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The Horseman of Tobruk

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2015

Fadel Ali Mohamed
Fadel Ali Mohamed*
Affiliation:
Department of Antiquities, Shahat
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Abstract

Aspects of the geographical setting of Tobruk, the ancient Antipyrgos, are discussed as a context for the publication of a limestone statuette of a horse and rider found in 1991 at Bir el Jeser. Stylistically difficult to date, it is probably of the later Hellenistic or Roman periods.

Type
Articles
Information
Libyan Studies , Volume 28 , 1997 , pp. 5 - 9
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Libyan Studies 1997

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References

Notes

1. Thus Tjemho and Meshwesh appear in Egyptian records; Adyrmachidae and Giligamae in Herodotus; Marmaridae in later Greek and Roman writers.

2. Bates, Oric, The Eastern Libyans (London, 1914)Google Scholar; Carter, T. Howard, Expedition 5 (1963) 18–27Google Scholar; Mohamed, F. A., Libyan Studies 25 (1994) 40–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; id. and id. with Joyce Reynolds, forthcoming in L'Africa Romana 12.

3. Herodotus IV. 168, 169; for Chersis see F. A. Mohamed, Libyan Studies cit. n. 2, id. with Joyce Reynolds in Libya Antiqua n.s. 1 (1995) 73–8. For the western sector of Marmarica there is a useful recent account by Laronde, A., Cyrène et la Libye Hellénistique (Paris, 1987) 219–32Google Scholar from whom I take the suggestion that Plynis may have been on the gulf of Solium; and there is a still valuable account of the eastern one in Ball, J., Egypt in the Classical Geographers (Cairo, 1942)Google Scholar.

4. Laronde cit. n. 3; Romanelli, P., La Cirenaica Romana (Verbania, 1943) 119Google Scholar.

5. Norsa, M. and Vitelli, G., II Papiro Vaticano Greco II (Vatican, 1931)Google Scholar.

6. Romanelli, cit. n. 4, 135–6.

7. Romanelli, cit. n. 4, 232–3; Synesius, , Epp. 4 (Fitzgerald)Google Scholar.

8. Laronde, cit. n. 3, 221–2; Procopius, DeAed. 6.2; Goodchild, R. G., Fortificazioni e palazzi bizantini in Tripolitania e Cirenaica in Corsi di Cultura sull' Arte ravennate e bizantina (Ravenna, 1966) 237–8Google Scholar.

9. For the walls, plate 3; for the cistern, Laronde cit. n. 8; for the Arab period, Mohamed, F. A., Crete in Islamic Historians and Geographers in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries A.D. (Athens, 1984–1985)Google Scholar.

10. Pseudo-Skylax, 108; Stadiasmus Maris Magni 38; Ptolemy, Geog. IV.5Google Scholar.

11. The rather prominent ridge encircling the leg just above the lower break is, presumably, an exaggerated rendering of the fetlock.

12. Cf. the probable hat (petasos) shown on the shoulders of a horseman standing beside his horse on an Athenian vase of the mid fifth century BC (Anderson, J. K., Ancient Greek Horsemanship (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961) plate 25)Google Scholar; still more to the point the hat carried by the horseman on the obv. of the Cyrenaean gold coins (late fourth century B.C.) illustrated in Robinson, E. S. G., Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Cyrenaica (London, 1927) plate XIV. 14–26Google Scholar; cf. also Naville, L., Les Monnaies d'Or de la Cyrénaïque, 450–250 av. J.C. (Geneva, 1951)Google Scholar; cf. our Fig. 4.

13. There are points of comparison with the long bodies of horses of the late sixth to early fifth centuries B.C. (as shown e.g. in Messalière, P. de la Coste, Fouilles de Delphes IV, fasc. IV (Paris, 1957) pl. 87Google Scholar and with the dress of the warrior on a mid sixth-century vase (Anderson, cit. n. 12, plate 26d).

14. Cf. the dress of the grooms and often the saddles shown in Speidel, M. P., Die Denkmäler der Kaiserreiter — Equites Singulares Augusti (Köln/Bonn, 1994) plate 80, 83 etc.Google Scholar

15. On saddles see Anderson, cit. n. 12, 81–2; Hyland, Ann, Equus (London, 1990) 130–4Google Scholar; Connolly, P., BAR Int. Series 336 (1987) 7–27Google Scholar.

16. Pindar, Pyth. 4.1.17 for instance; Synesius, , Epp. 40 and 148 (Fitzgerald)Google Scholar, the former describing a horse sent as a gift to a friend, the latter the neighing of horses as an important element among the animal sounds to be heard in his country estate south of Cyrene. Among representations I draw particular attention to the horseman on Cyrenaean gold coins, cit. n. 12, and to two vividly represented horses in the mosaic from the nave of the church at Gasr el Leibia and the huntsman on horseback on the nave mosaic of Cyrene's Central Church, see Alföldi-Rosenbaum, E. and Perkins, J. Ward, Justinianic Mosaic Pavements in Cyrenaican Churches (Rome, 1980) plates 14.1 and 2Google Scholar (where the horse has a saddle, perhaps with a horn at the back), 40.2 (where the rider's cloak is folded over the breast in the manner of the Tobruk-horseman's, although the ends are shown streaming in the wind instead of lying stiffly against his back).