The official visit to Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, Crete and Tunisia made in 1895 by the French orientalist Charles Clermont-Ganneau (1845–1923) seems to have been quite forgotten, apart from a brief note by F. Chamoux (Cyrène sous la monarchie des Battiades, 1953, 19, n.5) describing the acquisition of certain antiquities by the Museum of the Louvre. Clermont-Ganneau himself produced no report. His references to his journey were brief and scattered (thus CRAI 1901, 42–3; Rec. Arch. Orient. VI, 1905, 53) and his publication was limited to illustrations without comment in his Album d'antiquités orientales, recueil de monuments inédits ou peu connus (Paris, Leroux, 1897), an uncompleted piece of work of which only plates I–II (Neirab), III–VI (Cyrenaica, miscellaneous objects), VII (Crete), and XLIII–L (Syria, Cyprus, Nendjirli, Malta etc.) ever appeared.

Thanks to the help of Mr. Bernard Delavault, an unpublished file has now come to light in the office of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, which fortunately supplements the record. It includes sixteen pages of an unfinished manuscript report of the 1895 journey by Clermont-Ganneau, together with a number of transcriptions and letters which contain interesting information.

Clermont-Ganneau left Paris on 17th January and returned on 7th April, having made stops of some duration at Tunis, Malta, Tripoli in Libya (where he collected antiquities, including coins), Benghazi (where he spent a fortnight), Crete (his travels in the island, which lasted for twenty-five days, will be described elsewhere), Alexandria; then Malta and Tripoli both for the second time, Homs (for a visit to Lepcis Magna), Gabès, Sfax, Sousse and Tunis again. Conditions in Cyrenaica made it impossible for him to get to the Cyrene area as he had hoped, and this accounts for the length of his stay at Benghazi where he collected the documents which are the subject of this paper; for while there he bought or was given antiquities which went to the Louvre and acquired from various sources copies of inscriptions.

Among the inscriptions of ancient Teucheira copied by R. Pacho during his visit to Cyrenaica in 1825 is a Latin funerary text for a Roman legionary veteran named M. Aurelius Apollonius. Traditionally his legion has been interpreted as XV Apollinaris – reasonably enough on the basis of Pacho's drawing. W. Rossberg, who was the first to discuss the text, recalled that a veteran might well have come to Cyrenaica as one of the colonists settled there by Hadrian after the Jewish Revolt of A.D.115/7; and when it became known that XV Apollinaris was in fact one of the legions from which those colonists were drawn the idea was, rightly, revived by S. Applebaum. It must, however, be rejected, for rediscovery of the inscription shows that it has been misread, that the legion is II Adiutrix and the veteran probably a Cyrenaican himself.

The inscription is to be found in Quarry IX to the east of the ancient city and has been for many years masked by a palm tree. It occupies an approximately rectangular area above the door of a rock-cut tomb in the west wall of the quarry. Its letters are 0.035–0.04 m. high in lines 1–4, 0.05 in line 5, and are very unevenly spaced throughout since the cutter had to avoid holes in the surface of the stone. There are superscript bars above the abbreviations in lines 1, 2 and the figure in line 3.

Systematic excavation in the grounds of Cyrene's extramural Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone has taken place on a syncopated annual basis since 1969 (non-seasons in '70, '72, and '75), and while this activity has not been conducted under the auspices of the Society for Libyan Studies, the original idea to clear the site owes much of its inspiration to the encouragement of Richard Goodchild, who had generously agreed to share in its responsibility before his death in 1968 brought about the postponement of its pilot season scheduled for later in that same year. Moreover, the University Museum Expedition was fortunate to obtain a research grant from the Society in 1976 for one of its staff. For these reasons I am happy to contribute the following what otherwise might appear exogenous remarks.

While the site athwart the south slope of Wadi Bel Gadir (pl. 1, fig. 1) appears to have been scarcely noticed by the early travelers, R. Norton (1910–11) followed by E. Ghislanzoni (1915) are known to have retrieved a number of sculptures and terracottas from its soil. In fact, some of the more burdensome of the marbles first discovered and then abandoned by the former were subsequently recovered by the latter, only to turn up in the same locus more than half a century later, re-buried in shallow fill containing broken wine (?) bottles and spent cartridges. Some time between 1915 and 1929 the Italian authorities were motivated to lay railway track along the wadi drain and to carry out an extensive clearance of the sanctuary's lower two terraces, leaving a gaping hole in its NW corner still visible today. Nothing is known of what prompted this considerable effort, which was never published, but already by the time of Anti's article the area is referred to as a Demeter sanctuary mainly on the basis of random discoveries of fragmentary inscriptions eventually published by Oliverio. By 1969 the site exhibited only the bare outlines of its main wall features and betrayed few outward signs of previous digging.

One of the over-riding factors ensuring the ease of Greek and Hellenistic civilisations' expansion throughout the Mediterranean basin, and the geographical factor which lent a cohesive potential to the Roman world was the Mediterranean Sea itself. During the 7th century B.C. it was the sea which provided outward access for the Greek colonial migration, and then later ensured communication between colony and mother city. The great weight which Greek colonists attached to securing an easy access to their maritime communication lines was a major consideration in determining the siting of the colonial cities. The increasing size of ships during the 5th–3rd centuries B. C. coupled with the vastly increased volume of maritime trade which characterised the Hellenistic period were major stimuli to the artificial development of those natural harbours on which the colonial cities were based.

Any study of classical harbours in Cyrenaica must begin with an examination of the literary sources of which two are particularly relevant. They are; the Stadiasmus Maris Magni (1), and Herodotus' account of the original Greek colonisation of Cyrenaica from the island of Thera (2). The Stadiasmus is a document to which at present no precise date can be assigned, but in its final form it is probably not later than the end of the 2nd century A. D., and it would seem to be a palimpsest. The Stadiasmus lists the harbours along the entire North African Coast from Alexandria to Tunis, and, being written by seamen for the guidance of seamen it is the equivalent of the modern Admiralty Pilot. The list of harbours which it provides indicates that there was a very strictly graded hierarchy of natural harbour types, for no less than six different nouns are used to describe harbour entities according to their geographical qualities. In the Cyrenaican section of the Stadiasmus nine harbours are listed which can be divided into three distinct groups according to the words used to describe them. The three groups are headed by the terms Euphormos, Hormos and Panormos in ascending order of merit, and each denotes a very specific type of natural harbour. The root word, Hormos, meaning a tore or collar, is used in a maritime context from the earliest literary times, and is so used by Homer. The various prefixes which are attached to the word, Euph and Pan, denote natural harbour types which either excel or in some way fail to match the norm, the Hormos. In its sense of ‘collar’ the word conveys a notion of the configuration of the ideal harbour, i.e. a land-locked bay to provide shelter for shipping with access to the sea.

The female funerary bust, as a type of grave monument, consists of a bust or a demi-statue including hips, waist, shoulders and head. The type is unparalleled elsewhere in the history of ancient sculpture.

1. This unique unpublished find (pl. 1) of the Flavian period, which is made of grained white marble and measures 50 cm. high by 34 cm. wide, was found at El-Beggara in the S. W. Cemetery at Cyrene by Mr. Ali Bu Nuw-wara on 4 November 1971. The statue portrays a draped woman in half-length bust form. The bust terminates a short way below the waist and is worked flat at the bottom. The figure is in good condition; only three fingers of the left hand are missing and some drapery ridges are chipped or broken.

The figure holds her right arm, bent at the elbow, horizontally across her body; the left arm is bent up to the side of the face and holds part of her garment across the face as a veil. The figure is completely draped in a himation which both enfolds the body and covers the head. The left hand, with thumb, ring and little fingers missing, stretches a part of the himation across the eyes, nose and mouth. These features are indicated under the transparent folds of the mantle. Here the sculptor has precisely demonstrated the delicacy of the facial features through the veil, an effect produced by his controlled chisel work. The figure's forehead is graced with tightly curled hair which is massed over the brow like a short African haircut. The hair style is typical of the Flavian period and is not later than the time of Hadrian. The folds of the himation in front are rendered as sharp ridges crossing the body; the back is also carved with folds of the same type but worked in a more simplified manner. The figure wears a snake bracelet on her left arm; this type of armlet appears in many of these Cyrenean funerary busts and may have iconographic or symbolic significance.

The authors of a recent article in this journal suggest that ‘water supply arrangements can be interpreted to provide urban population figures’. They offer conclusions constructed on this basis about the population of cities in Roman Cyrenaica. (J. A. Lloyd, P. R. Lewis ‘Water supply and urban population in Roman Cyrenaica’ Eighth Annual Report 1976–7, 35–40, at 36.)

Useable information about ancient city population remains perennially elusive. If a valid criterion for deducing population from physical remains could be established, it would be a highly important addition to the tools available to the archaeologist and the ancient historian. But before any such criterion can be achieved, we must escape from faulty methods. Demographic inference from aqueduct capacity should be recognised as a blind alley.

Difficulties can be indicated briefly.

1. The authors note that the ratios of aqueduct capacity to urban area at Ptolemais and Berenice differ widely. They explain this by noting that the ancients could not measure water flow at all accurately. If that is conceded, the attempt to derive useable population figures from aqueduct capacity fails on its own terms, since we have no means of discovering which ancient hydraulic calculations (if any) were accurate. The authors choose to regard the Berenice figure as accurate and the Ptolemais figure as inaccurate (by a factor of 2). But there is no real reason why one should be preferred to the other, once the likelihood of erroneous calculation has been admitted.

On the surface, the old city of Tripoli appears to have survived without serious damage to its morphological and architectural character into the modern period. But the entire function of the castle and suk has changed radically since the early years of the present century, beginning with the arrival of the Italian colonial regime in 1911. Even earlier, in the mid-nineteenth century, an important change is to be seen in the removal of the Karamanli Bashaws as rulers of Tripolitania and the institution of Ottoman control, from which time Tripoli ceased to be the seat of political power and an independent centre of corsair activity. Under Turkish administration there were but few changes in the structure of Tripoli and its environs, though illustrations of the period suggest that a number of official institutions set up buildings outside the old city and a slow but perceptible move began to establish settlements around the city walls. The pace of development of modern Tripoli was much accelerated by the Italian colonial occupation, though the larger part of this ‘new’ Tripoli was occupied by and served the needs of the Italians rather than the indigenous population. The population of Tripoli was reported as 13 841 in 1914 (di Agostini: 1917), entirely contained within the old city, and these social groups remained in their traditional areas in many cases until the violent upheavals caused by the collapse of the Italian colonial administration and the coming of political independence to Libya. Rapidly rising personal incomes in the period after 1961, resulting from the diffusion of oil wealth and particularly the concentration of economic activity in the hands of the merchants and the urban population of large, led to abandonment of the greater part of the old city of Tripoli. The old Arab and Jewish quarters alike are now taken over for temporary accommodation for recent (and often foreign immigrants) and for storage of goods. It may well be that physical decay of the city has been retarded but that the functional decay of the area is far advanced. Possibly this may be viewed as a fitting epitaph on a city that historically never succeeded in establishing clear and lasting control over its hinterland.

In the Seventh Annual Report of the Society I published an account of the journey of the shaykh Al-Tijānī to Tripoli at the beginning of the fourteenth century A. D./eighth century A. H., with particular reference to the Arab tribes and chiefs whom he encountered.

What follows is a translation of the passages from the Riḥla in which he describes the city of Tripoli as he saw it during the eighteen months of his residence. Page references are to the 1958 Tunis edition of the work, followed by references to the nineteenth century French translation by Alphonse Rousseau. The latter is incomplete, and not always accurate.

221, trans. 1853, 135

Our entry into (Tripoli) took place on Saturday, 19th Jumāḍā II (707).

237, trans. 1853, 135–6

As we approached Tripoli and came upon it, its whiteness almost blinded the eye with the rays of the sun, so that I knew the truth of their name for it, the White City. All the people came out, showing their delight and raising their voices in acclaim. The governor of the city vacated the place of his residence, the citadel of the town, so that we might occupy it. I saw the traces of obvious splendour in the citadel (qaṣba), but ruin had gained sway. The governors had sold most of it, so that the houses which surrounded it were built from its stones. There are two wide courts, and outside is the mosque (masjid), formerly known as the Mosque of the Ten, since ten of the shaykhs of the town used to gather in it to conduct the affairs of the city before the Almohads took possession. When they did so, the custom ceased, and the name was abandoned.