Tanit

Tanit (also Tinnit) was the primary goddess of Carthage, associated with the moon, fertility, and protection. Her symbol, a stylised human figure with a circular head, horizontal bar arms, and a triangular body, often accompanied by a crescent, appears on thousands of Punic votive stelae and objects across North Africa from the 5th century BCE onward.

The Tanit figure predates Islam and survived in material culture long after the official religious landscape changed. Her symbol persists in Amazigh jewellery, tattoo patterns, and textile borders, not always identified by name, but present in the compositional vocabulary of protective and cosmological motifs.

Scholars note a visual and cultural family relationship between Tanit and the Anatolian Elibende (hands-on-hips goddess figure) and the broader Mediterranean mother goddess tradition, suggesting a deep, trans-regional continuity of female divine symbolism that the woven textile tradition carries without requiring textual documentation.

Tilwen's Tanit mark, the site's logomark, uses the classical Tanit form adapted with a squared, geometric body that references the diagonal logic of kilim weaving.