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Architecture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2015

Extract

Many interesting architectural fragments came to light during the excavation, but in few cases are they sufficient to give an overall picture of any one building. Some suggest stylistic links with Tolmeita, although the Berenice versions are generally coarser and smaller in scale. For example Berenice has produced several variants of the doorway in the East portico of the Roman Villa at Tolmeita, but the forms are simpler and the scale smaller. An arched doorway which led from the street into the ‘L’ peristyle is closely similar to ones at Tolmeita.

Only the peristyle of ‘L’ can be confidently restored to its full height (Fig.3), but this building alone tells us a great deal about the character and influences of Berenice architecture. Built about 75 A.D. its order is Doric, for long a favourite in the province, and the columns are composed of two unfluted shaft drums and a capital cut from a separate block. No column is complete, but the fragments suggest a height of around 2.50 m. This only gives a lower diameter to height ratio of 1:6.5, but other elements too suggest that the building was rather squat. Above the columns is an architrave bearing a monumental inscription, and a frieze with triglyphs offset so that those over the columns could be carved from a single block instead of the normal two. To judge by the slots at the back of the frieze blocks the peristyle was roofed with wooden beams on which were laid poles or planking sealed with plaster or mud, a style which Wright terms “universal in the Near East during all ages”. After the building was abandoned the cornice blocks were dislodged so that the roof beams could be extracted, a demonstration of the scarcity of wood in the province. Good building stone was scarce too, as is shown by the widespread reuse of stone on the site and the extensive use of mud-brick. The back wall of the ‘L’ peristyle is stone-built to a height of about 1.30 m. and above that in courses of thin unbaked bricks whose dimensions conform to the wall thickness.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Libyan Studies 1974

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References

1.Wright, G. R. H., “A Villa of the early Roman Empire” in Kraeling, C. H., Ptolemais, City of the Libyan Pentapolis (University of Chicago, Oriental Institute Publications, XC), Chicago 1962, pp.119139, and Figs.44–45.Google Scholar
2. A drawing of one of these arches, from room 28 of the Public Building, is by Wright, in Kraeling, , op. cit., plan XVIII, 2. The other, as yet unpublished, is under the floor of a room in the south-east corner of the peristyle villa to the north-west of the four-sided arch at Tolmeita.Google Scholar
3. The Doric order of the Square of the Cisterns at Tolmeita, which dates to the early Roman period has a lower diameter to height ratio of less than 1:7. See Knudstad, J. E., “The square of the cisterns”, in Kraeling, op. cit., pp.6467, and Fig.11.Google Scholar
4. The reason for this unsubtle solution is probably because the sandstone which was used for this and most of the Sidi Khrebish buildings is much more friable than that, for example, at Tolmeita, where a much greater sharpness is evident in the carving of the mouldings.Google Scholar
5.Wright, G. R. H., “Construction and architectural ornament in the Villa”, in Kraeling, op. cit., pp.216217.Google Scholar
6. To be published shortly by Reynolds, Joyce.Google Scholar
7.Stucchi, S., “First outline for a history of Cyrenaican architecture during the Roman period”, in Libya in History (Historical conference University of Libya, Faculty of Arts, 16–23 03 1968), p.226.Google Scholar
8.Caputo, G., “La protezione dei monumenti di Tolmaide negli anni 1935–1942”, in Quad. arch, dell Libia, 111, 1954, pp.5358; G. Caputo, “Una basilica cristiana in Tolmaide”, Communicazioni presentate al 111 Convegno nazionale di Storia dell'architettura 1938, pp.159–162; C. H. Kraeling, op. cit., pp.97–100.Google Scholar