Antiquities
There was a ladies toilet room - with statues of ladies sitting on loos,
with the drains etc still all complete and in working order.
From Jan’s letter home Sep 1976
If there was anything that gave an extra dimension to living in Libya it was the Antiquities. This is the official name for the many ruins and their contents that may be encountered while touring the countryside. I must admit that when we first talked about coming to Libya, the thought of Roman and Greek ruins never entered our heads. In fact it wasn't till we had been in Benghazi for some time that we realised that "going to the ruins" was a popular recreational pursuit.
One of the few remaining statues at Cyrene.
We are having a long weekend due to the celebration of the end of Ramadan. It is called the Ede and marks the end of a month of fasting for all Muslims. Thursday night, the moon was just right – thank goodness the night was clear and they saw the new moon- because if its cloudy, they have to wait until the Imams see that it is actually there.
So Friday morning, all the Libyans were out, dressed in their best – which I might add is the smartest and most expensive in the way of clothes, both men and women, to say nothing of the children, who are all dressed up to the nines – visiting all their friends for coffee. Heaven only knows who knows to stay home to receive guests, for it seemed all of Benghazi was out and about.
View of the upper area of CyreneS
We were stuck at home as the work car had broken down and we had no transport. On the Friday it rained for some hours but Saturday it cleared and we took the children to one of the many play grounds that the government provide. These are just small plots with a few swings and roundabouts and the children enjoy going to them.
When we got back, had some lunch and put two tired children to bed for a sleep. Peter and I were sitting around wondering what to do for the rest of the weekend, when our Indian doctor friend, Reza, arrived, and in about 10 minutes of fast persuasive talking, appealed to our sense of adventure and had us agreeing to pack up then and there and go with him and his wife Ismet, and son, Rehan, to the Greek ruins at Shahat.
The ruins are those of the ancient Greek city Cyrene, and lie near the coast some 200 kilometers toward Egypt. Reza had a fastback Volkswagen car (Peter called it a VW Kharman Ghia) We all piled in with a minimum of baggage as Reza assured us we would find accommodation at Beida a town on the way.
Another view of Cyrene.
The drive was really good, and it was lovely to get out of Benghazi. Soon after leaving the city environs we traveled over coastal plains, made interesting by the proximity of the sea, small farmlets, roadside stalls loaded high with melons and pumpkins, and small villages of unknown names.
We were heading slightly inland toward the Green Mountain area and suddenly the road rose steeply - just like our mountain pass roads - and we drove up the Tokra hill. The character of the country changed sharply as we got higher, lots more green, trees and shrubs, farms in valleys, lots of Libyans picnicking under trees, in fact very like the plateau areas of New Zealand.
On top of the plateau we arrived at a town that is quite famous around here. Firstly we saw the twin towers of a mosque shining white in the sun, then rows and rows of white houses, neat streets, underground wiring, and what amazed us most was a complete absence of the usual rubbish and mess we had become used to in Benghazi.
Apparently in the 1950s an earthquake had razed the original town of El Marsh sited a short distance away and with American planning and know how, and money put up by local sheiks, a new El Marsh was built, as a model.
town. We didn't explore the town as the road passes the outskirts, so we must go back and visit one day.
We remained on the plateau all the way to Beida and were reminded of how high we were by the nip in the air, quite unlike the stifling heat of the coast.
Outside the hotel Raqem Wahed.
We arrived at Beida at 8:30 in the evening and hopefully enquired at the main hotel - no accommodation available. Tried the next best, no good, but very helpfully they telephoned around the rest of the town, and ended up finding us a 6 bedded room in hotel Raqem Wahed (hotel number one).
However the Raqem Wahed turned out to be minus on the star scale - in fact would be fairly low on the doss house scale. Reza and Peter went in to look the room over - as usual a committee meeting ensued, with one chap agreeing to show them the room and 3 or 4 others saying no. (it's a good thing Reza understood Arabic).
Meanwhile Ismet and I sat in the car and amused the children by counting the rats running round in the piles of rubbish in the street!!!!
Finally (when they had moved out the occupants of the room- probably those were the objectors) they showed it to Pete and Reza and as it was to cost only 3 dinars a night and it was our last chance, we took it. We moved in to the great interest of the other guests (all male).
Overheard two of them discussing whether we were American or "Ingleesi", so marched out and introduced ourselves as coming from New Zealand.
They turned out to be a group of Palestinian teachers "from the West bank of the Jordan" who lived in this 'hotel'
We shook hands all round and borrowed their primus to heat up our dinner (which Ismet had shoved into the boot at the last moment). Peter and Reza went out to buy some bread and managed to acquire some from a local cafe. We ate quite nicely, chicken curry and rice off pot lids and out of pots, washed it down with tinned apricots and peach nectar (very popular fruit juice here). The seven of us retired at about 10pm.
Guy and Anna Cyrene.
The neighbouring chaps held a party. They had loud Arabic music going and every now and then there would be the stamp of dancing feet, clapping, singing and loud arguments- in fact an indescribable noise in a place where as you can imagine the walls were less then paper thin. However they eventually subsided about 2:30am and we slept from then on.
I won't attempt to describe the communal bathroom - suffice to say that we did not use it and wouldn't have even if there had been any water in it.
At 7:30 we were up, packed, paid up and out of there pretty quickly, past a couple of chaps on stretchers in the hall- I think they were the ones who had been heaved out for us. We rolled up at the best hotel in Beida, grubby and tired, ordered breakfast and took the opportunity to use their bathroom facilities to the fullest.
Mind you it was very expensive and the service was shocking, but the coffee was wonderful and at least we could clean our teeth afterwards.
Me and Pete Corner family at Cyrene.
This place is hard to describe, the whole complex covers many square kilometers and much has yet to be excavated and classified. Archeological work has stopped but much had been done in the various digs of the 20’s and 30’s to expose large areas of the ancient city.
Although we could not really appreciate the finer points of the site, it was an amazing feeling to walk down the same streets that the Greek citizens had walked down 500 years before the birth of Christ. Indeed probably 1300years before a human being had set foot on New Zealand soil the good citizens of Cyrene were out and about visiting the theatres, bathhouses, temples and so on.
More or less central Cyrene.
The Greeks built the city initially but the Romans occupied Cyrene in 96BC and modified many of the Greek buildings to their own style and use. Such things as a Hellenic gymnasium had been altered to a Roman amphitheatre, consequentially there was a mixtures of architectures some Greek some Roman, beautiful columns, some almost complete statues (the really good statues ended up in British and Italian museums).
There was one Roman house with a perfectly preserved mosaic floor. A very complicated pattern of whorls and swirls, figures faces and intricate colours. There were also parts of a brightly painted wall, still preserved. There was a ladies toilet room - with statues of ladies sitting on loos, with the drains etc still all complete and in working order.
The whole area is enormous, and I think we will probably go back again and again, although we will probably do some reading before next time. There was something else that impressed us. We were the only people there! No guards, no guides, no Libyans except for one little girl picking at a mosaic floor, helping herself to the pretty coloured tiles.
One of several amphitheatres.
Anyway we drove to the Shahat village in need of refreshments by this stage, and found ourselves in what was once the King's local palace which has been converted into the local hotel. After some Pepsi we went back to Cyrene to continue the exploration.
The main area runs from a hilltop down a wide valley and looks out over a Plateau descending to a sea plain. The view is magnificent and one can understand the desire to build a city here. The ancient Greeks formed a road down to the sea and built a port which the Greeks called Appolonia but is now known as Sousa.
We followed this road, now a modern highway through some magnificent scenery and found ourselves in a small seaside village. The original Greek/Roman port was a little further along the coast. Not much left of it now as the land has subsided somewhat and a good proportion of it is drowned. There are places where there are signs of the roads disappearing into the sea.
One of the Roman mosaic floors.
Further along the coast we found a Motel type place where we had lunch, part of the lunch was a salad which contained some beautiful golden Chili peppers. They were a bit hot for me, but Peter enjoyed them, then disaster, Anna picked one up before anyone could stop her bit largely into it seeds and all.
All hell erupted. She screamed and yelled and turned bright red, everyone stopped and watched and it was some time before Ismet managed to get some salt onto her lips and in her mouth, which took away the burn and she settled down to just plain crying.
After that we set off for the trip home, this was long and tiring, broken only when Reza suddenly stopped and backed up. "Anyone want a tortoise," he said. Pete leapt out and picked it up and we are now proud owners of a tortoise (about 150mm long) called Sousa who is somewhere in our garden. It was a long trip, and we can't wait to go back again, but in our own car and at our own pace.
Cyrene and Appolonia are world renowned archeological sites, there is much work to be done there and it is to be hoped that the Libyan Government recognizes this and ensures these sites and the many others in the country are preserved so more can be learned about that wonderful era.
There are many more antiquities beside those mentioned above and during our stay we took every opportunity to visit them.
Some were too far away to get to easily and to my great regret we missed out seeing what is generally recognized as being the best Libya has to offer.
Leptis Magna in Tripolitania was reputed to outshine even Cyrene and I would dearly like to have seen it. Others such as Sabratha and Ghirza were very important sites but being on the other side of the country were also, unfortunately, a ruin too far.
Other sites closer to home were visited regularly, one of these Tolmeitha was only an hour and a half away by car, so was a very popular place with the expatriates on a days outing. I took Pete Corner there not long after his arrival. To say he was interested would be putting it mildly. I couldn't get him away, in fact I had trouble finding him half the time as he disappeared down various openings that had been excavated to show the workings of the water reticulation, sewerage disposal and so on.
Pete had an abiding interest in ruins from that day on and would often spend his spare time fossicking in any likely spot for artifacts of that ancient era. I didn't have Pete's dedication but would be quite happy spending time looking for pottery shards or coins or anything that could be assigned to Greek or Roman times.
By the number of Roman coins found (though not by me) during the time we were there I came to the conclusion that the Romans must have had holes in the pockets of their togas or didn't worry too much about their small change.
Tolmeitha was about 28 kilometers from Al Marsh, (the model town) and was situated on a broad hillside with a view of the sea in the distance. When we first visited, it was the middle of Summer and the surrounding country side was bare dirt with the odd hardy scrub scattered round.
Indeed the whole hinterland was the same. I mentioned this arid aspect to my Libyan workmates. "Ah! You wait until the spring," They said. "Then it will all change". Well eventually Spring did arrive, and they were right! Winter had been cold and wet, the rain soaked the ground but it was too cold for plant growth.
With the first warm days of March an amazing transformation took place, almost overnight what had been bare dirt or mud produced an abundance of wildflowers. Jan and I had never seen anything like it. There were acres of colour, patches of red gave way to patches of yellow which was bordered with blue. The whole countryside was transformed. The Tolmeitha area was particularly attractive as the rolling countryside lay nicely to the sun. The wildflowers grew among the ruins and as far as the eye could see. Truly magnificent.
Sadly it was not to last, within a few weeks the flowers had faded, the plants that bore them ran to seed and as the sun grew hotter they died and within a couple of months, the ground returned to the arid waste it had been when we first arrived. The seeds were there though waiting to burst into life when the next spring arrived.
Next page. Chapter 14 Work