Tanit

Tanit or Tinnit (Punic: 𐤕𐤍𐤕 Tīnnīt^[2]) was a Carthaginian Punic goddess, and the chief deity of Ancient Carthage, alongside her consort Baal Hammon.^[3][4]

The name appears to have originated in Carthage (modern day Tunisia), though it does not appear in local theophorous names.^[5] She was equivalent to the war goddess Astarte, and later worshipped in Roman Carthage in her Romanized form as Dea Caelestis, Juno Caelestis, or simply Caelestis. Before 1955, the only attestations of the goddess's name were in Phoenician, which is written without vowels. It was arbitrarily vocalized as "Tanit". In 1955, Punic inscriptions transliterated in Greek characters found at El-Hofra (near Constantine, Algeria) transliterated the name as Greek: Θινιθ (Thinith) and Greek: Θεννειθ (Thenneith). The inscriptions indicate that the name was likely pronounced as Tinnīt.^[2] Still, many scholars and writings continue to use Tanit.

In modern-day Tunisian Arabic, it is customary to invoke Omek Tannou or Oumouk Tangou ('Mother Tannou' or 'Mother Tangou', depending on the region), in years of drought to bring rain.^[6] Similarly, Algerian, Tunisian and many other spoken forms of Arabic refer to "Baali farming" to refer to non-irrigated agriculture.^[7] Such usage is attested in Hebrew, a Canaanite language sister to Phoenician, already in the 2nd century CE Mishnah.^[8]