The Necropolis of Kerkouane sits approximately 1.5 kilometers northwest of the ancient Punic city, built into a hill overlooking the sea. It consists of a series of burial vaults, four primary chamber-tombs, and a surrounding burial area that served the community for centuries. The tombs were carved into the rock and sealed, preserving their contents through the centuries after the city's abandonment during the First Punic War. When the schoolteacher broke into them, he found jewellery, ceramics, and scarab gems -- small carved amulets that the Phoenicians adopted from Egyptian tradition. The items he sold vanished into the antiquities market; their current locations remain unknown.

Subsequent excavations by professional archaeologists recovered what the schoolteacher and later grave robbers had deemed not worth taking: bones, eggs placed as funerary offerings, small altars, amulets, bronze coins, razors, toiletries, obsidian and basalt relics, and earrings. These everyday objects, humble compared to the looted jewellery, turned out to be invaluable for understanding Punic funerary practices. The eggs speak to beliefs about rebirth. The razors and toiletries suggest the dead were prepared for the afterlife with the same grooming rituals they practiced in life. The bronze coins were payment for passage to the underworld, a practice shared across Mediterranean cultures.

The most remarkable find survived because it was too large and fragile for casual looting. Deep in one of the chamber-tombs, archaeologists discovered a red-painted wooden sarcophagus with a carved lid in the shape of a woman. She wears a robe and a sacred crown known as a polos, and her body is covered in red, blue, and yellow plaster. Scholars have identified her as the goddess Astarte, protector of the dead, or possibly one of her worshippers. Aside from her feet, she is perfectly intact. The sarcophagus is one of the only known Punic wood carvings still in existence -- wood rarely survives two millennia in the Mediterranean climate. The find was so fragile that it was sent to Zurich, Switzerland for conservation treatment. When Tunisian newspapers reported the discovery, they christened the carved figure "the Princess of Kerkouane," and the name stuck. She now rests in the site museum at Kerkouane.

The walls of some tombs bear painted murals that include the sign of Tanit, the chief goddess of Carthage -- a geometric symbol resembling a stylized human figure with outstretched arms topped by a circle and a horizontal bar. Its presence in the necropolis confirms the religious connections between Kerkouane and the broader Punic world, even though this small fishing town was far from the power centers of Carthage. Together with the city ruins, the necropolis earned UNESCO World Heritage status in 1985, recognized as part of the only surviving example of a Phoenicio-Punic city. The dead of Kerkouane, laid in their hillside vaults with their coins and their eggs and their razors, are among the most complete witnesses to a civilization that Rome tried very hard to erase.