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.
