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This is the city of Thugga,
in the ancient kingdom and Roman province of Numidia.
It lies on the slopes of the valley of the Oued Khalled,
in a fertile landscape of olives and grain.
The city is well preserved and extensively excavated.
We'll be exploring the remains to investigate how the town developed
and what impact Roman occupation had on the city.
Thugga was already a flourishing city in the 4th century BC.
Well before the kingdom of Numidia was added to the Roman Empire,
it was a centre of Numidian power.
This is the royal mausoleum of Ateban, son of Ypmatat, son of Palu,
constructed around the beginning of the 2nd century BC by his son Zumar,
with Abaris, son of Abdastart, and Mangi, son of Warsacan,
and the inscription naming them,
which was torn from the building in 1842
and now lies in the British Museum,
was written in two languages, Libycan and Punic.
The mausoleum stands on five steps
and the lower part is like a house with a window on each side
and pilasters at the corners with lotus flower scrolled capitals.
Above this, three further steps rise to a central section
with a series of embedded Ionic columns around it
and surmounted with an Egyptian-style moulding.
Above this were a further three steps
with a now-mutilated figure of a horseman at each corner,
and on each side a bas relief of a four-horse chariot carrying two people.
The upper section, like the lower,
has lotus flower pilasters at the corners.
Above the pilasters is another Egyptian moulding
and a pyramid to crown the building.
At each of the four corners stood a winged female figure.
And at the top sat a lion.
Similar monuments have been found in other parts of North Africa,
but its details illustrate a fusion of Greek and Egyptian cultural elements
which came together in Africa
and influenced local expressions of culture.
Clearly Numidia was participating
in the culture of the Eastern Mediterranean
well before the Roman conquest of Carthage.
Other parts of the city also reveal glimpses of the pre-Roman town.
The city walls built of roughly squared blocks with square towers
probably date to the late 2nd century BC.
Outside the city walls lay the pre-Roman cemeteries,
where bodies were placed, with pottery,
in rough stone block chambers covered by earth mounds.
Within the city itself
the irregular plan of the streets goes back to the Numidian city.
Even the Roman period shows no signs
of the formal grid layout typical of so many Roman cities.
These, then, are the clearest remains of pre-Roman Thugga.
However, the city did not suddenly change
when the Romans took over Numidia
and we can trace the gradual development of the Roman city
by studying the surviving buildings
and also a remarkable collection of inscriptions
which have been found here.
These inscriptions help us to both identify and date
the buildings of the city.
So here we have the Temple of Mercury,
which was built in the late 2nd century AD.
A long inscription identifies the temple,
with its rooms, portico and statues,
built by Quintius Pacuvius Saturus, a leading citizen,
and his wife Nahania Victoria, an important priestess,
according to the will of their son Marcus Pacuvius Felix Victorianus,
at a total cost of 145,000 sestertii.
This small temple, dedicated to Augustan Piety,
was erected in the first half of the 2nd century AD by Pompeius Rogatus,
at a cost of 30,000 sestertii.
These temples surround a square.
Engraved on the paving is a wind rose,
which marks the points of the compass and the names of the winds.
So, for example, we have the south-south-east wind, Leuconotus,
the south wind, Auster,
and the south-west wind, Africus.
The Augustan author Vitruvius
describes how to accurately lay out a wind rose
and suggests that ideally streets and buildings should be set out
to avoid directly facing the north, south, east or west winds.
The wind rose at Thugga matches the description
but the layout of the city does not follow the instructions.
For example, on the fourth side of the square,
the capitol is aligned to face the south wind.
The temple is dedicated to the protectors of Rome,
Jupiter, Juno and Minerva.
In the back wall of the cella are three niches,
one for each of the divinities.
Above the cella doorway an inscription tells us
that Lucius Marcius Simplex Regillianus built the temple.
In the pediment is a mutilated relief
of the apotheosis of the emperor Antoninus Pius.
He is shown being taken aloft by an eagle.