Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T23:30:03.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Martyrion by the City Wall at Apollonia: Its Structure and Form

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2015

G. R. H. Wright*
Affiliation:
Avignon

Abstract

A small Christian monument of centralised plan built against the West Wall of Apollonia was excavated and slightly restored by the Libyan Department of Antiquities under the directorship of the late Professor Goodchild during the sixties. In 1967 the present writer, then architect to the Michigan Apollonia Expedition, was commissioned to make a set of drawings of the monument as a basis for its publication by Professor Goodchild to appear in the Michigan Report. Professor Goodchild's untimely death in 1968 nullified the project and eventually in its stead only a cursory notice of the monument appeared. The substantive treatment of the monument, utilising the prepared set of drawings, was reserved for the long laboured Corpus of Christian Antiquities of Cyrenaica. Unfortunately in turn this design was frustrated by the death of Professor Ward Perkins in 1986 so that the detailed drawings of the monument remained unpublished for 25 years. In 1991 old prints of the drawings were recovered and are published here with a commentary.

This small square monument with a dome on four pillars giving a rudimentary cross-in-square plan is of late sixth century date. It is clearly sepulchral, whether it be a simple tomb or a martyrion. Thus in spite of its provincial guise it is of interest and significance (together with the Church at Qasr el Lebia) in the long vexed question of the origins of the ecumenical Byzantine cross-in-square plan.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Libyan Studies 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)