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Libya

IN THE DAYS OF GADDAFI 2007

Michael’s story of his trip to Libya With Pam and Ken Turner in May 2007

The 2nd Century AD Roman Theatre at Sabratha

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Intentionally left Blank

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rmy Generals, friends of Leader Qaddafi, are having lunch under the date palms and figs in a garden restaurant located in the shadow of the

Marcus Aurelius Arch opposite my hotel here in Tripoli. Their raucous, cigar-smoking bodyguards have been relegated to dine in the restaurant in the central courtyard of my hotel, and I am wondering whether someone is about to shoot an episode of ‘The Sopranos’ with such Mafia look-alikes! I’ve just flown in from Malta, and met up with Pam and Ken Turner who arrived here yesterday. Time for lunch! Adrenalin pumping, I traipse off expectantly through unsealed, dusty streets of the white-washed medina (I don’t think the streets have been repaired since World War II) with Nasser our friendly tour operator. There’s no lunch menu in the non-descript small seafood restaurant in the Souk Alturk but I’m happy to eat the fresh octopus salad and the spicy fish steak on offer. And it’s delicious. No red or white to wash it down. No wine or alcohol at all in this country. But who cares, for the moment? Can’t wait for Leptis Magna tomorrow, and then off to the great Sahara for a couple of nights after that. Sound good?

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Why Libya? Like hippies in past years, it’s the Cruise Line companies now that are discovering and adding exotic destinations to their ports of call. This allows travellers the opportunity to enjoy snapshot visits to little known or previously inaccessible places. A steady increase in cruise liner calls at Tripoli in Libya has caught my eye and imagination. I want to get in and see how it is before it becomes ‘fashionable’. I’ve been lucky enough to visit a few of the Unesco Heritage protected sites of cultural importance in different parts of the world in recent times, and I am aware that there are no less than five such sites here in Libya. They include the old Roman cities of Leptis Magna and Sabratha beautifully located on the shores of the Mediterranean. There’s also the well preserved old town of Ghadames, a palm-fringed oasis on the edge of the Sahara and once a crossroads for camel caravans coming from all parts of Africa. So, what is preventing a tourist influx to Libya? Apprehension in quite big doses actually. Friends thought I was crazy in coming here. Some don’t even know where Libya is, yet they were afraid. We all know of Libya’s connection to Lockerbie and the subsequent embargo by western nations. (I flew to New York from London on Pan Am on the day following the Lockerbie incident.) Most recently there is the case of the Bulgarian nurses sentenced to hang over allegedly contaminated blood that caused many deaths. Then there is the Leader, Colonel Qaddafi! My taxi driver in Malta summed up a commonly held attitude by westerners when he said “For what he do, this bloody Arab (sic), I just can’t take it.”

Posters of 'Leader' Qaddafi greet me at every turn – Libya is a large country in Africa with its coastline stretching for more than 2,000 kms along the Mediterranean from Tunisia to Egypt.

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STOP PRESS! 20 Oct 2011 Gaddafi dies

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Lockerbie is resolved. A solution will also be found in the nurses’ case – eventually. Already, another defamation case against them was dropped by a Libyan judge only this week. After three decades of international isolation, Libya is working to shed its outlaw image. Colonel Qaddafi has moderated his rhetoric and is assuming a significant leadership role (some say meddling) in the fractured world of African politics. Tony Blair is visiting him in his tent as I write. How apprehensive was I before going to Libya? None of this has stopped me from going ahead with my plans. I am a little apprehensive at not having my Libyan visa stamped in my passport. I received a photocopy only by email from the tour operator in Tripoli just three days ago, but I can’t read what it says as it is in Arabic. On checking-in for my flight at Malta Airport, there’s lots of shoulder shrugging and head shaking when I present it. Three people later, I get my boarding pass. So far, so good! Descending towards Tripoli airport, the sparkling turquoise sea and sun-drenched mustard landscape temper my apprehension a bit. I finger the photocopy visa and say a prayer that I won’t be returning back on the same Air Malta plane. The landscape below is dotted with neat rows of olive trees and fields of green with scattered box-like buildings. Date palms cast perfect circular shadows in the midday sun, like spokes of a wheel. When a second set of steps is finally adjusted at the door of the aircraft, and I eventually reach the head of the Immigration queue, there’s more worrying body language from the frowning immigration officer. He points me to a small ‘box-office’ window with a hand-written ‘visa on arrival’ sign. Another wait.

Phew! There on the top in a dusty two-ring binder is the original of my visa. (I learn later that Nasser the tour operator had it placed conveniently there.) Luggage from four arriving flights is

Cipolin columns standing for 1,800 years at Leptis Magna

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mixed up over four carousels. Plain clothes police with big badges flapping seem to be buzzing around the place in great numbers but I have no problem getting out and finally meeting up with my smiling Nasser, who whisks me to the hotel and the start of what is to be an unexpectedly exceptional “Libyan Affair”.

In Roman times, visitors to Tripoli would come from the sea and enter the city along the road passing under the Arch of Marcus Aurelius (2nd Century AD.) My 200 year-old hotel from Ottoman times, the Zumit, is right next to this famous antiquity on the edge of the old Medina. The hotel lay derelict for 100 years until recently but is now completely restored in true Libyan style. The bedrooms are off a central internal balcony that looks down on a courtyard of arches and decorative tiled walls and is open to the sky.

The Zumit is my own modern-day caravanserai – which Wikipedia describes as “a building with a square walled exterior, with a single portal wide enough to permit large or heavily laden beasts such as camels to enter (not any longer you’ll be pleased to know). The courtyard is open to the sky, and the inside walls of the enclosure are outfitted with a number of identical stalls, bays, niches, and chambers to accommodate merchants and their servants, animals, and merchandise”.

Our hotel is not the gleaming new 5-Star international Corinthia Bab Africa Hotel (Door to Africa) that I passed on the waterfront nearby, but I’ve got the feeling that I’m really in Libya staying where we are! At dawn, I am awakened in my windowless ‘stall’ by the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. What a beautiful operatic voice. I had to sit up in the dark and listen to the whole thing, and then felt a calling to say my own ‘Hail Marys’.

Marcus Aurelius Arch and our hotel to the left

Entrance Zumit Hotel 2007 AD

Mosaic of old caravanserai – in Zumit Hotel 1837 AD

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Are we ready for an Ancient History lesson? Day 1 of our Libyan adventure takes us to Leptis Magna, a prominent city of the Roman Empire located 130kms east of Tripoli. It is one of the best preserved and most exciting of the Roman cities in the Mediterranean.

The city and surrounding area were formally incorporated into the empire as part of the province of Africa during the reign of Roman Emperor Tiberius. It soon became one of the leading cities of Roman Africa and a major trading post. Exotic animals from deep in Africa for use in Roman amphitheatres and jugs of olive oil were shipped from here Leptis reached the height of its glory when the Empire started to decline with the first incursions by Vandals in 429 AD. After the Arab invasion in 643 AD, the desert sand once again took possession of the site. In the period between the two world wars, the Italian government paid for a major excavation - 500 men cleared tonnes of sediment and discovered relics that defied imagination.

The Arch of Septimus Severus (203 AD) is a grand introduction to the architectural opulence of Leptis. I have to walk forever to photograph it with the sun behind me. So glad we have our own local tour guide (if only to wait for me to catch up). East-west and north-south roads paved in stone still exist today and cross under this arch. Magnificent Corinthian columns and relief carvings depict activities celebrating the emperor’s visit to his native city.

Roman Theatre 2nd Century AD in Leptis Magna

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It is quite easy to visualise the lavishly decorated Hadrianic Baths from what is still standing and restored. They were built by Emperor Hadrian to celebrate water being brought to Leptis via aqueducts. He also brought marble for the walls and floors from Italy and green cipolin marble for columns from Greece.

The Nymphaeum (Temple of Nymphs) has a superb curved façade of red granite and more cipolin columns. One of the large marble capitals and other carved pieces of the original temple are lying on the ground in almost perfect condition. The open air Severan Forum is 100 metres long with a marble covered floor, much of which is covered with fallen pillars and other pieces of marble that have yet to be identified. Yes, we had to climb over them. There’s nothing left of the colonnaded porticoes, but well-preserved gorgon heads of Medusa on the facades between the arches still remain. The Severan Basilica is 92 metres long and was built to honour Bacchus and Hercules. There is an apse at each end of the building. Griffins symbolising power still sit atop two towering columns at one end. The Basilica served as the city’s House of Justice until Emperor Justinian brought Christianity in 600 AD. Of course I had to be photographed sermonising from the white marble pulpit that is still standing. We can’t believe that there are so few tourists. At times we have the whole old Roman City to ourselves.

Our local guide showed us computer reconstructions of the major buildings as they would have been 1,800 years ago. Here is one of the Hadrianic Baths, Leptis Magna – Imagine!

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Arch Can you hear it? Heading towards the old Forum built by Augustus in 5 BC, we hear the sea for the first time and feel the cool breezes. In its day, it also featured colonnaded porticoes on three sides as well as three temples and the Curia house. Getting closer to the beach we see the Phoenician excavations from 700BC. These are just a pit of rubble in comparison with all we’ve seen. Pam tells me they resemble more what is on display in Pompeii, and of little interest in comparison to what we have just walked through and over. Leptis Magna had a population of 100,000 whereas Pompeii was a town of only 20,000 inhabitants. Pompeii is also famously known for its phallic symbols, which are amazingly absent here – except for the occasional stone signs set in walls and in stone paving pointing to male and female brothels. They incorporate the penis of course but also an evil eye and scorpion. Two testicles denote a male brothel and only one will lead you to the female. They had it every which-way in those days too!

Now for the pièce de résistance. We finally reach the imposing Roman Theatre by the sea. Climbing up the steps, I don’t look back. I’m waiting to get to the top to turn around and take in the sight of the semi-circular seating and columns behind the stage. The sky is ink-pot blue. Waves are breaking on the shore providing sound effects and creating the most surreal backdrop for this spectacular performance. This is one of the oldest stone theatres in the Roman world

and is the second largest surviving theatre in Africa after Sabratha (which we will also visit). We then drive a short distance to the old Amphitheatre from 56 AD situated behind a dune right on the beach. While as spectacular architecturally as the Roman Theatre, it is larger than the Colosseum in Rome! We sit in silence with a view of the sparkling sea beyond the chariot racetrack, and I can so easily imagine the poor Christians being fed to the lions while the crowds roar. Nearby we see the man-made harbour which used to be fed by a now-dry ancient river, and the remains of a 35 metre lighthouse. While Leptis is grand and overwhelming, the Villa Sileen is exquisite on a smaller and more personal scale. On the way back to Tripoli, we stop to visit this recently

Read the story if you don’t know what this is

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restored private home of a wealthy Roman family by the sea. It has finely-detailed mosaics, many of them amazingly intact and some still open to the elements on external patios. Inside there are very clear wall frescoes depicting people and animals of two thousand years ago. Ready for a change of pace and a trip 600kms into the desert? The Sahara beckons. On our way to the oasis town of Ghadames, we stop to see two Berber villages with granaries dating back to the 12th Century that until recently were used by nomads to store their supplies of grain and olive oil. At Qasr Al-Haj, we step inside this circular courtyard encircled by 114 cave-like rooms made of palm trunks and olive branches with walls of mud and rock. It is a spectacular example of Berber architecture but to me it looks like an over-grown columbarium, or a huge ant hill.

We then wind up hairpin turns behind slow-moving trucks carrying water up to the village of Nalut perched on an escarpment in the barren Jebel Nafusa Western Mountains. The granary of Qasr Nalut here is spectacularly located on a bluff with views down the rocky valleys and has more than 400 storage rooms in street formation clinging to the side of the cliff. We also

see how villagers made their olive oil using a blind-folded

camel to turn large rocks in an even larger hollowed out stone ‘dish’ to crush the olives before putting them under a heavy palm tree trunk to press them to extract the oil. There are still 300 more kilometres of changing desert landscape as we head south towards the dunes near the Algerian and Tunisian borders. In some areas the desert looks like a bitumen-paved car park with tiny black stones that shine like glass in the sun. I’m told the sandstorms clean the stones and they become like mirrors. Such isolation. We drive for a couple of hours and see three cars but 33 camels. Camels, goats, sheep – what are they eating? Where do they shelter from the sun and sandstorms? I wonder what thoughts must occupy the motionless goat herder’s mind day in day out. Although he probably has more purpose in life than many people living on the streets in our big cities. On arriving exhausted in Ghadames, we eat what’s put in front of us in the sprawling new Das Ghadames Hotel and go to bed. Eerie, there isn’t one piece of decoration in this huge cavern of a brand new hotel. Perhaps they haven’t gotten

Ken, Pam, Michael visiting granary at Qasr al-Haj

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Berber Granaries

Palm Oasis near Qasr al-Haj Ibrahim explaining the olive crushing

Wild Camels in the Stony Desert

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Ghadames

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around to decorating yet but I really don’t care tonight. After driving for more than 600 kms, all I need is a hot shower and a comfy bed. And this hotel offers both. Up bright and early and starting the day with a tour of the museum located in the old Italian Military Post, I learn that the date palm is a ‘second mother’ to these people. It provides so much of what is needed to support human existence – the dates provided food; domestic utensils were crafted from the wood; the wood was also used for furniture, building material, protection and shelter from the heat and sandstorms. The houses were painted white using gypsum, and much of the decoration was in red colour from easy availability of the pomegranate. Got that? Old Ghadames is notable for its "cake and icing" architecture and its labyrinthine streets. It is a maze of confusing dark alleyways located in an oasis surrounded by orchards and palm groves designed to fight the dramatic extremes in the turgid Saharan climate. It is lit by shafts of natural light which also let heat escape and create cooling ventilation. All houses are made out of mud, lime, and palm tree trunks. We were walking over dropped dates on open pathways between the white-washed walls and in the open squares, some shaded by huge old mulberry trees – fresh green foliage at this time of year but imagine your toes when the fruit started to drop and rot.

The availability of water made Ghadames an important centre for trans-Saharan trade until the 18th Century. Caravans of up to 1,000 camels would come laden with perfume from Timbuktu, or ostrich feathers, skins and ivory from Sudan. It was also a trans-shipment centre for human slaves. The lessening flow of the Ain-el-Fras spring has the government feeding water back into the well to continue the unique system of irrigation that keeps the area so verdant.

Entrance to the old city of Ghadames

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Of course, our visit wouldn’t be complete without a visit to a typical home to see how the people lived. The sleeping arrangements were cramped to say the least, but the cooking was done on the roof terrace where the ladies could cook and socialise and free to remove their veils with privacy. We sat on hand-woven rugs and cushions on the floor in a large room of many brightly coloured panels framed in red criss-cross patterns painted on white limed walls. Sitting on the cushions, we ate baby camel and couscous from a communal bowl, slowly at first I might add, but we were soon to vote that it was more tender and tasty than the beef we had the previous day. I also enjoyed tea made from the red hibiscus flower, which I recognized as the rosella fruit we get in Queensland where it’s

used to make a slightly tart jam. How about climbing the dunes and watching the sunset? Ken is most excited about getting into the 4WD for our trip into the dunes at sunset. Before getting to there though, we shake and rattle across the orange stony desert to a small mountain outcrop where we climb up and clamber over loose rocks to reach the top and peer across a desolate but colourful desert landscape. We see a small oasis town way off to the west in Tunisia and to the south the distant sand dunes of neighbouring Algeria. Before our sunset climb up the side of the dunes, we sit in a Berber tent for a cup of frothy sweet mint tea. The robed tea-maker pours the steaming frothy liquid from a great height into little medicine-size cups. We also get to eat the freshly baked sand bread. The dough has gone into the sand without any wrapping and when it’s cooked they just tap it with a stick to remove any grains of sand. “That noise you hear is sand” says Pam chortling and munching away happily on the sweet smelling damper. Then a second sweet cup of tea, this time with peanuts in it! There’s another tourist couple on the other side of the tent and they have a local Tuareg tour guide. We haven’t seen too much

Decoration in private home in Ghadames

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national dress so far and I’m pleased to see this very dark fellow in his bright blue robes sitting chatting in the same tent as us. The light is fading as we trudge off through sand up the side of the dune. Ken is barefooted in the soft sand and Pam stays in her sandals! I’m expecting dramatic changes of colour from yellow to orange and red like at Uluru (and like in the tour brochures), but it’s not to be. The most visually exciting part is seeing Pam with hair flying, being caught up in fine mist of sand swirling up from the other side

Guide in Tuareg dress - photo a little blurred but then I’m not perfect (all the time). I like it!

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just as she gaspingly reaches the top edge of the dune. The sky changes colours as the sun sinks below the horizon and provided some great practice for me and my new camera, but the dunes just got darker.

The three of us are ‘empty nesters’ so we’re not shoppers. We are at that stage of life where we need to give things away, not buying more. However, we stop at the pottery market on the way back to Tripoli and can’t say no to some locally painted plates. After all these oases in the desert, I have to have a souvenir of a painted date palm, don’t I? Pam also has a pair of leather slippers intricately embroided in silk in Ghadames in her bag. Before descending down the Jebel Nafusa range towards the coast, we make a stop to see another Berber granary built in rolling hills at Kabaw. This one is also circular like in Qasr al-Haj but it has balconies made of sturdy palm trunks protruding out from the mud and stone walls. It is lying open and not used but we can still smell olive oil around the old stone oil press. Also I get to see where some of those wonderful red-skinned peaches come from that I’ve seen in huge displays by the side of the roads leading into and out of Tripoli. There are orchards and green fields up here on the mountain plateau, which is quite unexpected.

“Sandals in the Sahara”

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“How comfortable and safe do we feel after a few days in Libya?” By now, we are getting a pretty good insight into life here in Libya. During this whole Libyan experience, we are lucky to always be in the care of Nasser, a suave international young Libyan, who is hell-bent on immersing us in the Libyan way of life. We also have our dashing escort Ibrahim travelling with us. Having visited Europe frequently to visit many girlfriends, he’s quite worldly and is a mine of information on local customs and social development in the country. And we have our own driver, smiling little Abdul. As comfortable as we are with our stay, I think we’d be a little outside our comfort zone without these guys. Certainly, any apprehension has melted away and we feel completely safe and at home here. As a matter of interest, individuals are not allowed to travel in Libya without pre-planned arrangements. The country is alcohol free and that has to be a contributing factor in keeping crime down. A few years ago, bad elements of black African illegal immigrants, who had been responsible for much of the crime, were moved out of the Medina in Tripoli where they had been living in huge numbers, and expelled from Libya. I got myself lost in the Medina and ended up in the heart of this once bad area where even Libyans feared to tread. Today it is just very run-down. But I’m still here to tell the tale. “What are you eating?” I can hear my sister Annie saying. Libyan cuisine has Arabic, Mediterranean and Italian influences. We are taken to restaurants where westerners would never go (or fear to tread in some cases). Lunches and dinners seem to be a standard four-course affair with soup, salad, meat or fish and fruit. We’ve probably had more than our usual fill of chick peas and lentils, sometimes a little spicy, but by and large, the food has been very healthy. We’re also on a local yoghurt kick each morning as a kind of insurance against unwanted tummy bugs – fingers crossed, we are doing just fine. Ken gets his morning fix of espresso at Caffé Marco across the street but we’ve yet to see the film stars, intellectuals or artists that we’re told congregate under the arches

or umbrellas in the courtyard. We are definitely yet to see a local

woman over there. On the last day, Nasser introduced me to “nuk-nuk” a kind of Turkish come Libyan frothy sweet coffee, which I rather liked.

Meet Nasser our obliging tour operator and host

Swordfish anyone?

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My favourite meal was down at the fish markets on the Tripoli waterfront. Wonderful catches of swordfish and tuna on tables out front under lights and the smell of cooking fish on external open grills at so many restaurants whetted our appetites. We were seated in the “family” section which I took to mean “reserved” for friends of the owner. However, the rest of the restaurant was men only and the family section is kept for men with women and children (and in our case, Pam). We enjoy some grilled prawns but the main dish is a local macaroni speciality “Bac Ba Ka” that tastes like spaghetti marinara with all the flavour in the sauce and not much by way of prawns or calamari. On the way home, we stand with the locals in a car park drinking (and eating) a cup of hot sweet green tea with fresh mint and blanched almonds. And back in our rooms, there is a fresh supply of sweet small dates waiting for us. What about Libya’s natural resources? Libya is rich in oil and gas resources but like so many other parts of the world is deficient in water. Gas is piped under the sea to Sicily and from there piped up into Italy and on into Europe. Petrol is so cheap for the locals at one Euro for ten litres. Every Libyan has a car so it is bedlam on the roads in the cities. There are no really poor Libyans. I bought two dozen biros in London to give the children (to get them to smile for my photos), but these kids are already on computers. Libya has a population of only six million people, half of whom are foreign workers from countries like Egypt and Tunisia brought in to do the menial jobs. Water is scarce but the “Great Man-Made River Project” as it is known will pipe water through a network of more than 1,000kms from inland artesian cisterns deep under the desert to intermediate pumping stations to ‘green the desert’ and to provide irrigation for agriculture along the way. Some think this to be overly extravagant and ecological madness. Come for a walk with me in Tripoli? Tripoli is a pulsing city on the shores of the Mediterranean. In Roman times it was the city of Oea. It has enough skyscrapers on the foreshore to make it look international, but for the most part, it is very

Italian. The whole city was Italianate Tripoli

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planned and built under Italian occupation with all streets fanning out from the central Green Square next to the old Citadel. The buildings are very Fascist Italianate with tidy clipped ficus trees lining the colonnaded city-centre streets and huge palms in the many green garden squares throughout the neighbourhoods. Most of the buildings could do with more than a lick of paint on the peeling white walls and green wooden shutters. An intensive ‘greening’ program involving the planting of hundreds of palm trees and miles of green grass (a lush variety that I haven’t seen in Australia) along the foreshores is a recent major step to beautify the city.

The Arabic music and slightly nauseating sweet smell of apple or strawberry tobacco from gurgling hookah pipes could put me off my macchiato. However, after walking through these wonderful old streets alone, I am in the mood for sitting in an outdoor espresso and hookah shop. I sit under a Pepsi umbrella (the only multinational advertising that I’ve noticed here) at an outdoor café in a square under the old Turkish clock tower behind the very Italianate ex-Bank of Roma building and now the Libyan Central Bank. There’s much excavation and noise as part of what they refer to as the “2010 Project”,

which is an infrastructure upgrade and restoration of the Medina precinct. I just want to take a breather and soak it all up. Espresso bars here make excellent coffee but probably make more money from stoking and selling their hookah pipes. Nasser tells me that his assistant goes out and sucks on one for half an hour at lunch time. The people are very friendly and so many greet us with “Welcome to our country” rather than “Hello”. They are genuinely pleased to see tourists coming. But there aren’t too many as yet. On the morning I spent alone wandering through Tripoli, I didn’t come across a single westerner. The souks are loaded with shops selling gold silver, copper, clothes, leather and spices but are not nearly as crowded as in Marrakech or Istanbul and thankfully the shop keepers don’t pester you. Ibrahim takes us through the Jamahiriya Museum to help us put all the places we have already visited into some context. The museum was built in consultation with Unesco and is set up over many

Hookah water pipes at every café

Ibrahim and Michael go shopping in the souk

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Tripoli

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floors in the massive 16th Century Citadel in Tripoli. It addresses Libya’s Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic periods and we come away just a little the wiser. We were probably too pressed for time to do it justice. Are you ready to walk over one more ruin with me before I go home? We don’t get to see the ancient Roman city of Sabratha until the last day. And I’m tempted to say we kept the best till last, spending a lot more time than planned. Sabratha is 75kms west of Tripoli towards Tunisia and is also dramatically set on the Mediterranean Sea. Not as large as Leptis Magna, it seems to be more digestible. I am also very interested in the small (and again digestible) museum

that has spectacular displays of perfectly preserved mosaic floors and other finer works of art. Remarkably, I managed to pay avid attention for the whole tour. Archaeologists have taken up the mosaic floors of the nave and two aisles from the Judicial Basilica and reconstructed them in the museum. It is quite unbelievable viewed from a balcony looking down on it all. I then walk around and feel the smoothness of the mosaic. Outside there are still so many mosaics in

An amazing mosaic lifted from the aisle of the Basilica in Sabratha and reassembled in the museum – columns, where the two cut-outs in the lower edge are shown, still stand on site

Examining sections of mosaic floor just lying broken

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such good condition, but I was able to pick up a big section at the edge that had been broken off by people walking on it. There is nothing in all our travels to match the 2nd Century Roman Theatre by the sea in Sabratha. It is more intact than the one in Leptis Magna. Not only had it not suffered as much damage in the earthquake, much more of it has been restored using sandstone quarried on site. The interiors of this theatre were in white marble with monumental columns of gray granite and Cipolin marble. They tower three stories behind the stage! Rolling waves in the blue sea beyond are visible through the marble columns. The performers on stage were sheltered from the elements by a cantilevered awning, and a tent was stretched on ropes to protect an audience of 5,000 people. My imagination runs wild here! I look like an ant standing on the stage of this Theatre. There are excellent carvings in the panels in front of the stage depicting life and events of that time that provide a wonderful reconfirmation of how life was lived. As I walk along the old paved road running between the Theatre and the marble columns of the Temples of Jupiter and Serapis, I also imagine myself walking on the Roman road from Carthage to Alexandria. I can see the columns of the 1st Century Temple of Isis, one of Sabratha’s finest and dedicated to the Egyptian goddess that are scenically located on a promontory stretching into the sea. Unfortunately, time doesn’t permit me to walk out there. We’ve run out of time. After being transported magically back in time. But we will be back. Are you coming too? MM 28th May 2007

Ruins of Roman Temples of Jupiter and Serapis at Sabratha