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The Camel in Roman Tripolitania1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

Olwen Brogan
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Extract

It is impossible for us, even in these days of land-rovers and jeeps, to imagine a North African landscape without a camel in it, yet the animal is nowhere to be found on the numerous Roman mosaics with scenes of country life in the museums of Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripolitania. Only two ancient writers before Ammianus Marcellinus refer to the camel in North Africa, one specifically, the other by implication. The fact that the camel spread over this region—Africa Proconsular is, Numidia and Mauretania—some time during the Roman period is, however, generally accepted. What is not clear is when and how this happened. The purpose of this note is to publish the photograph of a relief from a Tripolitanian tomb (Pl. XVIII), in the hope that it may be a small contribution to the discussion of the problem, at least as far as Tripolitania is concerned.

The evidence has often been studied. The earliest mention of the camel in the Maghreb is the note in the Bellum Africanum to the effect that twenty-two camels belonging to King Juba were captured during the skirmishing in the campaign which led up to the Battle of Thapsus (45 B.C.). It is not known how Juba obtained his twenty two camels, or whether other rich Numidians owned any, and there is no hint of the presence of the beast in Punic times. The second notice comes in the work of the late third-century African Christian, Arnobius of Sicca, who writes of the camel kneeling down when it is being loaded or unloaded.

Type
Research Article
Information
Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 22 , November 1954 , pp. 126 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 1953

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References

2 It is given fully in Gsell, S., Histoire ancienne de l'Afrique du Nord, i, Paris, 1920, 59–61Google Scholar, and in his later article, ‘La Tripolitaine et le Sahara au iiime siècle’, Mém. de l' Académie des Inscriptions, xliii, 1933, 149–66, especially 154 fGoogle Scholar.

3 lxviii, 4.

4 Adversus Gentes ii, 25. This part of his work is believed to have been written about the year 297. He also mentions the camel in vii, 16.

5 xxviii, 6, 5.

6 E.g., Procopius, , Bell. Vand. i, 8, 25Google Scholar; Corippus, , Iohannis, ii, 93Google Scholar.

7 Hist. Nat. vii, 26.

8 Tacitus, , Ann. xv, 12Google Scholar.

9 Eph. Epig. vii, 457; J. Lesquier, L'Armée romaine d'Égypte, 1918, pp. 80, 113–14, 147.

10 R. Cagnat, L'Armée romaine d'Afrique, 1913, 331.

11 Catalogue du Musée Alaoui, Tunis, i, 1897, 139Google Scholar, nos. 64–6; 144, no. 113.

12 Ibid., Supplément, 1910, 40, no. 88 (from El-Alia).

13 G. P. Gauckler, Inventaire des Mosaïques de la Gaule et de l'Afrique, Tunisie; A. Blanchet, R. Cagnat, and de Pachtère, L'Algérie; a number of examples are given in Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire. There is a camel on a mosaic at Djemila (L. Leschi, Djemila, Algiers, 1949, 36), one of a series of animals and fish in medallions, but it is dated to the fourth century.

14 S. Aurigemma, I Mosaici di Zliten, 1926; see also Rostovtzeff, op. cit. pl. XLIV.

15 M. Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, 1941, 292, 315, 359, 1404.

16 Athenaeus v, 200 f.; W. W. Tarn and G. T. Griffith, Hellenistic Civilisation, 3rd Edn., 1952, 183; Jennison, G., Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome, ManChester, 1937, 33Google Scholar.

17 Strabo xvii, 1, 45.

18 M. Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, 1926, pl. XLII.

19 E. S. G. Robinson, British Museum Cat. of Greek Coins: Cyrenaica, 1927, pl. XLII, 1–5. Coins issued under Tiberius bear the same emblem, ibid., pl. XLIV, 10.

20 iv, 7, 9: aqua etiam defecerat, quam utribus cameli vexerant.

21 ‘La Tripolitaine’ etc. (note 2 above), 154.

22 IRT, p. 78.

23 See R. G. Goodchild, ‘Oasis Forts of Legio III Augusta on the Routes to the Fezzan’, in this volume of the Papers.

24 Caputo, G., Monumenti Antichi xli, 1951, 200–442Google Scholar; the results of the expedition of Pace, Sergi, and Caputo are summarised in Wheeler, Rome Beyond the Imperial Frontiers, 1954, 97–107.

25 Tacitus, , Hist. iv, 50Google Scholar; Pliny v, 38. Before the middle of the second century a citizen of Lepcis, Julius Maternus, was able to make a voyage of exploration right across the Sahara (Ptolemy I, viii. 4–5). Caputo, op. cit., 442, regards the time of Vespasian as vital in the development of this commerce.

26 Miss Joyce Reynolds has drawn my attention to an inscription recently found at Ostia (Not. d. Scavi, 1953, 276). It is a tombstone of T. Flavius Stephanus, praepositus camellorum, a freedman of one of the Flavian emperors. Below it are incised the figures of an elephant and two camels. The elephant is too roughly sketched for it to be safe to state whether it is African or Indian, but it may be remarked that in the first century Africa was still a land of elephants. The exact function of this praepositus is not clear, so the significance of the inscription cannot yet be explained.

27 Romanelli, P., ‘La vita agricola tripolitana attraverso le rappresentazioni figurate’, Africa Itatiana iii, 1930, 53–75Google Scholar. See also R. G. Goodchild, Geographical Magazine, 1952, p. 152, which shows a farmer and his animals, including a camel, approaching his fortified farmhouse. A list of pagan sculptures in the Tripolitanian hinterland is given by Goodchild, and Perkins, Ward in Archaeologia xcv, 1953, 80–1Google Scholar. Sculptures of related type, showing animals including camels, but not showing camels ploughing, have been found in the Matmata zone of Tunisia: Bulletin Archéologique du Comité, 1902 (Henchir bou Guerba), 405–11; ibid. 1906 (Henchir Bel-Aïd), 116.

28 Journal of Roman Studies, 1949 and 1950; Goodchild, Geographical Journal, 1950; Geographical Magazine, 1952, Perkins, Ward, Archaeology iii, 1950, 25–30Google Scholar.

29 It is hoped to publish some notes on these in a forth coming issue of the Reports and Monographs of the Department of Antiquities of Libya.

30 Photographs of some of these are to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Illustrated London News.

31 One shows a string of three camels.

32 IRT 900.

33 Romanelli, op. cit. figs. 13 and 14, evidently from the same monument. The stone of fig. 13 was observed in 1952, walled into the small mosque of Buchar, west of Giado (Sheet 1671, Giosc, U306668). The stone of fig. 14, in which it is reversed by a printer's error, was at some time removed from the mosque to Giado; it was taken to Tripoli in 1954 (Pl. XVII, 2).

34 Goodchild, R. G. and Ward Perkins, J. B. ‘The Christian Antiquities of Tripolitania’, Archaeologia xcv, 1953, 39Google Scholar. A photograph of the camel has not yet been published. The notes here given were kindly sent by Mr. Goodchild to the writer.

35 On two mausolea close to Tigi and at Dahret Hagiar, north-east of Scecsciuch (Sheet 1572, Gasrel-Hag, 382958). The reliefs at Dahret Hagiar include two horses and two bulls; my guide informed me that there used to be a camel, but that it has now disappeared (1953).

36 F. Corò, Vestigia di colonie agricole romane: Gebel Nefusa, 1929, 117. (Henscir el-Ausaf, Sheet 1570, Tigi, T699882).

37 Or on the Tunisian stele which G. C. Picard (Les Religions de l'Afrique du Nord, 1954, 121) dates to the period of the Tetrarchy.

38 Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, pl. XLIII. ‘The sacred cone of the great Semitic and Berber goddess of Africa.’“ (No date is given.)

39 Picard, op. cit., 186 ff. (Ceres), 121 (Saturn).

40 Camels may have been supplied by the state to stock the farms of the original limitanei (cf. SHA. vit. Sev. Alex. lvii), but they were already in use by other farmers further north.