Dougga – A Roman Hilltop City in Tunisia

Tumbling down the Tunisian hillside in terraces of warm sandstone lies the magnificent remains of one of Rome’s outpost cities, on the edge of the Empire. And one of the best preserved Roman cities of North Africa too – so well preserved that it is rightfully listed on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list.

Nor was this a backwater, a drab place without the amenities of cities nearer the heart of the Empire. This place had monumental arches, baths, a circus, a theatre and around twenty temples – everything the cosmopolitan Roman citizen night expect.

Figure 1: the Capitoline Temple at Dougga – the main temple overlooking a city’s forum

This is Dougga, sometimes called Thugga, a Roman city not far from the North African desert frontier, but also a city rooted in its Numidian and Carthaginian past.

The Numidians were the native people of the hills and plateaus of the semi-fertile zone between the desert and the Mediterranean sea. By the time of Rome’s expansion, they had formed a kingdom, adopting written language and government from the Carthaginians – the Middle Eastern people who had settled on the coast of North West Africa and had created a trading empire. Although some of the Numidians were still nomadic, plenty lived in villages and even towns like Dougga.

Although this was a Numidian town, in the days of the Numidian kings there was also a Carthaginian community in the city and it was ruled along Carthaginian lines, with public offices of Carthaginian names. And when Rome conquered the province, veterans of the Roman army were settled here, adding to the mix. So it was a place where cultures melded.

The Numidian royal family adopted stone monumental architecture from their initially more advanced neighbours and it’s here at Dougga that one of the few surviving Numidian monuments can the found: the mausoleum of Atban.

Figure 2: Numidian mausoleum of Atban

The mausoleum is well down the slopes of the hill, outside the city proper. It is in the form of a tower, decorated with Greek columns but also with Egyptian lotus flower capitals and topped with a pyramid. Here in stone is reflected the different influences on the Numidian kingdom. It is inscribed both in Carthaginian and in the native Libyan (rendered in Carthaginian alphabet) and that has allowed scholars to decipher the ancient Libyan language.

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