During the years 1895–6 the late H. Swainson Cowper visited the Tarhuna pleateau of Tripolitania and examined in considerable detail a large number of ancient sites. The results of this exploration, first published in the Antiquary, were later embodied in a monograph published in 1897. Cowper was not the first European to visit the ancient monuments of the Tarhuna region: he had been preceded by Smyth (1817), Barth (1850), Von Bary (1875), and Rohlfs (1879). His own work was more detailed, and geographically more concentrated, than that of his predecessors, and his publication, amply illustrated by photographs and drawings, remains to-day an indispensable companion for any investigator of ancient sites in the eastern Gebel.Cowper's main thesis, which occupies a predominant place in his book, was that the trilithon-shaped ‘senams’ (arabic for ‘idols’) of the Tarhuna plateau were prehistoric monuments of a religious character. This conclusion was immediately challenged by Sir John Myres and the late Sir Arthur Evans, who demonstrated conclusively that these megalithic structures were in fact the frames of Roman olive-presses. In consequence general interest in the Tarhuna plateau declined, and even the researches of De Mathuisieulx (1901–4), which resulted in the discovery of the important neo Punic inscription of Ras el-Haddagia, failed to counterbalance the lost repute of the ‘senams’.
In a previous article in this Journal the writer and Mr. J. B. Ward Perkins gave a summary historical and archaeological sketch of the Roman Limes in Tripolitania, illustrated by the two sites, Ain Wif and Gasr Duib, investigated in 1948. Further evidence of the character of this Limes was obtained in the summer of 1949 when air and ground reconnaissances were made over a considerable area of the frontier zone, with the aid of the Royal Air Force and of the military authorities in Tripolitania. Since this new information relates particularly to the indigenous elements in the Tripolitanian frontier army, and to the types of fortified homesteads occupied by the limitanei—aspects which were referred to very briefly in the former article—it has seemed desirable to incorporate it in a supplementary paper, preceded by a note on the historical regio Arzugum, which is evidently to be identified, at least in part, with the Tripolitanian frontier zone.
The Limes Tripolitanus, the easternmost of the series of limites protecting the Latin provinces of Roman Africa, ran for some 1,000 km. from Turris Tamalleni (the modern Telmine, on the edge of the Chott el Djerid) to its eastern terminus at Arae Philaenorum (Muktar, near ‘Marble Arch’) on the border of ancient Cyrenaica. Of this total length the western 300 km. lie within the confines of the French Protectorate of Tunisia, and for this sector Cagnat's admirable summary of the archaeological evidence, although written in 1912, has not been seriously outdated by any more recent explorations. The eastern sector, also of 300 km., from the great salt-marsh of Sebcha Tauorga to Arae Philaenorum, is still completely unknown, and its character cannot be profitably discussed until exploration has been carried out : it should, however, be observed that in this eastern zone the limes must have followed the bleak shores of the Greater Syrtis, where there were few coastal centres of importance, and virtually no Romanized hinterland.
The two well-preserved Roman fortresses to be described in this paper have been known for many years. They were first brought to European notice by the British-sponsored geographical expeditions of the nineteenth century, when Tripoli was the spring-board for repeated attempts to find a route into Central Africa. Although important discoveries have been made in one of these forts (Bu Ngem) in more recent years, no detailed ground-plans have previously been published.The following notes and illustrations are primarily intended to fill this lacuna in the documentation of the African limes; but it is hoped that they may also serve to increase our knowledge of early third-century trends in Roman military architecture. The European frontiers of the Roman Empire have yielded, and are still yielding, numerous examples of first- and second-century forts, and equally numerous examples of the forts erected during the later-third and early-fourth centuries, when barbarian invasion threatened the whole Roman world.
HE extraordinary rapidity of the Arab * J. Maspero [24] suggests that the name 'Aboulyanos' given by John of Nikiu should be read as 'Flavianus'. It seems, however, more likely that it was Apollonios, a common enough name in Cyrenaica.
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