UNESCO’s work in Tunisia had begun much earlier, shortly after the country gained its independence in 1957, focusing on heritage, education, the environment, and establishing archives and centers for research. A major study on Tunisia’s sites and museums, conducted in early 1967, outlined opportunities for developing Tunisia’s heritage resources for tourism (Euzennat et al. 1968). More specific studies for developing heritage followed, including one for Carthage (Nekarda et al. 1969). A follow-up report recommended the creation of a national park (UNESCO 1974), and specific studies on the Parc National de Carthage/Sidi Bou Saïd subsequently appeared (UNESCO 1983; Lesage 1995). In addition, museum policies were elaborated (Heinz 1980), while excavations and conservation work were ongoing at the site of Carthage itself (Ennabli 1992; Vérité 1987). These efforts by UNESCO “pour sauver Carthage” (“to save Carthage”) from 1972 to 1984 were organized in cooperation with extensive excavations by a number of international teams (Wells 1982; Altekamp and Khechen 2013). UNESCO’s campaign at Carthage also provided the platform for a number of UNESCO advisory projects elsewhere in the country that focused on museum policy and urban rehabilitation.
The international work at Carthage has thus served as an important linchpin for projecting an image of a tolerant “pro-West” Tunisia to the world, in addition to cultivating Tunisian heritage experts as leaders in the international conservation field. UNESCO’s early presence and work in Tunisia also solidified the close relationships between conservation and development as two sides of the same coin, and effectively foreshadowed what was to become the new approach of “heritage development” that would find its testing ground in the Middle East and North Africa region (Lafrenz Samuels 2009, 2016). The entanglement of conservation and economic development in Tunisia means that continuing international calls “to save Carthage” will prove ineffective unless development is made a central pillar of management plans for the site. This would mean taking seriously the political and economic contexts of Punic heritage in Tunisia, as detailed earlier, and especially recognizing the dire economic straits that Tunisia faces, in which tourism—including heritage tourism—constitutes a core economic sector.
Entangled Heritage
The investment in Punic cultural heritage by local and international agencies and the attraction of foreign tourism revenue have supported national economic priorities around cultural tourism, but there are also further complications to the situation as we have outlined it. One recent consequence of the messaging of Western cosmopolitan values to foreign tourists and international actors, alongside the role of tourism as an economic cornerstone of Tunisian society, is that tourism has become a prime target for terrorist groups like ISIL/ISIS and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib (AQIM). This became painfully evident in the tragic attacks of 2015 that occurred at the Bardo Museum in Tunis and a hotel north of Sousse. The latter is both a center of beach tourism and a UNESCO World Heritage site. These acts of terrorism have successfully gutted a tourism industry already struggling since the revolution, and they thus harm Tunisian society where it is most vulnerable—the economy—in the fragile postrevolution years.
Another and quite different consequence of the developments outlined here concerns the presentation of Tunisia’s archaeological heritage. The combination of, on the one hand, the specific interest in and promotion of the Punic past by the Ben Ali regime, and on the other hand, the generic perceptions of “the Classical past” brought along by the tourism industry and the tourists themselves, is leading to a simplified presentation and “flattened” tourist perceptions of Punic heritage. An evident case in point is offered by the theme parks of “Carthage-Land,” the first of which was built in the eastern tourist resort of Hammamet in 2003; a second one opened its doors in 2014 just outside Tunis, about halfway toward ancient Carthage. The theme of both parks is ancient Carthage, and a handful of attractions, installations, and names suggest that the parks refer to Hellenistic-period Carthage at the time of the Barca dynasty and the Punic Wars—precisely the period foregrounded by the Ben Ali regime, who of course was still in power when the first park was opened. The wild-water ride called “Hanno’s Journey” in Hammamet is one of the few specific references to the Punic past of Carthage and central North Africa, while it is otherwise mostly the name of the parks and the omnipresent elephants that point to the Carthaginian theme (see figure 48.1). Attractions are otherwise generically named—for instance, after pirates and, in the most recent park, even after Ali Baba—suggesting that at least in Carthage-Land the Punic past is flattened to a small number of iconic images like the elephants and ancient soldiers.
It is worth noting that the icons used are in keeping with Western and Classical perceptions: the elephants and soldiers reference the Punic Wars and Hannibal in particular, whose crossing of the Alps with elephants is a stock image that is deeply engrained in the Western imagination and memory (on the Punic Wars, see chapter 13, this volume). In other words, Punic heritage as presented in the Carthage-Land theme parks and found in other media, including the national currency (figure 48.2), arguably plays on and into Western expectations and Classical stereotypes (for the Phoenicians in Classical sources, see chapter 44, this volume). As a result, the Punic past of Tunisia is eroded of its specific nature, and “rolled into” a generic, bland, and stereotypical representation of the Classical past that may be found at any tourist destination across the Mediterranean.
Figure 48.2 View of the Carthage-Land theme park near Tunis.
Source: Creative Commons © Flickr; photo David Weekly.
At the same time, it is no less relevant that this development had already started under the Ben Ali regime. It is the continuity of many of these images that should in fact be noted. The 5 dinar banknote that was first issued under Ben Ali in 2008 shows Hamilcar Barca and the circular harbor, as well as a large “7” (verso) that refers to the 1987 coup that brought him to power. It was only taken out of circulation in 2015, even if a new version of this banknote had already been introduced in 2013. The latter likewise showed the Punic harbor, but had Hamilcar’s profile replaced with a three-quarter view of Hannibal, while the verso was entirely newly designed.
The views of Tunisia’s cultural heritage that privilege the Punic period, and especially the Hellenistic city of Carthage and the world of Hannibal Barca, have, on the one hand, become deeply ingrained. As Hannibal, the circular harbor, and elephants have become icons of this period, the Punic world is, on the other hand, increasingly conflated with Classical antiquity more generally. As a result, there has been notably less interest in the earlier Phoenician period, including even an otherwise well-known figure as Queen Dido (on the foundation story of Carthage, see chapter 11, this volume).
Conclusions
In this chapter, we have highlighted the political and economic contexts of Punic cultural heritage in Tunisia. Punic cultural heritage—including both the tangible archaeological remains and the intangible iconographic symbolism—comprises one assemblage of a broader historic endowment of cultural resources in Tunisia: an endowment passed down from the diverse “Tunisian mosaic” history of the country, which is drawn upon as a cornerstone of the Tunisian economy. At the same time, the difficult economic foundations of Ben Ali’s repressive rule, the 2010–2011 revolution in response, and the protracted recovery from both, together embed Punic heritage and its economic functions in a precarious time for Tunisian society and its future. To its benefit, Tunisia has long been at the forefront of international conservation networks and the refinement of “heritage development,” mobilizing heritage resources for economic growth. In the case of Carthage, it remains to be seen how the Punic past will be balanced with conservation and development, but our argument in this chapter has been that archaeologists, historians, heritage practitioners, and others with a professional interest in the Punic past would do well to understand the economic and political stakes involved in balancing what in effect are two sides of the same coin.
While
there can be no doubt that heritage management and archaeological research have benefited from economic investment, it is also quite evident that in some tourism venues such as Carthage-Land, the presentation of the Punic past has become notably stereotyped, in part through the introduction of new icons such as Hannibal and his elephants but also by harking back to older stereotypes—the reference to Ali Baba in Carthage-Land may serve as an example of the resurfacing of an Orientalist association. This in fact matches a trend noted in Sardinia (van Dommelen 2014: 50–56) and is comparable to what Kersel and Rowan (2012) noted with regard to the presentation of Israel’s cultural heritage at “Mini Israel.” While there is clearly scope for a fruitful and sustainable integration of tourism, development, and cultural heritage, as the Tunisian case demonstrates, the balance is often a precarious one (cf. Walker and Carr 2013). (For the Phoenician heritage in Lebanon, cf. chapter 47, this volume.)
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