Sabratha

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Sabratha

Sabratha, in the Zawia

Az Zawiyah Municipality

Az Zawiyah District is one of the Districts of Libya in Libya. It is located in the north-western part of the country. Its capital is Az Zawiyah....
district in the northwestern corner of modern Libya

Libya

Libya , officially the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya , is a country located in North Africa. Bordering the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Libya lies between Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
, was the westernmost of the "three cities" of Tripolis

Tripolis (region of Africa)

Tripolis was a district in ancient Tripolitania , now in Libya, along the Mediterranean Sea between the Sabrata and Cinyps rivers, and comprising the three cities of Oea, Sabrata, and Leptis Magna....
. It lies on the Mediterranean

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea or Ocean off the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Europe, on the south by Africa, and on the east by Asia....
coast about 65km (40 miles) west of Tripoli

Tripoli

Tripoli is the largest and Capital city of Libya.Tripoli has a population of 1.69 million. The city is located in the northwest of the country on the edge of the desert, on a point of rocky land projecting into the Mediterranean Sea and forming a bay....
(ancient Oea). The extant archaeological site was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site

World Heritage Site

A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a site that is on the list maintained by the international World Heritage Programme administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, composed of 21 Sovereign state which are elected by their General Assembly for a four-year term....
in 1982.

atha's port was established, perhaps about 500 BC, as a Phoenicia

Phoenicia

Phoenicia was an ancient civilization centered in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal regions of modern day Lebanon, extending to parts of Israel, Syria and the Palestinian territories....
n trading-post that served as a coastal outlet for the products of the African hinterland.

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Encyclopedia

Sabratha, in the Zawia

Az Zawiyah Municipality

Libya

Tripolis (region of Africa)

Mediterranean Sea

Tripoli

World Heritage Site

Ancient Sabratha

Sabratha's port was established, perhaps about 500 BC, as a Phoenicia

Phoenicia

Numidia

Numidia was an ancient Berber people kingdom in present-day Algeria and part of Tunisia that later alternated between being a Roman province and being a Roman client state, and is no longer in existence today....
n Kingdom of Massinissa before being Romanized and rebuilt in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. The Emperor Septimus Severus was born nearby in Leptis Magna

Leptis Magna

Leptis Magna, also known as Lectis Magna , also called Lpqy or Neapolis, was a prominent city of the Roman Empire. Its ruins are located in Al Khums, Libya, 130 km east of Tripoli, on the coast where the Wadi Lebda meets the sea....
, and Sabratha reached its monumental peak during the rule of the Severans. The city was badly damaged by earthquakes during the 4th century, particularly the quake of AD 365

365 Crete earthquake

The 365 AD Crete earthquake was an undersea earthquake that occurred at about sunrise on 21 July 365 AD in the Eastern Mediterranean, with an assumed epicentre near Crete....
. It was rebuilt on a more modest scale by Byzantine

Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire and Eastern Roman Empire are conventional names used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople....
governors. Within a hundred years of the Arab conquest of the maghreb

Maghreb

The Maghreb , also rendered Maghrib , meaning "place of sunset" or "western" in Arabic, is a region in North Africa. The term is generally applied to all of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, but in older Arabic usage pertained only to the area of the three countries between the high ranges of the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea....
, trade had shifted to other ports and Sabratha dwindled to a village.

The archaeological site

Besides its magnificent late 3rd century theatre that retains its three-storey architectural backdrop, Sabratha has temples dedicated to Liber Pater, Serapis

Serapis

Serapis was a Syncretism Hellenistic-ancient Egypt god in classical antiquity. His most renowned temple was at Alexandria,. Under Ptolemy I of Egypt, efforts were made to integrate Egyptian religion with that of their Hellenic rulers....
and Isis

ISIS

ISIS is an industry standard interface for technologies, developed by Pixel Translations in 1990 .ISIS is an open standard for scanner control and a complete image-processing framework....
. There is a Christian basilica

Basilica

The Latin word basilica , was originally used to describe a ancient Rome public building , usually located in the Forum of a Roman town. In Hellenistic cities, public basilicas appeared in the 2nd century BC....
of the time of Justinian

Justinian I

Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus , AD 482 or 483 ? 13 or 14 November 565, was the second member of the Justinian Dynasty and List of Roman Emperors from 527 until his death....
and also remnants of some of the mosaic

Mosaic

Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other material. It may be a technique of Decorative arts, an aspect of interior decoration or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral....
floors that enriched elite dwellings of Roman North Africa (for example, at the Villa Sileen, near Al-Khoms). However, these are most clearly preserved in the coloured patterns of the seaward (or Forum) baths, directly overlooking the shore, and in the black and white floors of the Theatre baths.

There is an adjacent museum containing some treasures from Sabratha, but others can be seen in the national museum in Tripoli

Tripoli

Max Mallowan at Sabratha

In 1943, during the Second World War, archaeologist Max Mallowan

Max Mallowan

Sir Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan, Order of the British Empire was a prominent United Kingdom archaeologist, specialising in ancient Middle Eastern history, and the second husband of 'Queen of Crime' Agatha Christie....
, husband of novelist Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie

Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, Order of the British Empire , commonly known as Agatha Christie, was an English people crime writer of novels, short stories and Play ....
, was based at Sabratha as assistant to the Senior Civil Affairs Officer of the Western Province of Tripolitania

Tripolitania

Tripolitania or Tripolitana is a historic region and former province of Libya, situated alongside Cyrenaica and Fezzan). The system of administrative divisions that included Tripolitania was abolished in the early 1970s in favour of a system of smaller-size municipality or baladiyah ....
. His main task was to oversee the allocation of grain rations, but it was, in the words of Christie's biographer, a "glorious attachment", during which Mallowan lived in an Italian villa with a patio overlooking the sea and dined on fresh tunny

Tuna

Tuna are several species of ocean-dwelling fish in the family Scombridae, mostly in the genus Thunnus. Tunas are fast swimmers?they have been clocked at 70 km/h ?and include several species that are warm-blooded....
fish and olives.

Sabratha

Ancient Sabratha

The archaeological site

Max Mallowan at Sabratha

External links