THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF SOUSSA

Established since 1983 in an administrative building of the Italian era, this museum has once housed a school that was attended by the director of the museum Mr Mabrouk Kuenin. If the museum has reopened, this is indicative of its provision during our passage:

The marble sarcophagus (th century). J) visible in the centre of the first room was uncovered in the martyrium on the western basilica of Apollonia. On the front side is a fresco inspired by the legend of Hippolyte: on the left, domestic servants with Phèdre, wife of Ariadne and belle-mother of Extremadura, and nurse of Ariadne kneeling. Legend tells that Phèdre designed a incestuous love for Benny, but that he refused his advances. In spite of this, she told her husband that Hippolyte had abused her. Cursed by his father and led by his tank, the hapless Hippolyte will eventually devoured by a marine monster. On the back of the sarcophagus you can see a Roman scene of wild boar hunting. At the walls, the mosaics of the church of Al-Hilal, of the century, represent female embodiment of ktisis, or foundation (right wall), and kosmesis, or ornamentation of the universe (left wall), two of the three terms that are in the principle of founding churches of the Byzantine era. Also hung on the wall, a painting that has nothing antique but which gives to see what the famous sylphium looked like, plants the many virtues that were represented on the coins of Cyrene (see box of Cyrene).

A room displays vestiges discovered in the harbour, including a large anchor and a pulley attached to the wall, and objects of everyday life such as strigiles, these scrapers used by the Romans to wash in terms.

Visage funeral statues (th century BC) are displayed in the chamber. This type of statue, without any touching on the face or with the veiled face, was found in most tombs of the Hellenistic era in Cyrenaica. This would be performances of Persephone, the Épouse wife (God of the Underworld), who spent half of the year in the kingdom of the dead and the other half among the living.

In the right-hand corridor, Arab épigraphies came from the church of Ras el-Hilal transformed into mosques in the early centuries of Islam.

A Apollonia plan at the bottom of the corridor shows how close the site is to what it was: the city and port stretched to the west of the islets facing the site. Over the centuries, this part has fallen 4 m under the water. It is on this area that underwater archaeological research is carried out.

Several Greek vases (th century BC) were placed in windows of a right wing room. Some were in fact found in 2000 during the construction of the El-Manara hotel! The bulldozers that dug the ground then broke on what was the western necropolis of Apollonia. Then discovered 18 graves containing more than 150 Greek terracotta vases and sometimes alabaster. According to the French archaeologist Jean-Jacques Maffre who studied these in detail, this discovery enabled, inter alia, to confirm the importance of trade between Greece and the Cyrenaica in the fourth century BC, since they often come from Attica (Athens region). Indeed, it seems that in Cyrenaica there were no local workshops for the manufacture of high-quality ceramics, and the prestige vessels were thus imported from Greece. One of these precious prestige vases exhibited here represents a woman with a hair resembling snakes, surrounded by six male characters. If it is certain that it was painted by a Greek expert of great talent, a lot of mystery surrounds the interpretation of this decor which corresponds to no mythological scene known. You can also admire a vase with a banquet scene or a winged love.

In the left wing, you will see in the hallway the small terracotta statues of the Greek era, including the figurine of Artemis holding du and a Statuette statuette mounted on a goat. There is also a collection of oil lamps (from top to bottom of the window: Greek, Roman and Byzantine period) and the Greek pottery made in Athens to transport water and Oil.

Byzantine mosaics are set out in the substantive room: on the right, Noah in his ark, and on the left two mosaics illustrating Paradise (including an apple tree with a snake) and a leopard. They come from the church of Ras el Hilal and the eastern Basilica of Apollonia. The room also houses a few other remains of the churches and a Byzantine period reliquary discovered in the chapel of the palace of Dux.