Libya - Mosaic Four Seasoun

Libya - mosaic

Sent by Omran from Tripoli, Libya.

Libya

Libya

Sent by Omran from Tripoli, Libya.

Libya - Archaeological Site of Leptis Magna

Severan Basilica
Leptis Magna - Libya

Sent by Osama from Tripoli in Libya.

Leptis Magna is a unique artistic realization in the domain of urban planning. It played a major role, along with Cyrene, in the movement back to antiquity and in the elaboration of the neoclassical aesthetic

The Phoenician port of Lpgy was founded at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC and first populated by the Garamantes. The city, which was part of the domain of Carthage, passed under the ephemeral control of Massinissa, King of Numidia. The Romans, who had quartered a garrison there during the war against Jugurtha, integrated it, in 46 BC, into the province of Africa while at the same time allowing it a certain measure of autonomy.

Although Leptis (the latinization of its Phoenician name) was comparable to the other Phoenician trading centres of the Syrtian coast, like Sabratha, after Septimius Severus became emperor in 193, its fortunes improved remarkably. Thanks to him, the renewed Leptis was one of the most beautiful cities of the Roman world. It is still one of the best examples of Severan urban planning.

Thereafter, Leptis felt prey to the same vicissitudes of fortune as the majority of the coastal cities of Africa. Pillaged from the 4th century and reconquered by the Byzantines who transformed it into a stronghold, it definitively succumbed to the second wave of Arab invasion, that of the Hilians in the 11th century. Buried under drifting sands, the city has only been disengaged, piece by piece, over the course of a long archaeological exploration.

The city, which was constructed during the reign of Augustus and Tiberius but which was entirely remodelled along very ambitious lines under the Severan emperors, incorporates major monumental elements of that period. The forum, basilica and Severan arch rank among the foremost examples of a new Roman art, strongly influenced by African and Eastern traditions.

The sculptures of the Severan basilica, which remain in situ, and that of the Severan arch, in the museum at Tripoli, are innovative in their linear definition of forms, the crispness of their contours and the angular delineation of their volumes: a comprehensive aesthetic, conceived as a function of the blinding African sun.

The ancient port, with its artificial basin of some 102,000 m², still exists with its quays, jetties, fortifications, storage areas and temples. Dug under Nero and organized under Septimius Severus, it is one of the chefs d'oeuvre of Roman technology with its barrage dam and its canal designed to regulate the course of Wadi Lebda, the dangerous torrent that empties into the Mediterranean to the west. The market, an essential element in the everyday life of a large commercial trading centre, with its votive arch, colonnades and shops, has been for the most part preserved. The building, which dates from the Augustan period, was transformed and embellished under Septimius Severus.

Warehouses and workshops also attest to the commercial and industrial activity of a city whose large prestigious monuments, arches and gates, original forum and Severan forum, temples, baths, theatre, circus and amphitheatre, only occupy a very small part of the total area. (Source)

Libya - Sand Dune

Sent by Osama from Tripoli, Libya.

Libya - Three Doors

Sent by Osama from Tripoli, Libya.

Libya - Traditional Horsemen

Traditional horsemen during festival. Horsemen played important roles in Libyan fight against Italian invasion.

One of the two postcards sent by Youssef from Alzawiya in Libya.

Libya - Rock-Art Sites of Tadrart Acacus

And old drawings at the Rock-Art Sites of Tadrart Acacus, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

One of the two postcards sent by Youssef from Alzawiya in Libya.

Tadrart Acacus has thousands of cave paintings in very different styles, dating from 12,000 BC to AD 100. They reflect marked changes in the fauna and flora, and also the different ways of life of the populations that succeeded one another in this region of the Sahara.

The massif of Tadrart Acacus, a vast mountainous region (more than 250 km²) which is today a desert, is situated in the Fezzan, to the east of the city of Ghat. It contains some of the most extraordinary scenery in the world and has its unique natural wonders: dunes, isolated towers emerging from the sand and eroded into the most bizarre shapes, petrified arches, and canyons carved by ancient rivers.

Cave paintings and carvings of various styles are scattered throughout almost all the valleys, representing hunting or daily life scenes, ritual dances and animals. The site also includes the Murzuch desert, which bears traces of the different phases of the Palaeolithic.

The Italo-Libyan archaeological missions, which have run continuously from 1955 in Tadrart Acacus under the guidance of Fabrizio Mori and Paolo Graziosi, have catalogued, besides settlements comprising important stone and ceramic material, numerous rock-art sites, including hundreds of engravings and thousands of paintings.

Tools have been unearthed across an area covering thousands of kilometres. In the Tadrart Acacus Mountains, cave paintings and carvings of various styles are scattered throughout almost all the valleys, representing the various cultural groups that lived there during long periods of prehistory.

Like Tassili n'Ajjer (Algeria), various periods, corresponding to successive climatic phases which brought about underlying modifications in the flora and fauna and, thus, in the ways of life of the local population, may be distinguished. They are characterized by very definite artistic styles:

• during the naturalistic phase, corresponding to the last phase of the Pleistocene epoch (12,000-8000 BC), one sees numerous outline engravings, representing the large mammals of the savannah: elephants, rhinoceros, etc.
• during the round-head phase (c. 8000-4000 BC) engravings and paintings coexisted. The fauna was characteristic of humid climate; magic religious scenes appeared.
• the pastoral phase, from 4000 BC, is the most important in terms of numbers of paintings and engravings; numerous bovine herds are found on the decorated walls of the grottoes and shelters.
• the horse phase, from 1500 BC, is that of a semi-arid climate, which caused the disappearance of certain species and the appearance of the domesticated horse.
• the camel phase (first centuries BC) saw the intensification of a desert climate. The dromedary settled in the region and became the main subject of the last rock-art paintings. (Source)