Tunis — The Paris-based "Institut du Monde Arabe" is hosting an important historic exhibit on "the influence of the Phoenicians on the Mediterranean area from Tyre to Carthage ".

The event which will run until April 20, 2008 , is taking place in the impressive Institute's 'auditorium'.

The Tunisian Heritage Institute, as well as the Ben Ali Chair for the Dialogue of Civilizations and Religions were instrumental in the organization of the event, which gathered a large number of visitors and specialists of the period.

Professor Hassine Fantar, an internationally renowned specialist of Punic history who heads the Ben Ali Chair for the Dialogue of Cultures and Civilizations, said that some 67 historical objects had been lent to the exhibit by the Carthage , Bardo and Kerkouane Museums .

Among the artefacts are two rare pieces, one represents an epigraphic stele engraved with Punic letters and the second is a massive gold necklace also engraved with the oldest Punic writing of Carthage .

The exhibit boasts some 470 exceptional pieces, lent by Le Louvre museum, as well as museums in Berlin , London , New York and Beirut , which are revealing of the originality and the creativity of this great Mediterranean civilization which carried and transformed the Assyrian -Babylonian heritage from one part of the Mediterranean to the other.

The foundation of Carthage heralded the birth around the Mediterranean of small civilizations which hitherto had led a prehistoric or at best Neolithic ( stone age) life. This historic awakening started with Carthage and was later pursued by the Greeks.