Libya
Everyone on board Endeavour watched the shore of North Africa gradually emerge out of the morning haze with an edgy anticipation and excitement, perhaps a little anxiety, because the tawny and ochre land materializing on our bow was Libya. How we would be received? For two decades Washington had in effect outlawed Libya as a state sponsor of terrorism – until this spring – when Libyan redress for past behavior caused the most punishing economic sanctions to be lifted, including the ban on US travel. We were the first American ship to visit: we were testing the waters.
As it happened, Endeavour was met by the grinning crew of the pilot vessel, escorted into a new industrial port of Al Khoms to find a dockside of smiling official faces, plus a Libyan band of a bagpiper and drummers, and were offered dates and nuts as we went ashore. Couldn’t have been friendlier. In modern, air-conditioned buses we negotiated the dusty streets of the port city, past shops festooned with backpacks (this is back-to-school week for Libyan children) and evidence of much new housing construction, signs of fresh economic energy. Out of town the landscape made me feel that only date palms and eucalyptus trees are holding back the vast Libyan desert from pushing right to the sea. Indeed for centuries, our destination, Leptis Magna, the greatest Roman City in North Africa, was totally lost under the desert sands until excavations began in the 1920s.
The ruined city now revealed, staggering in its size and in how much still stands, astonished us all – even the scholars with us who had long studied Leptis Magna and only dreamed of actually seeing it. (…such as Tom Heffernan)
As Robert noted, I have been dreaming of visiting Leptis Magna for years. My own study of Roman North Africa has always emphasized that Leptis was the jewel in the crown. The city has a great antiquity and saw its first colonists from Phoenicia. The Phoenicians were looking for trading sites in the western Mediterranean and found the location of Leptis met all their requirements. The origin of its name is disputed but many agree that the river that supplies its water which still has the name Wadi Lebta was the likely source of the city’s name. Leptis was under the general control of great city of Carthage but with the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, Leptis was free to move towards Rome. By the middle of the 1st century Leptis was clearly allied with Rome.
It was not until the first Roman African Emperor Septimus Severus (who ruled from 193-211) that Leptis received the endowments that made it so beautiful. Septimus was born in Leptis and determined to turn it into a new Rome. He was quite successful and wealth flowed into Leptis in every vessel of grain and olive oil that left its ports. At the turn of the 3rd century Leptis was exporting 50 thousand metric tons to Rome alone. At its height it had a population of some 80 thousand and the archaeological ruins give a taste of the civility of life. The Hadrianic baths comprise almost 6 acres and are amongst the most elegant in the Roman world. The monument that remains in my memory is the triumphant memorial arch built to acknowledge the visit of their native son and Roman Emperor in 203 AD. We left Leptis passing by that glowing buttery sandstone and marble monument tired but exhilarated by this memorable experience.
Everyone on board Endeavour watched the shore of North Africa gradually emerge out of the morning haze with an edgy anticipation and excitement, perhaps a little anxiety, because the tawny and ochre land materializing on our bow was Libya. How we would be received? For two decades Washington had in effect outlawed Libya as a state sponsor of terrorism – until this spring – when Libyan redress for past behavior caused the most punishing economic sanctions to be lifted, including the ban on US travel. We were the first American ship to visit: we were testing the waters.
As it happened, Endeavour was met by the grinning crew of the pilot vessel, escorted into a new industrial port of Al Khoms to find a dockside of smiling official faces, plus a Libyan band of a bagpiper and drummers, and were offered dates and nuts as we went ashore. Couldn’t have been friendlier. In modern, air-conditioned buses we negotiated the dusty streets of the port city, past shops festooned with backpacks (this is back-to-school week for Libyan children) and evidence of much new housing construction, signs of fresh economic energy. Out of town the landscape made me feel that only date palms and eucalyptus trees are holding back the vast Libyan desert from pushing right to the sea. Indeed for centuries, our destination, Leptis Magna, the greatest Roman City in North Africa, was totally lost under the desert sands until excavations began in the 1920s.
The ruined city now revealed, staggering in its size and in how much still stands, astonished us all – even the scholars with us who had long studied Leptis Magna and only dreamed of actually seeing it. (…such as Tom Heffernan)
As Robert noted, I have been dreaming of visiting Leptis Magna for years. My own study of Roman North Africa has always emphasized that Leptis was the jewel in the crown. The city has a great antiquity and saw its first colonists from Phoenicia. The Phoenicians were looking for trading sites in the western Mediterranean and found the location of Leptis met all their requirements. The origin of its name is disputed but many agree that the river that supplies its water which still has the name Wadi Lebta was the likely source of the city’s name. Leptis was under the general control of great city of Carthage but with the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, Leptis was free to move towards Rome. By the middle of the 1st century Leptis was clearly allied with Rome.
It was not until the first Roman African Emperor Septimus Severus (who ruled from 193-211) that Leptis received the endowments that made it so beautiful. Septimus was born in Leptis and determined to turn it into a new Rome. He was quite successful and wealth flowed into Leptis in every vessel of grain and olive oil that left its ports. At the turn of the 3rd century Leptis was exporting 50 thousand metric tons to Rome alone. At its height it had a population of some 80 thousand and the archaeological ruins give a taste of the civility of life. The Hadrianic baths comprise almost 6 acres and are amongst the most elegant in the Roman world. The monument that remains in my memory is the triumphant memorial arch built to acknowledge the visit of their native son and Roman Emperor in 203 AD. We left Leptis passing by that glowing buttery sandstone and marble monument tired but exhilarated by this memorable experience.
