""Libya Cyrene With Greek & Roman Ruins-Temples & Ampithearters""

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This is The Cyrene Page of Libyan Travels

We left the Temple of Zeus and moved on to nearby Cyrene, an enormous sprawling ancient city in a large valley in the The Green Mountains or Jebal Akdar. Cyrene, or Shahat as it is also known is about 1200km east of Tripoli, the capital of Libya.

Presumably this is the birth place, in Christian mythology, of the biblical figure, Simon of Cyrene. The hairpin road that ribbons the valley is lined with large rectangular holes carved into the sides of the mountain.

These are the burial chambers and Sarcophagi of the ancient Greeks: the necropolis. There are several thousand of these burial chambers and statuary of Persephone, the goddess of the underworld is apparently evident though I must have missed it. The dead were buried with their finery and wealth which was later stolen during the Byzantine period. We stopped off for a bit of breakfast of liver sandwiches at a local cafe overlooking the valley and I bought some local honey.

We moved on to the centre of the ancient city of Cyrene. The ruins stretch for miles. It was established by the Greeks in 600 BC, taken over by the Romans and then occupied by the Byzantines

Cyrene fell into further disrepair during the Arab invasion in the 7th century. Cyrene, the city, was named after a girlfriend of Apollo. She was apparently skilled at wrestling lions. Her memory is represented by a statue protected by stone lions upon which you can sit and pose if you are so inclined.

The sanctuary of Apollo was preserved by the Romans but the main Greek theater was converted to an amphitheatre by the Romans for more gory entertainment. The main road through the city was once a busy shopping area and you can walk down the mosaic paths where over 2500 thousand years ago tradesmen and women sold their goods

This large community, with fortified walls, had temples, gymnasiums, bath houses, ceremonial colonnades and theatres, later converted to amphitheatres as well as hundreds of houses. Its population numbered tens of thousands. There is a spring housed in the Sanctuary of Apollo, a Temple of Hades, a Hall of the Medusa and many other buildings dedicated to the gods of Greek mythology such as the temples dedicated to Apollo and Artemis. The place abounds with the ruins of this ancient civilization and there is a bath house designed by the Roman general Hadrian who renovated the whole city after it was sacked by Jewish tribes in 115 AD.

The Hadrianic steam baths. Hot water circulated beneath the floor supported by stone columns

The valley is covered with wild thyme where exotic lizards bask on the rocks of the ruins and snakes rustle in the undergrowth. The honey from the bees that feed on the thyme is delicious. Access is free to all areas with the exception of one room of mosaics flooring which shows representations of the baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph from the Byzantine period. The mosaics are in near prefect condition and are protected from the elements but can be viewed through the windows. The Greeks, the Romans and the Byzantines all lived here, each group adapting the area. After the Romans had converted the Greek theatre into an amphitheatre for more blood thirsty entertainment such was the noise of hoi polloi that the resident governor ordered a large wall to be built between the temple and the amphitheatre less the gods be angered by excess of noise, violence and ribaldry generated by the amphitheatre.

The amphitheatre

The entrance of the Gladiators

We met two tourists and mentioned to them we were looking for the fingers of Zeus or the man with the key to the room where the fingers were stored to which they replied that they had seen the fingers and their guide had the keys. Their guide turned out to be Mohammed, the curator from the Temple of Zeus, whom we had met earlier in the day. We looked at him and he shrugged: "You said you did not need me as a guide…….." And I guess technically he did not tell us a lie when he told us the man with the key was not at the museum but he did not tell us it was him and that he had the key in his pocket!

In our explorations of the museum storerooms that we could get access to, set in large grounds with roses and bougainvillea, I noticed a stone umbrella stand. On closer examination I noticed the large stone rectangular container had carvings of a Bacchanalian nature, grapes, wine, seraphim etc and lying across the bottom was a large stone finger about one and a half feet long. One of the missing fingers of Zeus I presume. The grounds of the storage rooms and workshops abound, as does the whole area, with hundreds of headless statues of ancient Greeks and Roman men and women: headless because of a massive earthquake which toppled the statues and snapped their heads off. Most of the heads have been stolen though I have seen some in the museum in Tripoli and there are others in the local Shahat museum and no doubt there are some in The British Museum in London as is The Statue of Apollo from this site.

In the gardens of the store rooms of the museum. The buildings are Italian colonial civic in style.

We then ate lunch at a restaurant overlooking the plains leading to the coast of the Mediterranean. We chose to eat outside but part of the restaurant was a cave carved out of rock in the side of a hill. We ate couscous with vegetable sauce, rice with sultanas, and bread with chicken and lamb prepared by a Moroccan chef. We then left the Cyrene area and headed for Geigab on our way to Slontah.