Thugga Skyline

View to the skyline of ancient Dougga in Tunisia.

Yesterday I posted an old slide of the Mausoleum of Ateban, a second century BC tomb marker at the site of Dougga (ancient Thugga) in northern Tunisia. Here's a shot to the larger context. You can see the mausoleum rising on the right hand site of the ruins. Visible at the top of the hill is the Capitolium, a temple dedicated to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva.

A UNESCO World Heritage Treasure

Because of its impressive size, exceptional preservation, and stunning landscape, Dougga (ancient Thugga) was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997. Unlike many other Roman sites that were built on flat ground, Dougga is built on a steep slope, maintaining the organic layout of an indigenous Numidian community that was later Romanized.

It has frequently been dubbed “the best-preserved Roman small town in North Africa.” It possesses all the essential components of a Roman urban center:

• The Theatre: One of the most beautiful in the Roman world.

• The Capitolium: A towering example of second-century architecture.

• The Mausoleum of Ateban: A rare example of pre-Roman Numidian architecture.

A Moment in Time

I took this shot of the Dougga skyline in the winter of 2001, just a few years after the site received its UNESCO designation. The winter light in northern Tunisia highlights the golden limestone of the ruins against the green valley below—a view that hasn't changed much in two millennia.

The Mausoleum of Ateban: Cracking the Numidian Language

One cold morning I galumphed over a Tunisian hill and found myself facing the Mausoleum of Ateban. This 21-meter tower of stone, on the edge of the ancient site of Dougga, was erected in 146 BC. It was dedicated to a North African prince named Ateban or Ativan.

The Key to an Extinct Language

A bilingual inscription was once set into the face of this monument, written in both Numidian and Punic scripts. Much like the Rosetta Stone did for Egyptian hieroglyphs, this inscription provided the linguistic key that allowed scholars to finally crack the Numidian language.

Numidian is an extinct tongue, closely related to modern Berber, and was spoken across North Africa in the centuries surrounding the life of Christ. Without this stone, our understanding of the indigenous cultures of ancient Tunisia would be significantly less.

A Controversial History: From Dougga to the British Museum

The story of the inscription takes a dramatic turn in the 19th century. In 1842, the British consul removed the stone from the monument to preserve it (or claim it). Unfortunately, the removal process caused serious structural damage to the mausoleum itself.

The inscription was shipped to London, where it remains today in the British Museum—often out of public sight—while the reconstructed tower in Dougga stands as a silent witness to a language it no longer speaks.