A Seaside Villa in Tripolitania

Abstract

East of Sabratha the coast of the Mediterranean Sea is formed by a line of soft sandstone cliffs. These, which are scarcely more than twenty feet high, are divided by low headlands into shallow bays. Below the cliffs, the foreshore is sometimes of harder rocks, flat or weathered into sharp spines and pinnacles; sometimes of fine sand, equally ideal for bathing or for beaching boats. Inland run low sand-dunes, barren now except for the desert shrubs on which Arab boys graze their goats. But this coast was fertile once, for here and there one may find scatters of pottery, Hellenistic, Arretine, and Roman coarse wares; or lines of square-cut well-laid masonry, which mark the sites of Roman baths, mausolea and villas. One such group of buildings forms the subject of this paper.The site (Fig. 1) was discovered by Mr. J. B. Ward Perkins, the Director of the Sabratha Expedition (1948), who noticed foundations cut into the rocks of the foreshore, and short stretches of wall protruding from the sand dunes above the cliffs: clear evidence that a villa had once stood there. It was not possible to spare either Arab labour or supervising staff for a full-scale excavation of the site, but it seemed worth-while to make some record of the buildings. Mr. N. de l'E. Thomas and I decided, therefore, to devote what spare time we had to investigating the villa and, when its importance had been recognized, we were aided by four Arab workers.