The city of Motya was a rich Phoenician colony located on a small island off the western coast of Sicily. It was one of the most important towns in the Mediterranean when it was controlled by Carthage during the 5th-century BCE. Motya was famously destroyed by troops from the Greek city-state of Syracuse during the Second Sicilian War in 398 BCE. Not much remained of the city and it was lost to history for centuries, that is until the site was rediscovered in the 18th-century on what is now known…
