Talk:Carthage

grid city

Why was my post deleted? The article says Carthage means "new city". Is it not possible that it actually means "grid city".

Wikipedia:grid plan. Just granpa (talk) 08:33, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

No. The qrt bit means "city" and ḥdšt means "new". In Phoenician (as in Arabic), nouns come before adjectives. So if qrt meant "grid" then the phrase would be "new grid", which makes no sense. — Eru·tuon 08:36, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

unless "grid" was the word for city which seems quite possible to me. I am also thinking of midgard which would then be middle-grid. Just granpa (talk) 08:42, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Ancient cities weren't usually grid-like at all, were they? Even today going from the UK to the US one notices the perfect 90-degree intersections which aren't particularly common in British cities. Equinox ◑ 08:53, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

According to wikipedia: The housing blocks are separated by a grid of straight streets about 6 m (20 ft) wide, with a roadway consisting of clay. Just granpa (talk) 08:57, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Okay, so Carthage was gridlike. But QRT (that's the vowel-less spelling; with vowels it was probably qart) is a general word for town or city apparently, since related words are found in Hebrew and Arabic and other Semitic languages, and not all cities or towns in that region could have been laid out the same way, and our word grid is very recent, from the 1800s according to the OED; it wasn't around at the time when the Phoenicians still lived in Carthage. It's an interesting coincidental sort-of similarity but I don't see how the two words can be related. — Eru·tuon 09:36, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

cratis is latin for wickerwork. Just granpa (talk) 09:51, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Wicker fence: