Hannibal Barca from a Phoenician aristocratic family and the question of his appearance

Denzel Washington to play the Carthaginian general Hannibal, who invaded Italy on an elephant from North Africa, in a new Netflix project.

The director is Antoine Fuqua, who has filmed Washington before: think of the action film The Equalizer.

As for the historical figure, it is hard to speak of Hannibal's ethnic origin. We cannot even judge with any certainty what he looked like, for want of portraits, apart from, it seems, a single bust.

Hannibal Barca came from a Carthaginian, that is, Phoenician, aristocratic family. The region from which Hannibal's ancestors came is the territory of present-day Lebanon. In that age these lands were not ethnically Africanised, nor populated, in the modern sense, by dark-skinned people. Although the general's genealogy would most likely reveal various traces of North African peoples, in appearance Hannibal most probably resembled Assyrians and Arabs rather more.