The Numidian Kingdoms

In touch with the Carthaginians were also the Numidians, Berbers distinguished between Massyles and Masaesyles. Fruitful to both parties, this encounter gave rise to exchanges and loans phenomena, an osmosis which, undoubtedly contributed to the formation of one part of this substratum which underlies today the Tunisian culture and civilization. Thus, conscious of the necessity to practice languages other than theirs, interested in the alphabet that the Phoenicians brought with them, the Berbers adopted Punic speech and writing ; then, when all is said and done, decided to fashion their own written form, the Libyan, a writing preserved thanks to numerous inscriptions exposed at Bardo, to wit, a beautiful bilingual epigraph dating from the reign of Massinissa Aguellid!
Indeed, the Numidians knew how to consider the future; although an ally of Rome, Massinissa endeavoured to develop other Mediterranean relations all the same, notably with the hellenistic world which he provided with cereals; at Delos, his repute was so big that the city erected his statues! Worth her agriculture, especially after the second Punic war, following the annexation by Massinissa of the Magnis campi - those plains which stretch over the region of Bou salem and the Dakhla in the northwest of Tunisia-, the Numidia of Tunisia lived in such a state of prosperity that she ended up by bringing upon herself the Roman covetousness!