. Egyptians, for example, were in contact with them from the third millennium sc.
But whoever the indigenous inhabitants of north Africa were, they first met the people we know as Carthaginians in the eighth century ac. It was then that Qart Hadahst, 'New Town (later latinised into Carthago), was established near modern Tunis by the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians were a Semitic people from along the coast of Lebanon/Syria. Expert traders, they established waystations along the Mediterranean in their search for markets and metals. From such beginnings the powerful independent state of Carthage arose.
Hannibal (246-183 BO was a member of Carthage's ruling elite, the Barca family, which could trace its origins back to Carthage's first ruler, Queen Dido. His name is the latinised form of Chenu Baal, 'grace of Baal', that Old Testament god who gave the Israelites such problems. So whatever racial mixing may have subsequently taken place after the Carthaginian arrival in north Africa, Hannibal was not a black African.
But he was a quite brilliant general. It was his leadership qualities and capacity to manoeuvre the enemy into the position he wanted that made him so formidable. Hitting the inflexible Roman legions from the side was a speciality. As a result, he came within an ace of defeating Rome in the second Punic War (218-202 BC).
It all makes for a great story, but if the Americans really want to go for authenticity, they should cast a Semite from Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria or even Palestine in the lead. Ah! Not such
good box-office. Peter Jones
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