Ennabli, Abdelmajid. "North Africa's Roman art. Its future." in World Heritage No. 16, September 2000, pp. 18-29. © UNESCO – San Marcos http://whc.unesco.org/en/review/ ~IIYmilitary, su~ ne was more clea. , of influence unc El jem's listing i amphitheatre. nd Leptis Magna maritime citit rich in olive groves. Leptis Magna, home town of Emperc Severus, benefited from imperial generosity that endoweu it with imposing architectural decoration. Buried beneath the sands, it escaped pillage; having been gradually cleared, tl s remains arc and er ' ~ced. El Jem ( a great amphit surrounding town. This is the most striking sign of the pro! perity of a town whose archaeological riches, particularly the mosaics, are still being uncovered. It owed its prosper- ity to a location in the centre of an olive-growing regior and it was enc 1 a net\ < of roads reachin to many different i the Sahel -:' was export--' Dougga (fc not built : ~rdingto an orthogonal plan; instl adapted to the nature of the terrain with traffic 1 smoothly channelled and with the monuments arr3nn enhance the Capitol. The four grooved pillars su the pediment of this monu nt still domin, ribution networks - to the exclusion tage survival arouses at the moment of all other considerations, as is al- and the excess of zeal that one day ready the case with other products. threatens to become out-and-out ex- Sites on the World Heritage List ploitation, the future of world cultur- already represent an attractive, high al heritage remains uncertain. To- . quality and extremely varied selec- day, things are moving at an ever- tion of 'quality-controlled products' faster pace. This is more than suffi- 'hat need only to be taken in hand. cient reason for UNESCO and the .'his sort of management threatens to World Heritage Committee, guided turn into an actual domination of by the principles commanding their heritage which, once it becomes a foundation, to remain attentive to commercial product, is in danger .of the fate of the only area that has not losing its soul. Heritage is not mer- yet been absorbed into the world chandise. It embodies the identity of economic system. a country and a people and remains a vehicle for precious values whose ideological and emotional content is r\dTHOR: ABDELMAJID ENNABLl diffuse. It is obvious Curator of the Carthage site and its Museum e scant interest heri- OST NORTHAFRICAN towns list- and Mauritania when Rome's empire veying, storing and distributing wa- ed as part of the World Heri- extended across all of the territories ter, public squares, triumphal arches, tage predate the Roman Con- bordering the Mediterranean. paved roads and an underground quest. They nonetheless display a Rome imposed its own image of sewage system. strong Roman imprint that can be the city, which was to be adminis- These sites, whose diversity re- seen in the remarkable remains tered quite independently following sulted from their geographical and found in so many places today. Most the example of the capital of the Em- topographical situations, were all of these towns were abandoned in pire. Governing administrations re- modelled on the city par excellence favour of other sites at the end of An- cruited from among the leading citi- that was Rome. This is apparent in tiquity, but this actually helped pre- zens exercised prerogatives and at- the town planning, the diversity of serve the Afro-Roman urban and tributes within an urban framework buildings, the architectural tech- niques, the frequent use of marble and mosaics, the lavish decoration with statues and the common use of inscriptions commemorating the gen- he excavati~nsrevealed the erosity of the donors and the majesty of the emperors who presided over extraordinary wealth of the site the peace and prosperity of the in- hage as well as the density of the habitants. lev ation over the centuries CARTHAGE, of destruction THE IDEAL MODEL ORE SO THAN Tim- A- Mgad, created by Emperor architectural character now ac- that reproduced the Roman model. Trajan knowledged by their inclusion on the At the town centre stood the forum ' World Heritage List. with the temples of the gods and, of Djemila, Tipasa and Timgad in Al- course, the Capitol, the political as- geria, Leptis Magna, Sabratha and sembly halls including basilicas and Cyrene in Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, curiae, the public baths and build- Carthage, Kerkuane, Dougga and the ings for games and entertainment (theatres, amphitheatres, cir- amphitheatre at El Jem in Tunisia and A Volubilis in Morocco are all listed sites. cus-hippodromes). , They are merely the most remarkable There were also li- sites among dozens of others, more braries, popular and modest or as yet unexplored, dotting aristocratic private the former Roman provinces of North homes, an elaborate Africa, pre-consular Africa, Numidia water supply system with structures for con- I for his veterans with all the austerity - On the preceding double page, of a military camp, Carthage offers . - the ideal model of a Roman city. Es- a Roman road at the Carthage tablished on the ruins of the razed archaeological site, and an im~ressive Punic city, this colony was a new view of the amphitheatre at El ]ern, I capital conceived by imperial archi- both in Tunisia. tects in accordance with Hellenistic Above, the ruins of the amphitheatre and Middle Eastern theories. The so- at Carthage. called Upper City comprised a vast Left, the Triumphal forum at the intersection of the De- Arch of Caracalla at the site cumanus Maximus and Kardo Max- of Volubilis (Morocco). I imus on the summit of Byrsa Hill, which had been reshaped at tremen- dous cost in labour. The four major t divisions were arranged around it and these were divided into small city blocks. All religious and politi- cal monuments, buildings con- ceived for games and entertainment along with public and private baths in Carthage since there was a com- found their place in this network plete break between the original and, according to their importance, Punic city and the later Roman city - they formed part of a single insula or a break spanning a full century covered several blocks. (146-44 BC) during which the site This strict application of the prin- was closed to any form of human oc- cupation. LTHOUGH THE ARABconquest did A not follow this identical pattern, there was nonetheless a break be- tween old and new. The establish- ment of the new civilization in the former Romano-Byzantine province did not occur in a context of conti- nuity. Through transformation in the Arab empire - Omayyad and later Abbassyd -the cities adopted anoth- er religion and a different political system, which resulted in a new so- cial organization and a different kind of economy. The entire system of small cities de- , pendent on agriculture gradually de- In the other sites, Romanization able for the exceptional state of con- clined and the towns eventually disap- was a continuous process. In Leptis servation of their monuments. They peared. Only a few cities survived, but Magna and Sabratha, El Jem and are generally found further inland. In at the cost of total transformation; they Dougga, Djemila and Tipasa, Volu- El Jem, Tipasa, Djemila and Volubilis, were also well situated geographically, bilis and all the Phoenician trading the monuments strike one by the it should be noted. Sousse, Gabes, B6- posts along the coast, where the Nu- scope of their conception, the quali- ja, Le Kef, Gafsa, for example, sur- midian and Libyan cities and locali- ty of their architecture and the beau- vived because they continued to func- ties had been subject to Carthaginian ty of their decoration. tion as places of passage and refuge. influence, the Roman model was im- In most cases, this model did not But other towns such as Al Qal'a of posed on the inhabitants who aspired appear suddenly but developed grad- Beni Hammad and Mahdia came into to citizenship. In order to become ually during the second and third being only to disappear later along citizens of the empire, they had to centuries as the cities grew and their with their short-lived dynasties. create an urban landscape in the im- status rose from civitas to that of mu- Conquered and abandoned at the age of Rome. Fora were built, along nicipality or colony - making them end of Antiquity, Carthage gave way with their Capitols, curiae and specific even more like Rome, which always monuments embodying the ideal of a remained the model of the city. With city and its comforts. The cities, thanks the growth of the empire and the tri- to the generosity of com- umph of Christianity, the urban lay- peting benefactors, out was continually changing, ex- vied with one an- panding or contracting as the monu- other in con- ments were restored or renovated structing and put to a variety of uses. New ar- buildings chitectural forms appeared such as and decorat- the Christian basilicas, the architec- ing public ar- ture of which was derived from the 1 eas. This model judicial basilicas, though they were r of a civilization occasionally installed in pagan tem- t devoted to the ples or even in former public baths. Above, the Punic ruins on Birsa Hill well-being of its Many monuments whose functions at the archaeological site of Carthage- inhabitants is ap- had become obsolete disappeared. and, left, a magnificent column parent in the ves- The Christian city gradually replaced excavated at the site. tiges of the Roman the pagan, transforming the monu- Above right, the great row of columns towns which, al- ments while at the same time con- of the Temple of Apollo in Cyrene though less impos- serving the urban structure, which (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya), and below, ing than Carthage, gradually deteriorated and lost its for- an overall view of the coastal city are more remark- mer splendour.