King of Carthage ignoring power of mysterious symbols (5)
I believe the answer is:
runic
'mysterious symbols' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'king of carthage ignoring power' is the wordplay.
'king' becomes 'R' (abbreviation for rex, king in Latin).
'of carthage' becomes 'punic' (I've seen this in another clue).
'ignoring' indicates named letters should be taken away.
'power' becomes 'p' (symbol in physics).
'punic' with 'p' taken away is 'unic'.
'r'+'unic'='RUNIC'
'of' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for runic that I've seen before include "Using Norse letters" , "In a Norse alphabet" , "Of magical signs" , "mysterious symbols" , "Pertaining to an ancient Germanic alphabet" .)