Tripoli's Protestant Cemetery is a place of some mystery. One of the most persistent of these mysteries is the whereabouts of the £200 Sterling that the former British Consul General in Tripoli, Colonel Hanmer Warrington, publicly claimed to have deposited in the Bank of England around 1841 to maintain his family mausoleum and the rest of the cemetery. Research at the Bank of England and in the National Archives in Kew, London, has thrown fresh, but not conclusive, light on this matter. Another of the cemetery's mysteries are the five graves, said to be those of some of the United States sailors killed in Tripoli harbour in 1804. In the 1950s and 1960s these graves were the focus of an annual American diplomatic and military commemoration ceremony. But were the graves really what they were supposed to be?

InA Hole in the Heavens, the history of Cyrene which he had under preparation at the time of his death, and now published in its unfinished state in his memorial volume, Richard Goodchild, writing about the Beechey Brothers expedition to Libya in 1821–2, stated “Unfortunately a large number of their drawings had to be omitted from the published volume for reasons of economy, and if these unpublished drawings still exist, their present whereabouts are not known”. Further on, on the same page, Goodchild added “The modern investigator of ancient Cyrene would gladly sacrifice nine-tenths of the Beecheys' narrative in return for those plans and drawings which were omitted from the published report”. A small packet of some of these plans and drawings has come to light in the library of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities of the British Museum; it is not known how or when they were acquired. Which of the Beechey brothers was the main draughtsman of these documents is unclear: the packet is labelled “Wm. Beechey's Monus. of the Pentapolis Cyrenaica — Africa”; one brother was Frederick William and the other was Henry William. Most of the drawings are plans, and it seems that Frederick Beechey was more concerned with that aspect of che work than his more artistically inclined brother.

Blinkenberg's treatment of the participation of certain Lindians in the founding of Kyrene, a fact mentioned only in the list of dedications to Athana Lindia, is, at the very least, inadequate, since he gives no reasons for rejecting the report. Blinkenberg seems to have been misled by Herodotos, whose account lacks precision, as historians familiar with this passage have long recognised. Chamoux at least attempted to buttress the received view with arguments. The present paper sides with the Lindians against the naysayers regarding a Lindian role in the foundation of Kyrene and reaches the conclusion that these Lindians numbered among the perioikoi there.

This paper presents a short preliminary report of excavations at Balagrae (al-Beida) in 2001 and 2002. Two phases of building were investigated; the first, representing a possibly domestic or industrial structure which appears to have been destroyed in the earthquake of AD 365, and the second a crudely built late structure erected after the earthquake. Elements of a Roman Doric colonnade reused in the walls of Phase I suggests the existence nearby of a still earlier structure of some architectural pretension.

The main intention of this survey, for which I was awarded the first Libya Fellowship of the Society, was to examine a number of sites in Libya and also in adjacent countries which are either of the same period as the monuments in Ajdabiyah, or have relevance to the development of these monuments.

On the way to Libya I visited the related, if somewhat later monuments of Palermo, built in the Arabo-Norman style, but utilizing both workmen and a number of constructional techniques from North Africa. I was fortunate in being guided around the various sites by members of the Ente per i Palazzi e Ville di Sicilia, and was able to use the recent study of Palermo by Mrs D. L. Jones, currently awaiting publication. The architectural details, and many of the designs and patterns involved relate very strongly to the north African forms, and emphasise the fact that the Mediterranean was still much more of a linking than a divisive factor even after the Muslims had lost control of Sicily and some of the other islands.

The creation of the Libyan-Tunisian border through the Jafara plain, in the wake of the French occupation of Tunisia in 1881, was to be codified in a formal treaty in 1910, just before the Italian occupation of Libya and the outbreak of the Italo-Libyan wars. However, the border, as then defined, had little to do with any prior social, political or economic reality – Muslim political theory is more concerned with communal sovereignty than with territorial control, while the Jafara plain had always been a region of local political autonomy. In reality, it represented the complex attempts by local military commanders, with the full support of the French administration in Tunis, to maximise French territorial control at the expense of the Turkish administration in Tripoli. The abandoned village of Dahibat, at the foot of the Jabal Nafusa, provided an ideal means of applying such control, particularly as the original population was anxious to return and the French were able to use their anxiety as a means of applying concepts of territorial sovereignty to the Jafara. However, in creating a rigid territorial division, the French authorities also created the grounds for resistance at a local level that eventually expressed itself first through the First World War jihad movement in the Jafara and later formed part of the Tunisian independence movement.

Over the past few decades the Higher Education system in Libya has witnessed a rapid growth in student numbers and a massive expansion in its programmes and services. Despite the contribution of Higher Education provision in the development and progress of Libyan society, the large increase in the number of Higher Education institutions has considerably exceeded the actual needs and demands of the country. Past and present studies highlight several shortcomings and limitations that significantly impede the overall performance and operation of the Higher Education system in Libya. This study supports the need for a comprehensive and critical evaluation of Higher Education provision in order to understand better its current status and role in modern Libyan society.

The main factors to be tackled if environmental sustainability becomes Libya's national goal are: first, to base desalination and pumping on renewable energy (e.g., solar, wind); second, to invest oil receipts to export solar electricity; and third, to achieve these two before oil or water are depleted. Because water is paramount for sustainability and economic development, if pumping fossil water and desalination become based on renewable energy, then low-cost freshwater can become the basis for sustainability. As Libya is so well placed to generate solar electricity, the most sustainable choice is to accelerate the transition to renewables before international climate treaties force coal and, later, oil to be left unused in the ground. Libya could lead in making Europe carbon-neutral through massive exports of solar electricity. This would be highly profitable for Libya and at the same time would help achieve sustainability. Quasi-sustainability of non-renewable resources (e.g., oil) could be achieved by investing oil receipts in Libya's sovereign funds, so that by the time hydrocarbons are exhausted a sustainable income is generated for Libyans in perpetuity. This could also provide social safety nets, create jobs and increase human capital formation.

The mausoleum of Gasr Doga in the Tarhuna area was a grand funerary monument erected, by a member of the local Libico-Punic élite, in a strategic position on the limits of the provincial territory. Its architectural articulation recalls the dynastic Numidian monuments, while its decoration shows elements of the local tradition combined with motifs imported from Italy. In Late Antiquity and the Islamic period the mausoleum was surrounded by a fortified village, almost entirely built of spolia coming from the mausoleum itself. In an attempted reconstruction, the elevation of the third storey is discussed alongside other problems concerning the original layout of the structure.

In the course of the two decades since 1969, archaeological and architectural investigations relating to the Islamic period in Libya have made sufficient progress for it to be possible now to see the country's Islamic antiquities with a reasonable degree of perspective within Libya and in relation to a broader context. Nevertheless, a great deal of work remains to be done, both with regard to extending the geographical scope of research on Islamic Libya and to studying relatively neglected periods. At present we are better informed about certain Fāṭimid monuments in Libya than any other Islamic buildings in the country. While the importance of Libya in the tenth and eleventh centuries AD is a matter of great interest, it must not be forgotten that even today, we know very much less in detail about the mosques and houses of later times. A marked imbalance therefore exists in the relative degree of information available for an account of the Islamic archaeology and architecture of Libya in the period as a whole. This imbalance is very clear in the present survey.

The extent of the increase in knowledge of the Islamic archaeology of Libya becomes immediately clear by referring to K. A. C. Creswell's A Bibliography of the Architecture, Arts and Crafts of Islam to 1st Jan. 1960 and the Supplements to it (Creswell 1973; Pearson et al. 1984). In his original Bibliography Creswell found nothing on Libyan architecture except for some studies on Tripoli. Even in the 1960s, very little further research on the Islamic period was published, although it was in this period that Ajdābiyah and Madīnah Sulṭān were initially investigated: this work formed the foundation of that which was to follow after 1969. Bys the time that the latest Supplement to Creswell's Bibliography appeared in 1984, a plethora of published material had emerged as a result of the sharp rise of interest in Islamic Libya during the period from 1969 onwards. As a result, no comprehensive survey of Islamic archaeology and architecture in North Africa written in the future will be complete without giving some account of the information that has been accumulated during the period 1969 to 1989.

This is a review of a project aimed at assisting the Libyan Department of Archaeology with the conservation and management of their mosaic heritage. Over the course of a year we undertook an evaluation trip along the coast of Libya and then put on two workshops for the Department's staff to help build capacity. The workshops disseminated complementary content on the protection of mosaics and their management to two different contingents: managers and technicians. The teaching was intended to empower Libyans by giving them the confidence to make simple and sound decisions, and to encourage them to join more formal training courses run by major international organisations. The project was a collaboration with the Department and was supported by the Getty Foundation, King's College London and the Society for Libyan Studies.

Nine Latino-Punic inscriptions from Roman Tripolitania are discussed in detail, and their wider context discussed. Not only do they attest to the prevalence of the Punic language in Roman Tripolitania, but also provide interesting data about the Neo-Punic language. They also shed light on the history of the ancient Roman province of Tripolitania and the Roman military and civil organisation in the zone of the ‘limes’.

Since the revolution of September 1969 very bold and expensive experiments have been mounted to test the productivity of Libya's soil and water resources. Ten years on it is appropriate to review these experiments in terms of the extension of the irrigated and cultivated area as well as with respect to the impact of such innovations on the renewable natural resources base and the viability of agricultural production in existing or changed economic circumstances.

Libyan economic development takes place in the special circumstances of an oil economy in which the massive oil revenues accruing to the government are deployed almost exclusively through the public sector via ministries and secretariats. In an oil economy a special and inescapable burden of responsibility falls to the government to lead and direct economic and social change (Penrose 1973, p7) and this role has at no time been avoided by the revolutionary government. On the contrary there has been a progressive rationalisation of activity and property since 1969 so that by 1979 almost all commercial and industrial activity, as well as housing and services were controlled by government agencies.

The agricultural sector has been affected by this trend towards public intervention directly through the capital invested in cultivation, irrigation and livestock and indirectly through the control of the marketing of agricultural products. The final phase of this interaction is seen in the new proposal to reorganize the farming of the coastal strip of the Jefara Plain and the coastal area as far as east Misuratah, with a view to creating viable agricultural units able to support a Libyan family with no outside labour. The economic, social and ideological implications of this proposal are immense not to speak of the opportunity which such a reorganization would present for the rational management of the crucial and much impaired groundwater resource upon which irrigated farming depends in the favoured and therefore ‘over-developed’ coastal strip.

This paper describes material recovered over the last few years from sites at Marsa Gezirah, near Misurata, in an attempt to assess their nature. Site A, which has recently suffered severe damage, appears of particular importance as a small port on the edge of the Sebkha, with evidence of brisk commercial activity for the last two centuries BC.

One of the more unusual attractions in Windsor Great Park is the folly beside the lake at Virginia Water. Built in the 1820's in the form of an idealised Classical ruin, it incorporates a large collection of Roman antiquities from the site of Lepcis Magna in Libya. Considering the importance of this monument, not only as one of the most elaborate follies, but one of largest assemblages of Roman architectural fragments in the country, it has received relatively little scholarly attention. As a consequence, in the summer of 2003 a thorough survey and partial excavation of the site were undertaken. The results of this work, a detailed plan of the ruins, a catalogue of the items remaining and new evidence for the origin, construction and history of the site, are presented. The provenance of the Roman elements will be examined in greater detail in part 2.

In 1998 a mile-station was discovered along the ancient coastal road 1400 m east of Abu Kammash, a centre identified with ancient Pisida on the basis of the Roman itineraries: the Itinerarium Antonini records a distance of 54 miles from Sabratha; the Tabula Peutingeriana of only 53. The Department of Antiquity of Sabratha in collaboration with the Archaeological Mission of the University Roma Tre recovered a milestone of Caracalla (216 AD) and another of Diocletian and Maximian (290-292 AD). Both bear the number of 54 miles, a distance evidently reckoned from the city of Sabratha, in perfect accordance with the figure of the Itinerarium Antonini.

Excavations at El-Medeinah, ancient Surt (in previous reports erroneously called Medinat Sultan) took place between July 11 and August 6th 1977. The excavations were financed by the Department of Antiquities of Libya and by the Society for Libyan Studies. Participants of the excavations were Mr. Abdulhamid Abdussaid, Technical Director of the Department of Antiquities, Libya, Mr. Masoud Shagluf, Controller of Antiquities, Benghazi, Dr. Géza Fehérvári, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London on behalf of the Society for Libyan Studies, Mr. Idris Ahmad Badi, Inspector of Antiquities, Benghazi, Mr. Michael Blyth and Mrs. Marta Kozary Blyth, Architects, Miss Marga Foley, Conservation student, Institute of Archaeology, University of London, Miss Caroline Ballingal, student, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and Mrs. Iren Fehérvári.

The aims of the season's work were:

1. to prepare an overall survey map of the site,

2. to prepare for publication the previously excavated pottery, and

3. to open a trial trench in the mosque area in order to investigate earlier occupation levels, and a second one inside the mosque to establish the existence of a ṗre-Fāṭimid mosque.

With regard to the survey of the site, Professor Lucien Golvin of the University of Aix-en-Provence began such work on the site in June, 1975 and laid down a number of reference points on a 50 m grid. It was decided that the present survey should be based on Professor Golvin's grid, and implemented as necessary. A new reference system was evolved which will be used in future excavations. A contour map of 1:1000 was produced which extends beyond the suggested line of the city walls as they were set by the Department of Antiquities under the direction of Dr. Mohammad Mostafa. The map depicts the contours at 50 cm intervals and includes all the previously excavated areas and visible features of the site (Fig.1).