Transcript

PHIL PERKINS:

This is the city of Thugga, in the ancient kingdom and Roman Province of Numidia. It lies on the slopes of the valley of the Oued Khalled, in a fertile landscape of olives and grain.

The city is well preserved and extensively excavated. We’ll be exploring the remains to investigate how the town developed and what impact Roman occupation had on the city. Thugga was already a flourishing city the 4th century BC. Well before the kingdom of Numidia was added to the Roman Empire, it was a centre of Numidian power.

This is the royal mausoleum of Ateban son of Ypmatat son of Palu, constructed around the beginning of the 2nd century BC by his son Zumar, with Abaris son of Abdastart and Mangi son of Warsacan and the inscription naming them which was torn from the building in 1842 and now lies in the British Museum was written in two languages, Libycan and Punic.

The mausoleum stands on five steps and the lower part is like a house with a window on each side. And pilasters at the corners with lotus flower scrolled capitals.

Above this three further steps rise to a central section with a series of embedded ionic columns around it and surmounted with an Egyptian style moulding.

The upper section, like the lower has lotus flower pilasters at the corners. Above the pilasters is another Egyptian moulding and a pyramid to crown the building.

At each of the four corners stood a winged female figure. And at the top sat a lion. Similar monuments have been found in other parts of North Africa but its details illustrate a fusion of Greek and Egyptian cultural elements which came together in Africa and influenced local expressions of culture.

Clearly Numidia was participating in the culture of the Eastern Mediterranean well before the Roman conquest of Carthage.

Other parts of the city also reveal glimpses of the pre-Roman town - the city walls built of roughly squared blocks with square towers probably date to the late 2nd century BC.

Outside the city walls lay the pre-Roman cemeteries - where bodies were placed, with pottery, in rough stone block chambers, covered by earth mounds.

Within the city itself the irregular plan of the streets goes back to the Numidian city.

Even the Roman period shows no signs of the formal grid layout typical of so many Roman cities. These then are the clearest remains of pre-Roman Thugga. However the city did not suddenly change when the Romans took over Numidia and we can trace the gradual development of the Roman city by studying the surviving buildings and also a remarkable collection / of inscriptions which have been found here.

These inscriptions help us to both identify and date the buildings of the city.

So here we have the Temple of Mercury, which was built in the late second century AD. A long inscription identifies the temple, with its rooms, portico and statues - built by Quintius Pacuvius Saturus, a leading citizen, and his wife Nahania Victoria, an important priestess, according to the will of their son Marcus Pacuvius Felix

Victorianus, at a total cost of 145,000 sestertii. This small temple, dedicated to Augustan Piety, was erected in the first half of the second century AD by Pompeius Rogatus, at a cost of 30,000 sestertii.

These temples surround a square. Engraved on the paving is a wind rose, which marks the points of the compass and the names of the winds, so for example we have the south south – east wind Leuconotus, the south wind, Auster and the south west wind Africus.

The Augustan author Vitruvius describes how to accurately lay out a wind rose and suggests that ideally streets and buildings should be set out to avoid directly facing the North, South, East or West winds.

The wind rose at Thugga matches the description but the layout of the city does not follow the instructions. For example, on the fourth side of the square, the Capitol is aligned to face the south wind.

The Temple is dedicated to the protectors of Rome: Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. In the back wall of the cella are three niches, one for each of the divinities. Above the cella doorway an inscription tells us that Lucius Marcius Simplex Regillianus built the temple.

In the pediment is a mutilated relief of the apotheosis of the emperor Antoninus Pius: he is shown being taken aloft by an eagle.