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Three Inscriptions from Ghadames in Tripolitania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

J. M. Reynolds
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Extract

The three inscriptions described below were seen and photographed at Ghadames in 1955 by Mr. C. J. Barron and subsequently re-examined by Mrs. Olwen Brogan. They illustrate the three main phases of the history of the oasis in classical antiquity—the life of the Roman garrison established in the early third century A.D., of the resultant civil settlement with its Latin speech and customs and, finally, of the native Libyans, using the Latin alphabet but their own language, presumably in the gradual barbarisation of the place after the withdrawal of the garrison. They are published here by kind permission of Dr. Vergara-Caffarelli, Director of Antiquities in Tripolitania.

1. Moulded altar of limestone, the top broken away and lost (0·36 × 0·54 × 0·36) inscribed on one face within a sunk panel. There is a vertical groove down the centre of the back, presumably made in order to attach the altar to a wall. Findspot unrecorded. Now in the courtyard of the Mudiriya.

Type
Research Article
Information
Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 26 , November 1958 , pp. 135 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 1958

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References

page 135 note 1 The spacing suggests [Discipli]/nae Aug(ustae) or [Fortu]/nae Aug(ustae).

page 135 note 2 AV in ligature.

page 135 note 3 Probably between c. 198 when the legion is first recorded with these titles and c. 231 when it received the additional title S(everiana). The text then contains the earliest surviving dated reference to the legionary detachment stationed at Ghadames. There can, however, be little doubt that a fort there was part of the Tripolitanian frontier system planned by Septimius Severus, see J. Reynolds and J. B. Ward Perkins, Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania, p. 225 ff. and Goodchild, R. G., PBSR, xxii (1954), p. 56 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 136 note 1 Presumably the name of the dead woman's father.

page 136 note 1 The stone gives the impression of belonging to a mausoleum.

page 136 note 2 The letters are late in character and include some unusual forms : in 1. 14, , see J. Reynolds, PBSR, xxiii (1955), p. 128, no. s. 2; and in 1. 15, θ which, if rightly read, seems to be from the Libyan alphabet, see Reynolds, loc. cit., p. 139, no. S.21.

page 136 note 3 The language is clearly Libyan and the monument is the first in this language to be recorded at Ghadames. In l. 12 the group of letters B V N V may be a version of byny, son of, see R. G. Goodchild, The Antiquaries Journal, xxx (1950), p. 139. In l. 14 the cutter may have intended ducentos or a form of ducenarius.