The Archaeology and History of Tripoli and Tripolitania

When most people think of Tripolitania, in western Libya, they think of the magnificent Roman cities and UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Lepcis Magna and Sabratha, as well as Libya’s capital, Tripoli.  And they should, for these cities are home to some of the best preserved buildings from anywhere in the former Roman Empire. 

The amphitheater at Lepcis Magna (a photo by Capuozzo Pietro)

The Severan basilica at Lepcis Magna (a photo by Sasha Coachman)

The theater at Sabratha (a photo by Sasha Coachman)

The Arch of Marcus Aurelius in Tripoli (a photo by Daniel and Kate Pett)

These sites have been in the news recently because of the threat posed to them by ISIS, which briefly occupied modern Sabratha in February 2016, and because of the heroic efforts Libyans have taken to protect their archaeological sites.  The sites and their protectors deserve much more attention.  In this post I want to talk about the history and archaeology of Tripolitania.  Who built these incredible cities?  How did they pay for such opulent building?  Why do these sites matter today? 

First some background about the region.  The region takes its name from the ancient Greek word for “three cities.”  In antiquity these cities were Lepcis Magna, the most important of the three, Oea, which lies underneath modern Tripoli, and Sabratha.  These cities controlled vast territories that extended south into the Jafara Plain and the Western Mountains.  Today, as in the past, the Jafara Plain is too arid to support agriculture.  The Western Mountains, which stretch in an arc from the Mediterranean coast east of Lepcis Magna to modern Tunisia, contain much of the region’s agriculturally productive land.

Tripolitania has long been an object of study.  European colonizers took an early interest in its ruins because the Roman character of the coastal cities justified their colonial projects.  More recent scientific studies, such as the one by the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Archaeology Survey (1979-1989), have shed new light onto the cultural, political, and economic history of the region.  Recent books by David Mattingly, Graeme Barker, and Philip Kenrick have synthesized a lot of the archaeological and historical data in English.  This post owes much to their work.

In my last post I explored the prehistory of the region and the Western Mountains in particular.  I found that the Western Mountains facilitated the movement of people and Stone Age technologies between east and west, north and south.  One group to settle in the region was likely the ancestors of the Berbers, but because of their uncertain identity, historians have chosen simply to call them “Libyans.”  Libyans lived a semi-nomadic existence, tending herds of sheep and goats and farming where they could.  They were probably living much as their ancestor had when the first Phoenicians arrived in the late 9^th or early 8^th century BCE. 

The Phoenicians came to Libya from what is now Lebanon in search of new opportunities for trade.  They initially founded the city of Carthage in modern Tunisia.  In the following centuries new Phoenician settlements sprang up along the north coast of Libya.  Lepcis Magna was founded in the 7^th century BCE, Sabratha in the 6^th century BCE, and finally Oea in the 5^th century BCE.  These three cities, collectively called the Emporia, were to become fabulously wealthy from trans-Saharan trade and from the production and sale of one commodity in particular, olive oil.  They formed close relations with the local Libyan populations and often intermarried with them.  Though they maintained contact with their Phoenician homeland, their connections in North Africa mattered more, and for this reason historians call them Libyphoenicians.  They spoke and wrote in Punic (a language related to Phoenician) and Libyan (likely a Berber dialect). 

The cities of the Emporia remained under the influence of Carthage until Carthage’s defeat by the Romans in the Punic Wars (264-146 BCE).  After this epic struggle Rome took a greater interest in the region.  Rome supported Masinissa, the king of Numidia (in what is now Algeria) against Carthage and allowed him to extend his influence into Tripolitania.  After the final destruction of Carthage in 146 BCE, Rome annexed all of Carthage’s territory, and the Emporia became Rome’s allies.  In 46 BCE Julius Caesar invaded North Africa chasing his enemies in his civil war with Pompey.  The cities that had sided with Pompey, notably Lepcis Magna, were fined and made subjects of Rome. 

As subject cities they paid tribute to Rome and received Roman administrators and garrisons, but the Romans did not permanently settle Tripolitania or systematically exploit its people and resources.  The Romans’ only goals were to promote peace, build cities, and collect taxes.  They occasionally led military expeditions against the tribes of the interior, such as the Garamantes, and build forts and roads to control the movement of nomads across the frontier.  Gheriat el-Gharbia and Bu-Njem are examples of Roman frontier forts.  There were probably other forts at places like Zintan, Ain el-Auenia, and Mizda. 

Otherwise the Libyphoenicians were left on their own.  As members of the Roman Empire they accumulated massive amounts of wealth.  Their wealth was based on the cultivation of olive trees on their estates in the Western Mountains.  They pressed olives into olive oil, which they sold all over the Empire.  Some rural farmers also grew olives and were able to benefit from trade in olive oil, but by and large most of the wealth accumulated in the coastal cities.

With their wealth the Libyphoenicians built grand cities in the Roman style with all the urban amenities one would expect of a Roman city, like baths, colonnaded streets, and theaters.  Wealth also enabled the Libyphoenicians to join the ranks of the Roman elite and one of their own, Septimius Severus, was able to become the Roman emperor (193 CE – 211 CE).

Outside the cities in the more remote reaches of Tripolitania life went on as it had for thousands of years.  Punic and Roman influences were weak here and became much weaker in the 4^th and 5^th centuries CE when the magnificent coastal cities shrank and the Romans pulled their soldiers out.  Then the Vandals and later the Byzantines came and went, leaving no lasting influence. Throughout these turbulent centuries of the early Middle Ages many Libyans continued to practice pastoralism and seasonal farming in wadis and to organize their society into villages and tribes.  The arrival of Arab armies in the 7^th century was to mark the beginning of ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and political developments that continue to define modern day Libya. 

Thus the main take-away is that the opulent cities of the coast – Lepcis Magna, Oea, and Sabratha – are just as much a part of Libyan history as Roman history.  They were built at a unique moment in human history when the continent spanning empire of the Romans unified the entire Mediterranean region.  The Roman Empire enabled the local elite, like the Libyphoenicians of Tripolitania, to grow rich and show off their wealth by lavishing their cities with magnificent Roman-style buildings.  Otherwise the Romans themselves were only fleeting interlopers in Libyan history.   

The Prehistory of Jebel Gharbi

Recently a new friend of mine asked me to research for him the prehistory of his region, Jebel Gharbi.  I knew nothing about this area, but after reading up on it, I discovered that these mountains played an important role in human history.  While no long-lasting civilizations like the Garamantes inhabited Jebel Gharbi, the region can boast of something arguably more important.  Beginning in the Middle Stone Age (roughly 60,000 years ago), Jebel Gharbi was home to groups of modern human beings (Homo sapiens), who settled around the area’s abundant water supply and utilized its raw materials to make stone tools.  Moreover, the position of these mountains between West Africa and the Middle East, as well as between the Mediterranean and the Sahara, made it an important crossroads for the spread of Stone Age technologies and domesticated plants and animals.  The importance of Jebel Gharbi, and Libya more generally, to early human development is one reason why preserving Libya’s cultural heritage is all of humanity’s responsibility.   

Jebel Gharbi, a photo by Mr. Sadik al-Kiesh

 

Jebel Gharbi is a narrow mountain range that divides the Jafara Plain, where Tripoli is, from the Tripolitanian Plateau.  The city of Nalut lies at the western end of the range and Gharyan at the eastern end.  In between are the towns of Yafran, ar-Rujban, Jadu, Shakshuk, and Kabaw, today home to important Arab and Berber communities.  Significant for the prehistory of the region are the perennial springs and the deep wadis that flow north to the Jafara Plain.  The most important of these are Ain Shakshuk, Wadi Ain Zargha (Ras al-Wadi), and Wadi Ghan.  Jebel Gharbi has been the subject of an ongoing archaeological research project by the Libyan-Italian Join Mission founded by Professor Barbara Barich of Sapienza University of Rome.  This project has provided important insights into the early human occupation and development and I owe them for the findings I present here.

About 60,000 years ago humans were drawn to Jebel Gharbi’s abundant supply of workable stones and water.  These hunter-gatherers practiced a form of stone working that scholars have called Aterian Industry.  Aterian Industry is very important because it is believed that the first modern humans (Homo sapiens) invented it.  We human were not always as we are today, but we had to invent technologies, like stone working, farming, and writing.  Aterian Industry represents a huge step in this process.

Humans in Jebel Gharbi made Aterian tools until about 30,000 years ago, when the technique disappears.  Archaeologists have found little evidence of human activity for the next 10,000 years!  But about 20,000 years ago a new tool making technique appeared, called the Iberomaurusian Industry.  This industry was likely brought to the region by a new group of people, just as Aterian Industry was likely brought by people from what is now Morocco. 

About 10,000 years ago, Iberomaurusian Industry was replaced by a new way of making stone tools, called Capsian.  Again scholars think that a new group of people arrived in Jebel Gharbi bringing their technologies with them.  The people who practiced Capsian Industry were possibly speakers of  the Afro-Asiatic language family, a group of languages that includes Arabic, Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian, and Berber.  It is possible, therefore, that Capsians were the ancestors of the Berbers.

In the following millennia humans made more advances.  For a long time humans had been hunter-gatherers; they had relied on what they could find.  But about 8,000 years ago in North Africa humans started experimenting with ways to grow plants and keep animals.  If humans could master farming and pastoralism, they would have more regular access to food.  Scholars used to think that grains, such as wheat and barley, and animals, such as sheep and goats, were brought to North Africa from the Middle East in a single moment.  But now they are not so sure.  There is some evidence that sheep and goats came to North Africa both from the East, through Egypt, and the West, through Spain and Morocco.  Jebel Gharbi lies in between and would have helped spread new technologies and cultures.

This is the real significance of the region.  Jebel Gharbi is so rich in human history because of its natural gifts and its important role in transmitting new cultures and technologies between faraway peoples and places.  Jebel Gharbi is one shining example of the wealth of Libya.  I am always looking for new topics to write about, so if you are interested in a particular time and place, please feel free to message me and I will do my best to tell you more about it!  

The Garamantes of the Fazzan

I’d like to pick up this time where we left off last time, with rock art.  One of the great mysteries of rock art is, who left these paintings?  Was it one group of people or many groups?  What was their culture like?  Historians aren’t sure, but after looking at a combination of artistic, archaeological, and DNA analysis they have concluded that many different peoples likely inhabited Libya in the prehistoric period.  One group was the Berbers. 

The mystery doesn’t end there.  No one really knows where the Berbers came from or when they arrived in Libya, but the general consensus is that they were one of the groups that made the transition from pastoralism to settled agriculture that we saw last time in rock art, and that they spoke a language related to Arabic, Ancient Egyptian, and Hebrew.  It is misleading, however, to speak of a single Berber people, as in a short period of time in the distant past the Berbers spread across much of North Africa and continue to inhabit large tracts of it today.  So in this post I am going to focus on one group of Berbers, the Garamantes. 

From about 1000 BCE to 600 CE the Garamantes were a force to be reckoned with in the Fazzan; however, if you were to read Greek and Roman accounts of them, you would get the impression that they were uncivilized bandits.  This cannot be further from the truth.  The Garamantes developed a complex, urban kingdom independent of the Greeks and Romans, and figured out enduring strategies for living in a harsh environment.  So while Greek and Roman archaeological sites might enjoy more press, we can learn a lot from the Garamantes about how states formed on the periphery of the Mediterranean world and how people adapted to a changing climate.

About 5000 years ago the Sahara began to change.  What had been a fertile savannah interspersed with lakes and oasis became much drier, as it is today.  As their world became drier, people living in the Sahara had to adapt and find new strategies for survival.  They abandoned more nomadic lifestyles and settled in wadis and oases, where water could be easily found.  Garamantian civilization arose in this context.

As the Garamantes turned to farming, they built towns and villages in Wadi al-Ajal (known today as Wadi al-Hayat).  The first sites consisted of easily defensible hilltop fortresses, such as Zinchecra.

Mattingly, D. (2003). The Archaeology of the Fazzan, vol. 1

These are some pictures of the extensive fortifications, taken by Professor David Mattingly and his team, that surrounded Zinchecra in antiquity.  These works suggest a society that could mobilize large amounts of labor for communal goals.  It is at this time too when the Garamantes started to bury their dead in cemeteries.  Thus from the combination of new types of settlement and burial practices we can conclude that with the Garamantes Libyan history had entered a new phase, one of civilizations.

As the Garamantes’ power and population increased, they moved from the hilltops to the center of Wadi al-Ajal, closer to their farms.  Here they built a capital city, Germa, that would proclaim their wealth and power to the world. 

Ancient Germa, taken by Franzfoto, Wikimedia Commons 

Today the city lies in ruins, but an ancient visitor, seeing the colonnaded streets, civic center with monumental buildings, and complex, multi-room homes, could be forgiven for thinking that he were in a city of the Roman Empire.  But despite a few expeditions against them, the Garamantes remained an independent state.  They preferred to trade with Rome, and their control of Saharan oases made them perfect intermediaries between sub-Saharan Africa and the wider Mediterranean world.  Caravans of horses and camels carried slaves and gold from the countries of the Sahel and beyond, as well as the Garamantes' own trade goods, such as salt, carnelian, and beads.

As the population of Wadi al-Ajal grew, the Garmantes developed a sophisticated irrigation system to support it.  A network of foggaras tapped into the subterranean aquifers and channeled water to the wadi center where farms grew a medley of Mediterranean crops, like dates, olives, and wheat.  Foggaras are tunnels that run from the foot of hills, where the water is higher, to lower areas where people have their farmers. 

Mattingly, D. (2003). The Archaeology of the Fezzan, vol. 1

As we can see in this schematic rendering, the Garamantes dug vertical shafts every 5 to 10 meters that would allow them to access the foggaras and connect individual segments. Over 550 foggaras have been found in Wadi al-Ajal alone and they vary in length from half a kilometer to over four kilometers.  This network of foggaras represents a colossal undertaking that would have required a highly organized society to complete.  They are surely the Garamantes' most impressive achievement, for, without them, their civilization would not have been possible.

The Garamantes did not long survive after the collapse of the Roman Empire.  This underscores the close connection between trade with Rome and the ability of the Garamantes to project power in the Fazzan.  About this time the foggaras also began to fall out of use, and settlements moved from the wadis to oases and wells.  Today most people rely on modern irrigation technology and few understand how the foggaras worked, but the achievement of the Garamantes means that we should take seriously how ancient peoples survived in harsh environments.  It is illustrative of this point that the population of the Fazzan did not return to the level of the Garamantian period until 40 years ago.  Clearly the Garamantes figured out a winning combination and, as the climate continues to change, we might learn a thing or two from them that will help us cope. 

For more on the Garamantes, see http://www.livius.org/articles/place/garamantes/ 

Prehistoric Rock Art in Libya

The Libyan Sahara is home to hundreds if not thousands of examples of prehistoric art, depicting millennia of human experiences.  The earliest examples date from about 10,000 years ago and feature simple scenes of humans hunting large animals, such as giraffe.  The latest ones, which date from about 2,000 years ago, represent a high level of artistic sophistication and show advanced pastoral communities, much like how the Bedouin lived until recently.  This body of art, etched and painted on simple rock walls, is thus one of our best guides to how life as a human being has changed over the years.  It is in these works that past people preserved for our eyes the things that were most important to them - family, religion, community, survival, and death - helping us to appreciate it what it means to be human.

Van Noten (1978) fig. 117

In this first example we see four men drawing their bows.  Before humans figured out how to domesticate animals, such as sheep, goats, and cows, they had to hunt for their food.  In many of these early examples, humans are depicted capturing wild animals and leading them away with rope.

Van Noten (1978) fig. 181

Hunting and gathering eventually gave way to pastoralism about 8,000 years ago.  And this change can be observed in their art.  Pastoral art shows that new animals and new social practices became important.  In this example, a shepherd leads a large herd of goats and cows.  Keeping their herds fed and watered required people to move with the changing seasons and climate to locate new sources of water and vegetation.  They also had to protect these places.  Pastoral art shows many examples of people fighting around their animals.

Van Noten (1978) fig. 232

In this well-preserved painting, we can see an advanced pastoral society with the two people herding the animals around a central shelter.  We also notice the high degree of sophistication of the artist.  To modern eyes these figures might not look like much, but we have to keep in mind two things.  First, the earliest human art, found in South Africa, dates from around 70,000 years ago, and in North Africa, in the Nile Valley, from about 16,000 years ago.  So by the time of this painting, people had been doing art for a long time.  Second, since these figures were born from an ancient artistic tradition, the differences between them and our art are not a matter of quality as much as stylistic preferences.  People painted like this because that was the fashion in their culture.

Van Noten (1978) fig. 171

In this final example, we can see the timeless image of a family.  The parents embrace while two children drink the milk of a cow.  The woman is also depicted wearing jewelry.  This painting might then be the most important of those I’ve discussed here, because it shows that despite vast changes in lifestyle, culture, society, etc. there is at least one fundamental truth to the human experience: family.  

As I read about prehistoric Saharan art I was struck by how hard it is to interpret these paintings.  We as modern humans tend to look at them and bring our own understandings of how the world works.  We say, “Well in the modern world, if we do this, then so did people 10,000 years ago.”  And despite some real similarities, such as family, people living in the past had their own ways of understanding and depicting the world.  So to truly grasp what these paintings mean, and what it was like to be a human in the distant past, we need to study them in the landscape where they were painted.  Taken away from their rock overhangs, mountains, and wadis, these paintings lose much of their historical value.  We can still appreciate them as art, but their real significance remains in the places where their artists lived.

Images scanned from: Noten, F. L., Rhotert, H., & Misonne, X. (1978). Rock art of the Jebel Uweinat: [Libyan Sahara]. Graz: Akadem. Druck- u. Verlagsanst.