Libyan Heritage, Identity

Memory in postcolonial Italy and Libya has been used, reinterpreted and staged by political powers and the media. This book investigates the roots of myth, colonial amnesia and censorship in postwar Italy, as well as Colonel Gaddafi’s deliberate use of rituals, symbols, and the colonial past to shape national identity in Libya. The argument is sustained by case studies ranging among film, documentary, literature and art, shedding new light on how memory has been treated in the two postcolonial societies examined. The last part briefly analyses the identity transformation process in the new Libya.

This paper re-examines the evidence for the diffusion of foggara-based irrigation across the Sahara in ancient and medieval times. Recent fieldwork by the Fazzan project has established that the foggaras of the Wadi al-Ajal in Libya are of Garamantian origin (last centuries B.C. / early centuries A.D.), and appear to have been used perhaps until the early middle ages (ninth to eleventh centuries), but probably not beyond this. Abandonment of some of the foggaras may even have begun as early as the fourth century A.D. It is argued that foggara irrigation technology was introduced from Egypt in the second half of the first millennium B.C., and enabled the development of a Garamantian agricultural society in Fezzan, which controlled trans-Saharan trade. From the Fezzan, foggaras spread north to the fringes of the Garamantian world, to southern Tunisia and the southern Aurès in the Roman period.
An apparent collapse in North-South trans-Saharan trade in the late Roman period (fourth/fifth centuries A.D.), linked to the decline of the Tripolitanian coastal cities, weakened the Garamantian state, not least by affecting supplies of slaves used in foggara construction and maintenance. Coupled with a declining water table, problems of labour and maintenance gradually led to the abandonment of most foggaras, and a shift to smaller-scale agriculture supported by wells. Meanwhile, however, development of oasis zones in the west central Sahara (especially the Touat and Gourara) facilitated the subsequent development of new North-South trade routes through what is now the Algerian Sahara. These oases are today the zones of most highly developed foggara use anywhere outside Iran; local tradition puts foggara use here as early as the eleventh century A.D., and there are grounds for thinking it may go back to the seventh century if not earlier. There are strong similarities, in construction and nomenclature, between the foggaras of Fezzan and those of the west central Sahara, and it is most likely that the foggaras of the Touat and Gourara were introduced from the Fezzan. From these oases the foggara subsequently spread to the Tidikelt, Tafilelt and Figuig. Foggara technology spread throughout north Africa along trans-Saharan trade routes, and also enabled the development of oases as trading centres. As such, the history of the foggara in the Sahara is inseparable from the history of trans-Saharan trade.

The multivarious arrangement of mosaic floor pavements in Greek and Roman houses provides us today with clues as to the presumed function of the rooms they decorated. This is something that Pierre Gros recently evoked in his L'architecture romaine, his excellent synthesis of Roman architecture published in Paris in 2001 by Picard. The architectural layout and decoration, especially the mosaic floors, of the given rooms in the House of Leukaktios in Ptolemais have lent support to this idea, contributing to an understanding of specific purpose and function, which can be deemed as very likely.

This is an article that gives a brief account on the history of the Libyan novel. It also illustrates the most important stages that the Libyan novel came across since its beginnings until our present days. However, it is not intended to deal with all what has to do with the Libyan novel and novelists especially in respect of contemporary era. It is rather an attempt to recall historical elements of the Libyan novel with some hints about its contemporary development.

La présente contribution présente une stèle inédite déposée près de l’entrée principale de la casbah qui domine la ville d’El Kef, l’antique Sicca Veneria, en Tunisie centrale occidentale. Il s’agit d’une stèle punique tardive, datable entre le ier s. av. J.-C. et la première moitié du suivant, caractérisée par une scène de banquet entre deux personnages assis, probablement divins ; son iconographie constitue un unicum dans l’Occident punique et punique tardif, tant par ses thèmes que par son exécution, et renvoie à des éléments et des concepts de lointaine origine proche-orientale

Il contributo è dedicato alla presentazione di una stele inedita deposta accanto all’ingresso principale della kasbah che domina la città di El Kef, antica Sicca Veneria, in Tunisia centro-occidentale. Si tratta di una stele tardo punica databile tra il I secolo a.C. e la prima metà del secolo successivo caratterizzata da una scena di banchetto tra due personaggi seduti, solo probabilmente divini; tale iconografia costituisce un unicum nell’Occidente punico e tardo punico tanto per la tematica quanto per la resa e rimanda a elementi e concezioni di antica origine vicino orientale.

In the present article, the author intends, through the presentation of some cases (Portugal, Libya, India, Nigeria, Mozambique) that occurred recently, of patrimonial destructions - focusing on the Portuguese case, to demonstrate the need for an International Regulatory Authority, which defends the Heritage itself, but also all of its Professionals. Work that is currently being carried out by the ICCIRA Board of Directors and by hundreds of its Volunteer Ambassadors spread across the four corners of the world.

No artigo presente, o autor pretende, através da apresentação de alguns casos (Portugal, Líbia, Índia, Nigéria, Moçambique) ocorridos recentemente, de atentados patrimoniais - centrando-se no caso Português, demonstrar a necessidade de uma Autoridade Reguladora Internacional, que defenda o Património em si, mas também todos os seus Profissionais. Trabalho que se encontra a ser efectuado presentemente pelo Conselho de Directores da ICCIRA e por centenas dos seus Embaixadores Voluntários espalhados pelos quatro cantos do Mundo.

This chapter examines the use and function of neo-Punic inscriptions and neo-Punic/Latin bilingual inscriptions in Roman North Africa, especially Lepcis Magna. It considers how and why Punic was used as a language for monumental euergetism alongside Latin - both the public setting of the Punic texts, and the similarities and differences in phrasing between the two languages in bilingual texts such as the building inscription on the theatre of Lepcis Magna (AD 1-2), where differences in the Latin and Punic versions of the text point up differences in epigraphic habit between Latin and Punic and are clearly designed to appeal to different readerships. Conversely, brickstamps of the early second century AD show idiomatic corresponsions, where Punic stamps on locally produced bricks render the normal Latin epigraphic formulae on the imported bricks from the Tiber Valley used in the same projects. The chapter also tracks the persistence of Punic epigraphy on monumental buildings into the second century AD, examines the changes in the contexts in which Punic texts appear, and the emergence of Latino-Punic inscriptions in rural Tripolitania.

Reconnaissance survey in the Murzuq area, some 150 km south-east of Jarma, was carried out as part of the 2011 field programme of the Desert Migrations Project, with separate funding from the Leverhulme Trust for this element of work entitled the ‘Peopling the Desert Project’. This survey was designed to provide field verification of details of settlement systems identified and mapped from high-resolution satellite images in an area of c. 600 km2 immediately east of the oasis town of Murzuq. Examination of high-resolution QuickBird and Ikonos satellite imagery has permitted identification of a large dossier of more than 200 sites (fortified buildings known as qsur, other settlements, cemeteries, wells, fields/gardens and linear irrigation works called foggaras). The majority of these sites have never been previously noted or mapped and the date of the sites was unknown at the outset, though they clearly pertained to the historic periods. While further study of the finds and scientific dating evidence is required, the initial results of the brief field visit have major implications for our understanding of Garamantian and early Islamic settlement in south-eastern Fazzan.