This article discusses some of the results of the fieldwork which has been carried out since 1994 by Liverpool University at the site of Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham (Mersa Matruh). In particular it concentrates on how the epigraphic and archaeological evidence recovered from this Ramesside fortress-town has produced new insights into Egypto-Libyan relations, and especially how Egypt operated its short-lived imperial administration of the Marmarican coast during the Late Bronze Age. Egyptian inscriptional evidence from the fortress names the specific Libyan groups against which it was directed, while adding to the debate regarding the areas of operation of these groups by locating itself within “Tjemeh-Land”. Both inscriptional and archaeological evidence indicate that Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham was intended to be, and became, a major fortress-town like those known from Egypt's Nubian and Levantine empire. Evidence for food-processing and the production of linen cloth makes it clear that Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham was largely self-sufficient rather than being reliant on supplies from the Nile Valley. However, this self-sufficiency could only be maintained with the goodwill of local Libyan groups, suggesting some level of economic symbiosis between those groups and the fortress' garrison. On a wider level, the desire to protect Egyptian economic interests, in particular international maritime trade routes, was undoubtedly a major factor behind the construction of this (and other) fortresses on the Mediterranean coast during the reign of Ramesses II.

Finds of significant quantities of foreign (Canaanite, Aegean, Cypriote) material at Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham are a clear indicator of this role, while it is suggested that the Libyan groups against whom this trade route needed to be protected were not the ‘local’ Tjehenu and Tjemeh Libyans but the newly-appeared Meshwesh and Libu.

Richard Goodchild was much concerned for the men who had preceeded him in connection with the discovery and rebirth of Cyrene. It seems, therefore, a fitting contribution to his memory to deal in their memories: the memories of Cyrene evoked by antipodal circumstances such men came to experience in their subsequent careers. The curtain is raised on half a dozen of these men who took all the chances offered by the 19th-century world, so full of opportunity for the talented and resolute.

In 1881 the Italian explorer Giuseppe Haimann and his wife made a two-month journey through the Gebel Akhdar from Benghazi to Derna, travelling under the auspices of the Società d'Esplorazione Commerciale of Milan and Haimann's report first appeared in the Bollettino della Società Geografica in 1882. Haimann's sober assessment of Cyrenaica's potential contrasts favourably with the later accounts of Italian journalists and other visitors who in the early twentieth century had their own reasons for presenting Turkish North Africa to the Italian public as a veritable Paese di Bengodi – a Land of Cockaigne. But 30 years before the Italian intervention of 1911, Haimann had come to the conclusion that Cyrenaica – ‘in ancient times so civilised and prosperous’ – might be restored to new life if agriculture, industry and commerce ‘were to be given an effective impulse’.

In 1820, when he had already been six years in Tripoli, the British Consul General, Colonel Hanmer Warrington, acquired a small country estate about a mile beyond the city walls. The move had political implications that he may not have considered or appreciated at the time. But the fact that for a quarter of a century (1820-46) Consul Warrington lived most of the year, and eventually all the year, in this so-called ‘English Garden’ in the oasis-suburb of the menscia brought this influential, larger-than-life figure into much closer, personal contact with local dissident and opposition figures than he would ever have done had he been always shut up in town. In the decade 1832-42 Consul Warrington's official diplomatic position in Tripoli, together with his informal role as doyen of the menscia residents, placed him in a unique position to meddle and mediate in the affairs of the Regency of Tripoli. Such was the case under the semi-independent Karamanli regime and, after 1835, under the Ottoman Turkish administration ruling direcdy from Constantinople. Although the rewards of this risky policy might have been spectacular for Warrington and for Great Britain (and they were nearly achieved in 1842), such success was elusive.

On the surface, the old city of Tripoli appears to have survived without serious damage to its morphological and architectural character into the modern period. But the entire function of the castle and suk has changed radically since the early years of the present century, beginning with the arrival of the Italian colonial regime in 1911. Even earlier, in the mid-nineteenth century, an important change is to be seen in the removal of the Karamanli Bashaws as rulers of Tripolitania and the institution of Ottoman control, from which time Tripoli ceased to be the seat of political power and an independent centre of corsair activity. Under Turkish administration there were but few changes in the structure of Tripoli and its environs, though illustrations of the period suggest that a number of official institutions set up buildings outside the old city and a slow but perceptible move began to establish settlements around the city walls. The pace of development of modern Tripoli was much accelerated by the Italian colonial occupation, though the larger part of this ‘new’ Tripoli was occupied by and served the needs of the Italians rather than the indigenous population. The population of Tripoli was reported as 13 841 in 1914 (di Agostini: 1917), entirely contained within the old city, and these social groups remained in their traditional areas in many cases until the violent upheavals caused by the collapse of the Italian colonial administration and the coming of political independence to Libya. Rapidly rising personal incomes in the period after 1961, resulting from the diffusion of oil wealth and particularly the concentration of economic activity in the hands of the merchants and the urban population of large, led to abandonment of the greater part of the old city of Tripoli. The old Arab and Jewish quarters alike are now taken over for temporary accommodation for recent (and often foreign immigrants) and for storage of goods. It may well be that physical decay of the city has been retarded but that the functional decay of the area is far advanced. Possibly this may be viewed as a fitting epitaph on a city that historically never succeeded in establishing clear and lasting control over its hinterland.

As a contribution to the Society for Libyan Studies’ 50th anniversary, the paper discusses three projects in which the author has been involved, with a focus on their different contributions to our understanding of Libya's landscape prehistory and history. The deep stratigraphy of the Haua Fteah cave in three projects are described in chronological order, but they contribute in reverse order to our understanding of how Libyans have changed and been changed by their landscapes. The deep stratigraphy of the Haua Fteah cave in Cyrenaica represents an intermittent history of landscape use, and the way people dealt with climate change impacts, from some 150,000 years ago to the Graeco-Roman period. The faunal assemblage from Sidi Khrebish, Benghazi, provides insights into how Graeco-Roman city-dwellers interacted with the people of the countryside. The UNESCO Libyan Valleys Survey changes the perspective, showing how tribal people in the pre-desert were drawn into the ambit of the coastal cities and the economy of imperial Rome, before returning to semi-mobile pastoral/arable lifeways not so dissimilar to the lives of many Libyans before the oil revolution. The principal linking finding is that there are no simple stories from the past in terms of people's relations to their landscape: the mix of structure and agency embodied in the archaeological record can be a record of failures, misguided decisions, bad luck etc. as much as of successful responses and adaptations to opportunities and challenges.

The charismatic Consul-General Hanmer Warrington held his post in Tripoli for thirty-two years, during which time he cultivated a good, if tempestuous, working relationship with the Bashaw and the other foreign consuls. The large Warrington family was raised there. When they outgrew the Consulate building, which dated from 1774, the Consul designed a country house, and had it built two miles outside the town. It was near this house, and by the sea, that in 1830 he and the other consuls founded a walled Protestant Cemetery for the burial mainly of Europeans. This cemetery was rediscovered and studied by Abdulhakeem Amer Tweel of Tripoli, who is in the process of publishing a book on the subject.

The paper presents first results of a joint German–Tunisian research project in Carthage, Tunisia. Archaeological fieldwork has been undertaken (preceded by a geophysical survey) in the southwestern quarter of the ancient city to study the architecture, chronology and urban context of the circus. The area has, unlike the rest of Carthage, not been targeted by excavations of the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries and, also unlike the rest of Carthage, is mostly not overbuilt, although under pressure from neighbouring communities. The area is the last one allowing a large-scale diachronic urban study in which the circus and its impact on the quarter is in the centre. From our first results, we can date the beginning of the construction of the circus to the late first century AD, with interventions in the early third century and usage continuing into the sixth. We were able to define the extension of the northern cavea and to study the western part of the spina and identify the meta at this point. Information has been obtained on early Roman, pre-circus use of the area as well as data on the Punic phases. Sixth- and seventh-century levels are also well preserved.

This article reports on the work carried out by the UNESCO Libyan Valleys project in 1989 within the church at Souk el Awty in the Wadi Buzra. It includes a detailed analysis of the upstanding structure of the building together with the results of the trial excavations conducted within it. The place of the Souk el Awty church amongst the other churches in the pre-desert and on the coast is discussed, and dates suggested for its initial construction and subsequent modification when an eastern apse was inserted into the nave. The suggestion by some scholars that this eastern apse was the mihrab of a mosque is dismissed.

Lepcis and Cyrene in Roman times were two very different cities, each typical of the province to which it belonged—Lepcis to Africa Proconsularis, one of the most successfully ‘Romanized’ provinces of the Roman Empire, and Cyrene to the province of Crete and Cyrene which always remained part of the Greek-speaking world and retained much of its Greek character and institutions. Architecturally, Lepcis today is one of the most impressively Roman cities, with its splendid public buildings, which include the grand Severan Forum and Basilica and the massive Hadrianic Thermae, and its spacious streets. Cyrene, in contrast, preserves an image that is severely Greek, dominated by austere Doric architecture. Even in quite late Roman times there seems to have been a determined effort to preserve the old forms, so that the Capitolium, for example, on the edge of the old Agora, was re-built under Antoninus Pius as a Greek building.

On the occasion of the Libya exhibition, I have tried to find a theme to bring together these two very diverse provinces that both form part of the modern Libyan Arab Republic. The choice of Septimius Severus, emperor from A.D. 193–211, needs some explanation. He was, of course, born at Lepcis probably in 146; he was there again as legatus of his uncle, the Proconsul of Africa; he may have gone there as Emperor in A.D. 203 during a grand tour of Africa and personally planned the great building programme which transformed his home-city. There is, on the other hand, no record of his ever having been at Cyrene, though he might have gone there as a boy. It is generally believed, indeed, that his first experience of the Greek-speaking empire was when he went to Syria to serve under Pertinax in A.D. 180. He does, however, provide a suitable link in that he was commemorated by sculptured monuments in both places, and the attitudes of mind which these monuments reflect, help us, I think to understand the underlying unity as well as the diversity of the two provinces.

This paper discusses Egyptian faience vessels of the Roman period from Fezzan. The nature and characteristics of Roman faience are discussed together with a petrological analysis of the material. The different vessel forms from Fezzan are recorded. Parallels in glass and pottery suggest a late first or second century AD date for most of the material.

There are, in the gardens of the Department of Antiquities at Cyrene, two well preserved grain mills which probably date to the early Imperial Roman period. The context and location of their discovery within Cyrene is not known and their dating must rely on parallels from elsewhere. Moreover, it cannot be certain that each catillus (upper millstone) originally belonged with the meta (lower millstone) with which it is now associated, although it seems likely in view of their compatible sizes.

Both grain mills are of hard, grey, vesicular volcanic lava and were certainly imported into Cyrenaica, which has a purely sedimentary geology and no rock suitable for intensive grinding. A study of millstones in Cyrenaica would for this reason provide important information about the trade in millstones in the eastern Mediterranean region. This subject has received little attention to date, but has considerable potential, particularly in the light of Peacock's recent study (1980) of the complex and wide ranging Roman millstone trade in the central Mediterranean region. It was in this context that a sample was taken from the catillus of each grain mill and examined in thin section using a petrological microscope.

One of the over-riding factors ensuring the ease of Greek and Hellenistic civilisations' expansion throughout the Mediterranean basin, and the geographical factor which lent a cohesive potential to the Roman world was the Mediterranean Sea itself. During the 7th century B.C. it was the sea which provided outward access for the Greek colonial migration, and then later ensured communication between colony and mother city. The great weight which Greek colonists attached to securing an easy access to their maritime communication lines was a major consideration in determining the siting of the colonial cities. The increasing size of ships during the 5th–3rd centuries B. C. coupled with the vastly increased volume of maritime trade which characterised the Hellenistic period were major stimuli to the artificial development of those natural harbours on which the colonial cities were based.

Any study of classical harbours in Cyrenaica must begin with an examination of the literary sources of which two are particularly relevant. They are; the Stadiasmus Maris Magni (1), and Herodotus' account of the original Greek colonisation of Cyrenaica from the island of Thera (2). The Stadiasmus is a document to which at present no precise date can be assigned, but in its final form it is probably not later than the end of the 2nd century A. D., and it would seem to be a palimpsest. The Stadiasmus lists the harbours along the entire North African Coast from Alexandria to Tunis, and, being written by seamen for the guidance of seamen it is the equivalent of the modern Admiralty Pilot. The list of harbours which it provides indicates that there was a very strictly graded hierarchy of natural harbour types, for no less than six different nouns are used to describe harbour entities according to their geographical qualities. In the Cyrenaican section of the Stadiasmus nine harbours are listed which can be divided into three distinct groups according to the words used to describe them. The three groups are headed by the terms Euphormos, Hormos and Panormos in ascending order of merit, and each denotes a very specific type of natural harbour. The root word, Hormos, meaning a tore or collar, is used in a maritime context from the earliest literary times, and is so used by Homer. The various prefixes which are attached to the word, Euph and Pan, denote natural harbour types which either excel or in some way fail to match the norm, the Hormos. In its sense of ‘collar’ the word conveys a notion of the configuration of the ideal harbour, i.e. a land-locked bay to provide shelter for shipping with access to the sea.

The Ptolemais aqueduct is of a type common in the ancient world. It consists of a concrete channel, several layers thick, though this seems to vary (see Pl. XIVa and sections), which is set in a framework of roughly-dressed, mortared stone. The channel itself rests in a bed of mortar which in turn is based either on stone foundations or the Gebel bed rock (see Pl. XIII and sections). The upper surface of the supporting framework was cemented on each side like the channel itself. Throughout the aqueduct's length the channel width varies considerably, but averages about 0·40 m.

The country through which the aqueduct passes on the north side of the Gebel Akhdar is arid, stony and covered with often dense scrub. A series of wadis running from the Gebel to the sea cuts the twenty-four kilometres between Wadi Habbun, where the aqueduct begins its course, and Tolmeita where it completes it. To carry the water for Ptolemais over these wadis bridges were constructed.

The condition of the aqueduct varies throughout its length. In some places, such as between Wadis Habbun and El-Meleca, it runs continuously for over one kilometre, but for the same distance on the east side of Sidi Belgasem it cannot be traced. Some pieces of it are complete and with only minor repairs would be ready for use but in other places only the channel or stone framework remain. Nevertheless it is possible to follow the aqueduct's course from Wadi Habbun to the city walls of Ptolemais. Only its actual source in Wadi Habbun, its course in Wadi El-Meleca, and in Wadi El Rumman, and its disappearance at the city walls raise questions as yet unanswered.

The excavations at Sidi Khrebish, Benghazi, within the Hellenistic and Roman city of Berenice, yielded a considerable variety of inscriptions on portable objects in addition to monumental epigraphy. An account of the latter was published in the first volume of the final reports in 1977, together with a very short and preliminary list of the former. Following the detailed studies of various classes of material, it seemed opportune to bring together an updated account of the inscriptions on ‘minor objects’, which range from missiles to transport amphorae, table wares, kitchen wares, and lamps.

The purpose of this paper is to record the involvement of primary-age children from a Libyan-administered school in Marsa-el-Brega in basic archaeological practice, both in the classroom and in the field. The site of Boreum (as identified by Goodchild in 1951), which is in an area adjacent to the school, was used for fieldwork. As well as describing the methodology that was applied, the outcome of the work at Boreum is recorded, in the hope that it will be shown that not only is such practice viable, but also that the results can make a small but useful contribution to our knowledge of such sites.