August 7, 2019 Comments Off on Thamugadi – the Roman city buried under the Sahara Views: 1948 Ancient Stories, Nostalgia

Sahara is a well-known city swallower.

Presently, it’s slowly encroaching the African village of Chinguetti, a historically important site for Sunni pilgrims on their way to Mecca.

The world’s largest desert has also claimed numerous remnants of the ancient Egyptian civilization, and, in the case of the Roman Empire, which extended to North Africa, the outpost of Thamugadi.

Also known as Timgad and Tamugas, this ancient Roman city was originally founded around 100 A.D. It was built in the province of Numidia (today Algeria) under the orders of Emperor Trajan, who governed Rome’s most significant military expansion.

The remnants of the ancient Roman city of Timgad, Photo: Yvon Fruneau, CC BY-SA 3.0-igo

Thamugadi’s population had hit at 15,000 during the third century A.D. The city, which has been described as the most beautiful of all Roman cities in this realm of the vast empire, displayed a number of architectural feats such as a magnificent-looking Arch of Triumph, large amphitheatre, well-equipped library and more than a dozen Roman-style bathhouses. Its lavish mosaics has frequently been compared to those of Pompeii.

Trajan’s Arch within the ruins of Timgad, Photo: PhR61, CC BY 2.0

Roman soldiers and veterans did reside in Thamugadi, in order to protect the southern borders of the empire as well as grain production which added importance to the outpost. However, this did not stop invaders and vandals from attacking the city. The city succumbed to the most serious such attack in 430, after which it never bounced back to its former glory. By the 8th-century A.D., Thamugadi would be entirely abandoned. And over time, the Sahara entirely claimed over the once lavish urbanities.

From a set of photographs of the Timgad ruins taken on February 24, 1928.

It wasn’t until the 18th-century that Scottish nobleman James Bruce, accompanied by Florentine artist Luigi Balugani rediscovered the city lost to the desert.

Bruce had served as a British consul to Algiers, today the capital city of Algeria. He had lost his diplomatic post due to conflicts with superiors in 1765, but instead of going back to London, he initiated an adventure trip across Africa. Balugani, who also enjoyed Africa and travelling, accompanied Bruce on the journey.

Roman sculpture work at Timgad as seen on February 24, 1928.

The endeavours of the two included time spent in the desert. In fact, very early on the trip, they moved south to the Algerian desert in a quest to find ruins of ancient civilizations, according to the National Geographic. They did see ancient Roman ruins already before December 12, 1765, the date they first stumbled on the remnants of what they believed was the lost Roman city of Thamugadi. They were right.

“Many believe that they were the first Europeans in centuries to visit the site, near the northern slopes of the Aurès mountains,” notes the National Geographic in an article published on July 30, 2019. Bruce described Thamugadi as a “small town, but full of elegant buildings,” according to his diaries, and Balugani produced sketches of what they saw. Under the layers of sand, the Roman city had been saved in entirety.

View at the Timgad ruins, February 24, 1928.

In 1881, it was the French who claimed control of the ruins and through their presence in the region as a colonial power, they carried thorough excavations of the site. A century later, in 1982, and two decades since the French had left, the UNESCO declared Thamugadi a world heritage site. It’s one of the rare ancient Roman cities that have been excavated in entirety as most Roman cities are usually found buried under other development or effectively damaged by consistent human activity.

Britannica.com describes Thamugadi’s ruins to be the “best-preserved Roman remains in North Africa.”

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Tags: Abandoned cities, Africa, Ancient Explorer, ancient Rome, lost cities, Sahara swallower, Thamugadi