The Roman and Byzantine Defences of Lepcis Magna

1953 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 42-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. G. Goodchild ◽  
J. B. Ward Perkins
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
North African ◽  
The North ◽  
Ground Survey ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
The City

During the North African campaigns of 1941–3 numerous air-photographs of the Tripolitanian coast were taken by the R.A.F. for operational purposes, and the site of Lepcis Magna was included in the area covered. Examination of these photographs (pl. XV) showed many suggestive features relating to the defences of the ancient city, and a preliminary ground survey was later (1947–50) undertaken to establish, with a minimum of excavation, the course of the successive wall-circuits.The results of this investigation are described below, and are discussed in relation to the historical and epigraphic evidence. It is not claimed that these results are exhaustive, or that they will not need modification in the light of future discoveries. Since, however, there is little likelihood of any early resumption of large-scale excavations at Lepcis, this preliminary study may help to illustrate the growth and subsequent decline of the city that came to be the most important centre between Carthage and Alexandria.

scholarly journals The Ancient City of Babylon

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (40) ◽  
pp. 617-656
Author(s):  
Mohammed S. Mahan ◽  
Ghassan Muslim Hamza
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Large City ◽  
Aerial Photos ◽  
The North ◽  
City Gates ◽  
Upper Level ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
The City

       Babylon during Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BC) was a great city. It had been a large city since Old Babylonian times, but Nebuchadnezzar’s expansion of the city and large-scale rebuilding of important buildings with good baked brick instead of the traditional unbaked mudbrick created something exceptional. Babylon now was larger than Nineveh had been and larger than any of the cities in the known world. The political and economic base for this development was of course that it was the centre of the Neo-Babylonian empire created by Nebuchadnezzar’s father Nabopolassar (625–605 BC) and succeeding the Neo Assyrian empire as the main political entity in the Middle East.         An attempt for the first time to bring together the main results of the German excavations in Babylon with the main results from the Iraqi excavations there and thereby make use of the available cuneiform documentation and a selected use of the best of the classical tradition. With the help of a GIS software (QGIS) and a BIM program (ArchiCAD) the use of satellite images and aerial photos combined with inspection on the site, the historical development of the site has been studied and a digital research model of Babylon for different periods of the city’s history has been created.          Only main buildings and constructions have been considered and placed in the appropriate historical and archaeological context. Part 1 includes some information about the historical development of buildings and nature in Babylon, the rivers and groundwater in Baybylon, as well as basics about the building materials used in Babylon. Part 2 discuss the city walls and city gates, introductory matters about the history, excavation and other documentations of the walls and gates. The chapter also includes presentation of the walls and gates during Nabopolassar followed by a detailed discussion of the walls and gates during Nebuchadnezzar. The Ištar gate and the area around it with the different levels and the upper level glazed decoration have been treated separately. Detailed interpretations about the palaces, development of the main traditional South Palace and the new constructed North are discussed in part 3. Reasonable suggestions for the Hanging Gardens in the North Palace have be provided.          The temples are discussed in part 4 detailing the Marduk temple and the zikkurrat. The historical development of the four temples reconstructed on the site in Babylon on their old foundations, i.e. Nabû, Ištar, Ašratum, and Ninmaḫ temples, is discussed with indication which levels have been used for the reconstructions. The historical development of the other excavated temples, i.e. the Ninurta and Išḫara temples, are discussed in a similar way. Attention will be paid to the remains of wall decorations in the temples.  

scholarly journals Why Earthquakes Threaten Two Major European Cities: Istanbul and Bucharest

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory A. Houseman
Keyword(s):  
Upper Mantle ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Mass Movements ◽  
European Continent ◽  
European Cities ◽  
The North ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
The City ◽  
Large Earthquakes ◽  
Better Than

Istanbul and Bucharest are major European cities that face a continuing threat of large earthquakes. The geological contexts for these two case studies enable us to understand the nature of the threat and to predict more precisely the consequences of future earthquakes, although we remain unable to predict the time of those events with any precision better than multi-decadal. These two cities face contrasting threats: Istanbul is located on a major geological boundary, the North Anatolian Fault, which separates a westward moving Anatolia from the stable European landmass. Bucharest is located within the stable European continent, but large-scale mass movements in the upper mantle beneath the lithosphere cause relatively frequent large earthquakes that represent a serious threat to the city and surrounding regions.

scholarly journals The pulsating nature of large-scale Saharan dust transport as a result of interplays between mid-latitude Rossby waves and the North African Dipole Intensity

2017 ◽  
Vol 167 ◽  
pp. 586-602 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Cuevas ◽  
A.J. Gómez-Peláez ◽  
S. Rodríguez ◽  
E. Terradellas ◽  
S. Basart ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Rossby Waves ◽  
Saharan Dust ◽  
North African ◽  
Dust Transport ◽  
The North

The Temple of Zeus at Cyrene

1958 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 30-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. G. Goodchild ◽  
J. M. Reynolds ◽  
C. J. Herington
Keyword(s):  
North African ◽  
World War ◽  
Detailed Report ◽  
The North ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The City ◽  
The Temple

Cyrene's largest religious building, the great Temple of Zeus on the north-eastern hill of the city, has been the subject of several explorations. Its cella was partially dug out by Smith and Porcher in 1861, and was completely cleared of soil by the late Giacomo Guidi in 1926, in the excavation which brought to light the famous head of Zeus, pieced together from over a hundred fragments. Then, in the years 1939–1942, fuller work was carried out by Dr. Gennaro Pesce, who published a detailed report with admirable promptness. Despite the interruptions caused by the North African campaigns of the World War, Pesce was able to clear the greater part of the Temple and its fallen peristasis. At the conclusion of his work only the opisthodomos remained unexcavated, although much fallen stone still encumbered the pronaos and the eastern portico.

scholarly journals Earliest hydraulic enterprise in China, 5,100 years ago

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (52) ◽  
pp. 13637-13642 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bin Liu ◽  
Ningyuan Wang ◽  
Minghui Chen ◽  
Xiaohong Wu ◽  
Duowen Mo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Yangtze Delta ◽  
Core Element ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
Economic Developments ◽  
The City ◽  
Unique Relationship ◽  
Liangzhu Culture

Here we present one of the world’s oldest examples of large-scale and formalized water management, in the case of the Liangzhu culture of the Yangtze Delta, dated at 5,300–4,300 years cal B.P. The Liangzhu culture represented a peak of early cultural and social development predating the historically recorded Chinese dynasties; hence, this study reveals more about the ancient origins of hydraulic engineering as a core element of social, political, and economic developments. Archaeological surveys and excavations can now portray the impressive extent and structure of dams, levees, ditches, and other landscape-transforming features, supporting the ancient city of Liangzhu, with an estimated size of about 300 ha. The results indicate an enormous collective undertaking, with unprecedented evidence for understanding how the city, economy, and society of Liangzhu functioned and developed at such a large scale. Concurrent with the evidence of technological achievements and economic success, a unique relationship between ritual order and social power is seen in the renowned jade objects in Liangzhu elite burials, thus expanding our view beyond the practicalities of water management and rice farming.

Pisidia Survey Project: Melli 2000

2002 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 145-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lutgarde Vandeput ◽  
Veli Köse
Keyword(s):  
City Centre ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Third ◽  
The North ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
The City

AbstractThe third survey campaign of the Pisidia Survey Project at Melli took place in September 2000. Work on the remains of the small, semi-circular theatre completed the study of the monumental city centre and allowed the suggestion of a roughly Severan construction date. In addition, the remains of the early Christian period in the ancient city and in its north necropolis area were recorded, proving that older pagan buildings were partially re-used to build them and that several basilicas had a number of construction phases. A continuation of the study of the remains in the domestic areas of the city allowed a reconstruction of their organisation and showed that richer and poorer houses occupied the same quarters. Finally, work on the monumental temple tombs in the north necropolis was also completed. In general, it has become clear that the city flourished from the Hellenistic period throughout Roman times and into the early Christian period.

Balboura Survey: Onesimos and Meleager, Part I

1988 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 121-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. J. Coulton ◽  
N. P. Milner ◽  
A. T. Reyes
Keyword(s):  
The North ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
The City

In the course of the survey of the surface remains of the North Lycian city of Balboura, our attention was drawn to three small buildings near the southwest corner of the agora (Fig. 1), because their association with a series of inscriptions casts an interesting light on the society of the city. Most of these inscriptions have long been known, although three are unpublished, but their significance cannot be fully appreciated without some knowledge of the buildings and statue bases with which they are associated. Our aim, therefore, is to consider the architectural and epigraphic evidence together.The buildings concerned (Figs. 2–4) are, from west to east, an exedra set up by Onesimos the city slave (demosios), with statues of the Demos and Boule of Balboura; a temple of Nemesis, also built by Onesimos; and a second exedra, set up by the wealthy Meleager, son of Castor. All three buildings face southward onto a paved street, and turn their backs to the agora, which was set at a lower level to the north.

Improving our understanding of Londinium

Antiquity ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 90 (354) ◽  
pp. 1692-1699
Author(s):  
Martin Millett
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
The North ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Excavation Work ◽  
Rural Sites ◽  
The Uk ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

Our extensive knowledge of Roman London is the result of over four decades of large-scale excavation. In the UK, the establishment and growth of professional archaeology since the 1970s, coupled with the funding provided by property developers since 1990 (Fulford & Holbrook 2015), has transformed our understanding of both urban and rural sites—and nowhere more so than London. A combination of intensive building development in the City of London and the world-leading technical quality of many of the excavations means that Londinium is now probably both the most extensively and best-excavated major town of the Roman world. Knowledge generated by these excavations, however, has not always been made available through publications as it should have been. Although there is an important archive in which the records of past projects are curated, how and where to publish results has been a long-running problem, especially for the excavations of the 1970s and 1980s where post-excavation work was often not properly funded or supported. One major project to publish a synthesis of work on such sites in Southwark, south of the Thames, did result in a series of important volumes (Sidell et al. 2002; Cowan 2003; Hammer 2003; Yule 2005; Cowan et al. 2009), but a programme designed to provide systematic coverage of such projects in the City of London, to the north of the river (Maloney 1990; Perring & Roskams 1991; Williams 1993; Davis et al. 1994), failed to produce one of the five volumes promised—that concerning the archaeology of the key eastern hill. We also lack any up-to-date synthesis, a problem only partly compensated for by Dominic Perring's (1991) popular overview and Wallace's (2014) in-depth analysis of the evidence for the period down to the Boudiccan revolt in AD 60/61.

scholarly journals PHANAGOR'S ‘PORTRAIT'

2021 ◽  
pp. 261-274
Author(s):  
А.А. Завойкин
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
The North ◽  
Male Head ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
The City

Находка в 2017 г. в Патрее фрагмента мерной ойнохои с клеймом, на котором весьма в реалистической манере показана в профиль мужская голова в пилосе с двумя сохранившимися буквами (|<I>|AN|A|) над ним, позволила не только идентифицировать это изображение с эмблемой аверса фанагорийских монет времени автономии города (Захаров, 2018; Ковальчук, 2019), но и установить, что на голове персонажа надета не войлочная шапка, как принято было считать, а металлический шлем типа «пилос». Это наблюдение дало возможность вернуться к старой дискуссии о том, кто именно представлен на лицевой стороне монет Фанагории: основатель полиса, Фанагор, или хтонические божества - кабиры. Автор статьи присоединяется к выводам Д. Браунда (Braund, 2011), который убедительно показал, что невозможно говорить ни об атрибутивном характере пилоса на монетах, ни о распространенности в Северном Причерноморье культа кабиров вообще. Оценка исторического контекста чеканки монет Фанагорией в сочетании с учетом нового эпиграфического свидетельства, подтверждающего героический культ ойкиста Фанагора (Завойкина, 2020), приводит к убедительному заключению, что на монетах и клейме из Патрея представлен именно тот, кто дал свое имя городу, в героической ипостаси. A fragment of volumetric oenochoe with a stamp showing a rather realistically depicted male head in profile wearing a pilos with two surviving letters over the head (|O|AN|A|) was found in Patrei in 2017. The find made it possible not only to identify this image as an obverse emblem of Phanagoria coins dating to the period when the city was autonomous (Zakharov, 2018; Kovalchuk, 2019) but also establish that the man on the coin wears a metallic helmet of a pilos type rather than a felt hat as was previously thought. This observation provided an opportunity to get back to an earlier discussion as to who is represented on the obverse of the Phanagoria coins: Phanagor, the founder of the polis or the Kabiroi, chthonic gods. The author of the paper agrees with the conclusions made by D. Braund (Braund, 2011) who clearly demonstrated that we cannot say that pilos can be used as an attributive feature or that the Kabiroi cult was spread across the North Pontic region. It can be inferred from the assessment of the historical context of coin mintage by Phanagoria and the new epigraphic evidence confirming a heroic cult of the oikistes Phanagor that the coins and the stamp from Patrei feature the person who gave his name to the city and who is represented as a hero.

scholarly journals Local Religions in Roman North Africa on the Eve of the Middle Ages

2021 ◽  
pp. 53-68
Author(s):  
Chiara Ombretta Tommasi
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Reliable Information ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
North African ◽  
The North ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
The Middle Ages

This paper considers how late antique Latin authors (mainly Augustine and Corippus) dealt with ancestral rites and practices of probable autochthonous (i. e. Berber) origin and provided an ideological resemantisation. Although motivated by anti-pagan pleas and also allowing for some exaggeration, they nevertheless provide reliable information, which can be compared against epigraphic evidence, and offer further contributions that enrich the knowledge of the North African local pantheon, otherwise largely documented by epigraphical evidence. It might therefore be surmised that, notwithstanding the deep Christianisation of the region, at the end of the Roman Empire, North Africa still witnessed the survival of residual and isolated pagan fringes.

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