"Carthaginian Shields at Chimtou" Topic

Does anyone have any clear pictures or line drawings of the round shield designs from the tomb at Chimtou?

There are some blurry photos and tiny line drawings in Osprey Elite 201 but in some cases they aren't clear enough to be a reference for painting.

I'm particularly interested in a clear depiction of the shield with the Lernean hydra and a river, and the shield with a winged thunderbolt.

On the latter design, it bears some similarities to a shield painting at the Agios Athanasios tomb in Thessaloniki, except that the Chimtou version has two sets of wings and its thunderbolts are wavy not curled:

On a related note, I can't seem to find a good write up on Hellenistic shield designs, the types of motifs used, their meanings. Anyone know of one?

Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars has Hellenistic shield designs, earlier Greek hoplite patterns, and others from 350 to 146 bc. While not Hellenistic this website has Greek and Roman shield patterns
lukeuedasarson.com/MilHist.html

I have never seen clear renderings of all the (surviving) Chimtou shields. The best coverage I've seen is Rakob's and Horn's articles in Horn and Ruger's "Die Numider", and those only have clear photos of some shields, not all. There is (Abb.38 p.126) a photo of the shield with the river and what might be a hydra, but it's not a very large picture.

You could try Chimtou Museum for your next holiday – chimtou.com/? If so, send me some pics!

I'm not aware of any general or comprehensive study of Hellenistic shield patterns, either.

Thanks for the link to Luke Ueda-Sarson's site @williamb, I had forgotten about it.

Duncan, thanks for the reference. I'd love to holiday in Chimtou, sadly that might have to wait until the piggy bank fattens. In the meantime, I tried my luck writing to Sig. Salimbeti for a larger version of his line drawing of the Chimtou shields.

My best guess squinting at the grainy photo of the hydra river shield blazon in the Osprey is there are two objects that could be the multi-headed hydra, perhaps one represents tendrils of flame from a brazier, though I'm not aware of any comparable imagery from other Hellenistic/Greek sources.

It's interesting how strongly Hellenistic religious and mythic imagery penetrated into Carthaginian and Numidian society.

I've just found that what looks like the same photo of the "river" shield that's in Horn & Ruger is also in Polito's article on the Chemtou and Kbor Klib shields – online at link – which interprets this shield as "orné d'une torche".

I'd almost forgotten this article. Polito argues that the Chemtou and Kbor Klib shield motifs are specifically mid-2nd century and Macedonian-inspired, so have nothing to do with Carthage.

I had a long posting about the Kbor Klib and the site of Zama that also touched on these shields, at link if anyone's interested.

Duncan, thanks for that ancmed link, much to chew on there. Looks like plain shields will be the order of the day, though the I prefer the Chemtou designs to some of those speculative ones in the current shield transfers market.

Page 231 of "The Hellenistic West: Rethinking the Ancient Mediterranean" eds. Prag & Quinn, link has some very clear diagrams of the Chemtou shields.

Looks like the torch shield may have a serpent of some sort in it though its hard to make out whether it has one of many heads (like a hydra?).