Tanit (Punic: 𐤕𐤍𐤕 Tīnīt) was a Carthaginian goddess. She was the chief deity of Carthage alongside her consort Baal-Hamon. Tanit is also called Tinnit. The name appears to have originated in Carthage (modern day Tunisia), though it does not appear in local theophorous names. 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. In modern-day Tunisian Arabic, it is customary to invoke or ('Mother Tannou' or 'Mother Tangou', depending on the region), in years of drought to bring rain. Similarly, Algerian, Tunisian and many other spoken forms of Arabic refer to " farming" to refer to non-irrigated agriculture. Such usage is attested in Hebrew, a Canaanite language sister to Phoenician, already in the 2nd century CE Mishnah. Tanit or Tinnīt? Until 1955 the name of the goddess was only known in Phoenician characters, as TNT (written without vowels). It was vocalized, quite arbitrarily, as "Tanit". Then in 1955 Punic inscriptions, found at El-Hofra (Constantine, Algeria) and written in Greek characters, were published, that included the fully vocalized name as Θινιθ (Thinith) and Θεννειθ (Thenneith). This made clear that the name should be pronounced as Tinnīt. However, the spelling Tanit is still often encountered. Worship Tanit was worshiped in Punic contexts in the Western Mediterranean, in Sicily, Malta, North Africa, Gades and many other places into Hellenistic times. Tanit's worship might have originated in relation to the Phoenician deity Astarte (Ishtar), whose own worship is first dated in the Phoenician sites of Sidon and Tyre. Her shrine excavated at Sarepta in southern Phoenicia revealed an inscription that has been speculated to identify her for the first time in her homeland and related her securely to the Phoenician goddess Astarte (Ishtar). Iconographic portrayals of both deities later become similar. The relation between both deities has been proposed to be hypostatic in nature, representing two aspects of the same goddess. From the fifth century BCE onwards, Tanit's worship is associated with that of Baal Hammon. She is given the epithet ('face of Baal') and the title , the female form of ('chief'). In North Africa, where the inscriptions and material remains are more plentiful, she was, as well as a consort of Baal Hammon, a heavenly goddess of war, a "virginal" (unmarried) mother goddess and nurse, and, less specifically, a symbol of fertility, as are most