Professor David Mattingly

Event details

Lecture title: “Kings of the Desert: Garamantes of Southern Libya”

Date: 15 February 2007, 5.15pm

Venue: Archaeology Lecture Theatre, High School Yards, Infirmary Street

Lecture abstract

When we look out from the Roman empire towards its more remote neighbours, the most common basis for our perspective is the testimony of the ancient sources, though these are widely acknowledged to be problematic in their treatment of the ‘Barbarian Other’.

This lecture will consider the case of the Garamantes of the Libyan Sahara, combining the evidence from literary sources and archaeological investigation.

The ancient sources generally characterised the Garamantes as a populous, but wayward desert people, with a propensity for lawlessness and raiding. Above all, such people were deliberately presented as unknown (or unknowable) and mysterious long after the time at which more regular and sustained contact between their homelands and the Roman world had developed. The Garamantes were thus synonymous with all that the Mediterranean world found strange and threatening about the great desert.

The archaeological picture is very different, presenting a Saharan civilisation of considerable sophistication and power. New fieldwork allows a better appreciation of their achievements than was hitherto possible. Masters of their challenging environment, the Garamantes were truly kings of the desert.

Professor David Mattingly is from the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester.