Today, we finally got to visit one of the top sites in Libya, the Roman ruins of Sabratha. I’ll fill you in on the history of Sabratha in a little bit, but first, let me tell you about our trip. We started out at 8am, with Zack’s cousin driving, Mom, Hala, and Yaguta in attendance as well. The trip started out okay, with very little traffic as we passed through Tripoli. People here usually get started about 10 o’clock in the morning, so we avoided the usual congestion of the city.
Abdulrahman (Zack’s cousin) got his license about three months ago (legal driving age here is 18), and this was the first time he was really driving on the open highway. This may also be the last time, because he very nearly killed us, causing Zack to take over the reigns. We stopped in modern day Sabratha and picked up some breakfast (some type of bread, potato chips, red bull for me and Zack and some cold drinks) and then headed on to the site. It took some time, because Zack couldn’t remember exactly how to get there, and we had to ask a cop for directions, who was kind enough to let us know we missed the turn two seconds after we passed it (he was standing IN the intersection). We finally reached our destination (an hour and a half of driving), where Mom instructed me not to speak in English, or they may just raise the admission price on us. I, as per usual here, kept my mouth shut. Turns out the whole Prodigal Son returning scenario works at tourist destinations here, too, because we ended up getting into the museum for $9, less than a third of the normal price.
We first entered the museum, which stands on what used to be the church (set up during Byzantine rule). Outside of the main area are pretty impressive Roman statues, most notably, an almost complete man in the typical Roman army gear. Inside the main area (or, I would assume, the sanctuary of the church) there are huge mosaics along the floor and walls. The mosaics in this area are from the floor of the church, and include crosses, birds, and early Christian symbols. There are also some original columns salvaged from the church, a stone set of stairs (from the pulpit?) and a stone engraving at the back with two crosses and some other circular symbol which has what appears to be a six leaf clover inside it (again, I’m assuming this is an early Christian symbol of some sort, as everything in this room is from the church). The mosaics are complete, from what I could tell, and very ornate. You can see some of the sanctuary portion of the museum below:
Portion of the floor of the Byzantine Church
Early Christian symbols in the Byzantine Church
Leaving the sanctuary portion of the museum, you enter the side buildings, which house relics from the Roman city. There are more mosaics (one for the bathroom, one with amazing pictures of lions and cheetahs, and some downright creepy looking animals) and lots of huge statues. There is a positively GI-NOR-MOUS bust of Jupiter (Roman god of….anyone? Anyone? Answer: god of the sky) among other gods and goddesses, and apparently normal people, and there’s a truly terrifying child-god mix thing, with pointed ears and the most creepy expression on it’s face. Zack compared it to a vampire, but I felt more like it was a messenger of the gods or something. The complaint I have about the museum is that there is absolutely nothing to tell you what you are looking at, so unless you have a guide, you truly have no idea what’s going on. Heck, even with a guide, the guy could totally just be making stuff up (and considering all the conflicting accounts of the history of this place I’ve found, I’d say that option is highly possible). The truly great thing about this museum is that you can touch everything. Literally, there are no ropes or barriers anywhere, you can just walk right up to any artifact and lay your hands on it. It’s amazing!
Statue from Sabratha
Mosaic delineating the bath house
God of the Sky, Jupiter
Beautiful mosaic
The museum took all of ten minutes to go through (nine dollars well spent) and then we went outside, to tour the city. We were very fortunate to arrive when we did, because one of the visiting diplomats arrived shortly after us, and they closed the museum portion for his/her safety. Haha! Take that, politically important person! You may have shut down the entire city for two days, but you didn’t keep me from perusing the museum!
When you step out of the museum, you begin to understand that this area is absolutely enormous. When you say, I’m going to a ruined Roman city, you kind of think, it’ll be a few columns here, a few rocks there, maybe a theater or coliseum, and you’re done, right? No, not so here. This is literally a city, and it’s massive. As with the museum, there are very few markers telling you what you’re looking at. Thankfully, the signs that do exist are written in English and Arabic, so everyone in our party (with the exception of the three year old) could understand. The government is supposedly in the process of restoring most of the city, but for now, it’s pretty limited on what’s intact and what’s just laying around. There’s a lot of mosaic floors spread around. Some are almost complete, and some are actually in pieces, broken apart by some natural force. Zack picked up two pieces of a mosaic floor for us to take home (yes, it’s okay to do that…you can pretty much take anything back with you).
The architecture of the place is AMAZING! It’s basically a rock jungle gym for adults. You can climb on top of walls and look down into the rooms below, crawl through tiny little spaces, even sit in a public toilet. Let me tell you, those Romans did not believe in privacy when it came to pooing. The communal bathroom was basically a shelf around three walls, with a drop off underneath the rock that went down about ten feet. The holes were spaced about a foot apart, so you got to know each other pretty well, I’d assume. I asked Zack what in the world would you do if you had to go to the bathroom that close to someone else, and he said, well, I guess we’d just chat. Haha! He’s a riot! Within the walls underneath the drop off point (haha!) there appeared to be spigots, like there was some sort of water flow that came in and flushed out the nasties. Underneath the entire city appears to be a plumbing system. There are huge (and I do mean HUGE) holes throughout the city, all connected by tunnels underneath. The first thought that came to mind was catacombs, but then Zack made the valid point that it looked like it would function as a plumbing tunnel, since there seemed to be places for water to flush out any junk.
Well, when you have to go...
you have to go.
Most of Sabratha is still buried, and there doesn’t seem to be any kind of archeological digging going on, so it almost feels like you’re the first person to discover the ruins. Also, hardly anyone ever goes, for some unknown reason. I guess they’re just immune to it now. Whatever the case, we literally only saw about 12 other people all day, and that’s including the six police officers hanging out on the steps at the museum. Close to the public bathroom is a bathhouse. The floor of the…communal bathtub (?) is another mosaic which is almost complete, and it looks out over the Mediterranean. Can I just pause for a moment to say the Mediterranean is truly the most beautiful water I’ve ever seen? It’s crystal clear, everywhere. Today (and yesterday) it was also freezing, so I didn’t wade in it, but I did touch it and take some pictures. Wow, this city had a view! After that area, we walked around more, winding through some tunnels and going through little doors, and basically just climbing on everything. It rained for a few minutes, but it was barely a sprinkle, and only wet enough to put the shape of a Roman toilet seat on my pants for a few minutes. (Did not think about that when I was taking my potty break). This area seemed to be mainly shops and/or homes. Also, were the Romans just a totally tiny race of people, or did they just like to duck everywhere they went? All of the doorways and halls were very low and claustrophobic, so I think they musta been some kinda small. Maybe that’s why they overcompensate with those huge statues.
Road leading down to Sabratha
Fountain
Looking at the Mediterranean
The main part of the city is separated by about a hundred yards from the theater. As we were angling toward the theater, I happened upon the Temple of Hercules, where I struck my best muscle-man pose. His temple didn’t have much left (hey, it was established in 186 AD) other than a few portions of walls, a piece of a column and a huge hole in the ground. Zack and I both got the same impression from this hole, that it served as an area to sacrifice (something). Let’s hope it was plants, money and stuff like that, and nothing cute and alive. We then made our way over to the theater, which is RAD. This is a theater, not a coliseum, as I’ve seen it called on some websites. There’s an elevated stage, with elaborate carvings below it. On the stage, there are three entrances, through which you can see the Mediterranean. The stage is three levels high, and you can actually still climb all the way up, but all of the entrances have been padlocked for visitor safety, I suppose. The design of the theater is very interesting. You can enter by conventional entrances, or you can just climb on top of it all and sit at virtually the highest point to view the stage. At the entrance to the mosh pit (haha, just kidding! I think the floor level was the cheapest seats…could you imagine standing through an entire play and looking straight up?) is a huge carving of a fish. As I said earlier, the area below the stage is full of carvings; the carvings are all of people, but they’re all doing something different. Maybe they are depicting performances? Eh, I’ve got no idea. I actually took a picture groping a very nice butt of one of the carvings, which I found just hilarious. We spent a lot of time in the theater, and actually found a door that you probably aren’t supposed to open right off the stage. It led nowhere, and the theory was presented that maybe it was a changing room. If that’s the case, today’s stars have it great, cause this area was tiny and dark. The theater can seat 5,000 people. Those Romans sure loved their entertainment!
Temple of Hercules
At the theater
Engravings below the stage
When I finally pried Zack away from the theater (it’s his favorite part), we trekked over to the Byzantine area of the city, where there is a Punic mausoleum that’s pretty darn impressive. I climbed halfway up the darn thing, which was all fine and good til it came to climbing down, which proved to be not nearly as easy. This is the mausoleum of Bes, which is an Egyptian goddess who protected expectant mothers and the dead. I finally made it down, and we hoofed it over to the car, because our party (who’s visited the site probably 50 times between all of them) had become bored. We drove almost to the Tunisian border and turned around, looking for a certain restaurant for Zack’s mom. After about an hour and a half of driving around, we finally located it, and dang it if it wasn’t on the way home! All that driving around for nothing! This restaurant has what I’ll loosely call patio dining. Their patio dining actually consists of the cheapest plastic patio furniture in existence covered with ripped table cloths. The chairs and table are placed directly on the sand, cause, well, there’s just not much else here. There is a makeshift barbecue pit (one of those barrel-cut-in-half numbers) and a couple of dead sheep hanging around. I think I’ve already said this, but the people here seem to think that sheep (as in white, fluffy, baaaaa sheep) are in fact, goats, and that disgusting, scary, rabid rams are sheep. I’ve tried explaining their mistake, but no one will listen. Anyway, rams are disgusting. The meat actually has a delicious flavor, but you’re not going to find one single centimeter of “lamb” meat that doesn’t have a big ol’ honkin’ piece of fat hanging off of it. And all that fat makes that meat greasy as all get out, so I am thoroughly not a fan. Back to the restaurant…it’s Tunisian style food, so you go tell the guy what cuts of meat you want and they barbecue it up, right in front of you. They also serve you a delicious “salad” (that’s so not a salad, people!) which tastes remarkably like delicious salsa. I ate my entire salad with the provided pita bread and had one piece of ram. Still don’t like it. After eating, we piled back in the car, and the trip home from this point (an hour’s drive from Sabratha) took a little over two hours. We got stuck, unfortunately, in the hell they call traffic here, and sat, and sat, and sat. When we finally made it home, it was after four o’clock, and pretty much everyone here passed out, seeing as it WAS an hour after their normal siesta time. I, however, stayed up to look at pictures and begin typing up posts for all my followers (aka, mom and Scarlett) at home. Okay, now that I’ve told you my impression of Sabratha, I’m going to tell you the history of it. Now, please remember, as with the Tripoli history, there’s a LOT of conflicting accounts out there, and it’s really hard to decipher which one’s accurate, so I’m going to try to break it down correctly using various sources.
Perched on the Mausoleum
In front of the Mausoleum of Bes
Our driver (and cousin) Abdalrahman
The earliest known settlement at Sabratha was Phoenician, however as with Tripoli, it’s Lybico-Berber name suggests that there was an earlier settlement on the site. Archeologists have located the original foundations for the Phoenician homes and have found Phoenician, Punic (ancient Carthage) and Greek pottery dating back to the 5th or 6th century BC. The Greek called Sabratha “Abrotonos”, which translates to grain market, showing the city’s importance in the grain trade. The first permanent settlement seems to have been founded in the fifth century BC, but quickly outgrew its defensive walls, with homes being built outside of the city’s defenses. Sabratha became part of the Roman empire around 146 BC, after the fall of Carthage. By 7BC, the city was so important that it was minting its own coins, and in 157 AD, it became a full-blown Roman colony. The Romans revamped the city, adding in many temples for their gods, baths, forums, basilicas and the theater. They also reorganized the layout of the city, and set the streets on a grid pattern. As questioned earlier, I’ve found that the Romans, as a whole looked down upon human sacrifice to their gods (however, there are several cases where human sacrifice did occur). They did offer sacrifices of money, goods, and the occasional piece of livestock, so perhaps that’s why Hercules needed a gaping hole in his temple. It’s difficult to tell here exactly when the Romans left the area; some information points to an earthquake in 365 AD, which ended up sending some of the city into the Mediterranean, other information says that by the time of the earthquake, Sabratha was already mostly abandoned. Whatever the case, the city appears to have been taken over by Vandals in 455 AD and become part of the Byzantine empire in 533 AD. The Byzantines reestablished the city, though it was nowhere near the glory of its Roman days. Prior to that, Sabratha was an important part of Christianity in north Africa, serving for a time as a bishopric. Interesting point here, the beach at Sabratha used to be open for swimming, and Zack says when he went, there’s columns and rocks and shards of pottery at the bottom. I am so coming back in the summer to check this out! The city was finally completely abandoned after the Arab conquests of the 7th and 11th centuries, and lay in ruins until its rediscovery. I have found sites claiming that Mussolini is the person responsible for restoring much of Sabratha, with a ridiculous slogan of, “The Romans are back!” It was his colonization push, which he started around 1911, to strengthen Italy. This is where a lot of the Italian architecture in Tripoli and the restoration of Sabratha and Leptis Magna began. Apparently, there exists at Sabratha the ruins of an amphitheater, where gladiators did their thing, however we seem to have missed it. Zack is always rushing me, dang it!! Anyway, there’s more I want to say, but I’m exhausted and seem to be forgetting the minor details, so I’m going to end this post now. It was an absolutely perfect day, and Sabratha was amazing! I hope that we can make it back before it’s time to go
No comments:
Post a Comment