Museum Of Sousse At Historic Kasabah

Kasabah of Sousse

Sousse, the pearl of the Tunisian coast, has provided guests with a gateway to the past with the opening of the Archeological Museum of Sousse, located in its historic Kasbah, on the west fringe of the Medina.

Sousse is one of the oldest cities in Tunisia, and was a central point for the world’s largest ancient civilizations, starting with the Phoenicians who founded it as a base for their sea trade. They named the area “Hadramuete” in the ninth century BC.

Sousse museum plan

When Carthage, the Phoenician urban center encompassing Hadramuete, was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC, the city was annexed to Rome, becoming Rome’s first African colony.For more than five centuries under the Roman empire, Hadramuete was a merchant metropolis due to the wealth the port brought the country. The wealthy Roman citizens built luxurious villas paved with mosaics, and the villages were dotted with public buildings,such as baths, basilicas and temples.

With the Arab conquest in the 7th century, the area currently known as Sousse became a military port. The city was marked by ribats and fortresses to protect the coast from Byzantine assaults.

Sousse and its surrounding area are home to literal layers of culture. Underneath the Arab institutions lies the ruins of both the Punic and Roman eras. The Arabs kept some cultural edifices from the previous inhabitants. The new Arab leaders used the Roman’s huge stone blocks and columns to build the Arab cities of Sousse and Kairouan.

Oceanus was widely worshiped in Roman Hadramuete

The museum, covering 2000 meters, offers the opportunity to see the development of each civilization.  The building itself is a historical monument that evokes the Arab-Byzantine style of the eighth and ninth century.

The museum is divided into thirteen departments, with an outside terrace offering a panoramic view of Sousse. Statues, mosaics and funeral objects exhumed from Sousse and other sites along the Tunisian coast, are exhibited.

Inside Museum

The mosaics are a central component of the musem, as Sousse is famous in the Mediteranean for its collection of art. Their importance to Sousse is reinforced every summer with the festival of Aoussou. This is one of the oldest traidtions of the Tunisian Sahel, the Tunsian desert area, which draws its origins from the Oceanus, one of the most popular gods from the Roman era. This god was worshiped in the first and second centuries, and was the most commonly represented deity in mosaics in the public baths and basins.

The mosaics depicted gods, goddesses and heroes from Greek and Roman mythology, many of which are available for exhibition at the museum.

The Punic and early Christian eras are also represented in the museum. The Punic department exhibits funeral items, with terracotta vases and funeral objects. Christian artificats are plentiful.

A beautiful baptistery, found accidentally  in the Bkalta quarry 40 km south of Sousse It is decorated with mosaics, depicting birds and chrism, or holy oil used in early churches. Other funeral mosaics and tombstones were discovered in the undergrounds catacombs, one km from the Sousse bus station of Souk Lahad.

This museum allows guests to witness the ancient civilizations that have shaped the Tunisian identity and have enriched Tunisia’s development into one shaped by a variety of cultures.

Rome Never Dies; From Thysdrus To El jem

In the small village of El jem, which has only 18,000 inhabitants, a monument stands to recall its old glory when it was the Roman town of Thysdrus.
With more than 500,000 tourists per year, the El jem amphitheater is one of the most visited monuments in Tunisia. It is sixty km from Sousse, another tourist town where more than two million people come to spend their holiday each year. Local travel agencies usually organize a half-day trip to El jem with reasonable prices.

Arena and cavea

The amphitheater was built at the end of the second century thanks to donations from the wealthy citizens of Thysdrus who wanted to show their loyalty to Roman culture. It is the third biggest Roman amphitheater, after the Colosseum of Rome and the amphitheater of Capua. It remains one of the most well-preserved and complete amphitheaters in the world.
The last to be built in the Roman empire, the El jem amphitheater benefited from the accumulated experience of Roman builders. Although it follows the model of Rome's Colosseum, it is elliptical in shape rather than circular, with 427 m on the outer circumference. It stands on flat ground with the support of a complex arch system that holds its three floors and 36m height. The seats can hold between 27,000 and 30,000 spectators, divided into three compartments and separated by balustrades, arranged according to social class. Notable guests used to sit in a sort of horizontal platform near the arena to be close to the action.
Under the arena is a gallery, the site of the amphitheater's bloody past. It contains more then ten rooms where prisoners and animals were kept. The amphitheater games were a part of the Thysdrus culture and a popular pastime. Venatio, or shows that pitted men against wild beasts, were popular in Thysdrus, as were the executions of criminals and prisoners of war.
Since the start of French occupation in 1881, excavations on the amphitheater have unearthed many mosaics that are now exhibited in a museum, some 600 meters from the amphitheater. These mosaics narrate the popularity of Venatio games that were substitutes for Roman Gladiator shows. The cult of the wine God Bacchus was also a common
event in the arena, and some specialists have said that the amphitheater games were dedicated to this God. The procession that preceded the shows were dedicated to him. The cult was largely among the slaves who used to fight for their freedom under the slogan "Bacchus Liber Pater" (Bacchus Father of the Free).
With the decline of Rome, games were stopped, and the huge amphitheater was then used as a citadel by the Berbers led by their queen "Al-kahina" ("the priestess") in the seventh century, when the Arab troups started to attack the actual Tunisian territory. The Arab historians described it as Lajem, a word derived from the Arab word "ajem" - the citadel - which turned into the current name "El Jem." In 1695, the tribes rose against the political taxation of the Tunis-based ruler Mohamed Bey. The tribes escaped and took refuge in the amphitheater. The solders used cannons and opened breaches. These breaches can also be seen.
Since 1985, the amphitheater has been resurrected thanks to the International Festival of Symphonic Music. Musicians from Tunisia and the rest of the world come and perform from mid-July until mid-August.

The Bricks of Tozeur

Tozeur is a city in southwestern Tunisia and home to the country’s biggest oasis containing hundreds of thousands of palm trees. Its economy is based on the export of dates and “Saharan” tourism. In fact, more than 700 thousands visitors – both Tunisians and foreigners – come to enjoy the beauty of its mountain oasis.
Scores of ponds are scattered throughout the oasis and outside its confines. The layers of silt found at the bottom of these ponds provide the essential raw material for the local brick industry. With summer temperatures reaching 45 degrees, the extracted silt takes little time to dry and assume its yellowish, hardened form that is known in its Arabic name as “toub.”
Walking around the old city of Tozeur, one is immediately confronted by intricate, geometrical patterns of “toub” that decorate the buildings’ façades and the walls of the old city’s narrow passageways. These yellow bricks astonishingly maintain houses cool in the stifling heat of the summer and even warm in the cold winter.

Brick of Tozeur

Abdelhamid Haddan, a writer, painter, and artist, described the manufactory process of the brick of this yellowish brick. Mud and sand are mixed together and then soaked in water. Afterwards, mulch is added. The mixture is then moulded within small rectangular wooden frames and left to dry in the sun for one day in summer and ten in winter. Finally, the bricks are baked in a kiln under extreme temperatures reaching over 1000 degree celsius.
Haddan pointed out that the brick’s production is very economical. 1 cubic meter of clay can produce in turn 1000 bricks. The brick measures 17 cm by 8 cm and 3.5 cm high and weighs 728 grams.
The technique of Tozeur’s brick-making is Mesopotamian in origin and brought by the Arabs in the 8^th century. Due to the similarity of environment, Arab settlers found Tozeur to be a propitious location to continue their brick-making traditions, claimed Haddan.
For those who plan to visit Tozeur, Haddan’s book The Brick of Tozeur is available in the city’s libraries in English as well as French and can be consulted for more information.

The Synagogue of Djerba

From one of the oldest Jewish sanctuaries in the world, The synagogue of Djerba, Some Tunisian Jew reading the Torah  

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