Εμφανίζονται 2 τίτλοι με αναζήτηση: Πληροφορίες για τον τόπο για το τοπωνύμιο: "ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΪΣ Αρχαία πόλη ΚΥΡΗΝΑΪΚΗ".
About midway between Benghazi and Susa, this ancient port occupies
a narrow space (2 km wide) between the sea and the lower spurs of the Jebel el-Akhdar.
The harbor was sheltered W and N by a small promontory and two islets. A Greek
settlement, name unknown, was established here in the late 7th c. B.C. and became
the port of Barke, the rich colony of Kyrene 25 km inland on the plateau. Ptolemy
III (246-221 B.C.) refounded it as Ptolemais. It came into the hands of Rome in
96 B.C., and under Diocletian became the capital of Libya Pentapolis, but subsequently
it decayed and Apollonia (Sozusa) supplanted it as capital. Excavation began in
the 1930s and there is now a small museum on the site.
The Hellenistic city was laid out regularly, forming a rectangle roughly
1650 x 1400 m. Two major cardines run from N to S; the standard insula measures
180 x 36 m. An imposing decumanus, the "Via Monumentale," was given
a triumphal arch and a portico in the early 4th c. A.D. Little remains of the
Hellenistic wall. The standard of masonry was good, though one section of the
wall, carried a short way up the hillside to include a commanding point, was built
of rough blocks of stone. Some square projecting wall towers have been found but
the finest surviving part of the fortifications is the Taucheira Gate, built of
masonry with the marginal drafting characteristic of many Hellenistic walls. Its
inner side was altered, perhaps in the 3d c. A.D. when the walls seem to have
been rebuilt. Traces of another wall found near the sea may have been a Byzantine
circuit protecting the harbor.
Ptolemais had an amphitheater, a hippodrome, and three theaters, one
at least Hellenistic. The smallest, the Odeon, was adapted in the 4th-5th c. for
water spectacles, the orchestra and stage walls being covered with a layer of
watertight cement to form a swimming pool. Roman and Byzantine baths are known.
The public cisterns and reservoirs are impressive. A group of 17 Roman
vaulted cisterns under a porticoed space, the Square of the Cisterns, had a capacity
of 7,000 kl and may have been preceded by a Hellenistic reservoir. To the E are
two later open reservoirs, which probably received at least part of their supplies
from the catchment area provided by the lower slope of the Jebel. A Roman aqueduct,
probably Hadrianic, coming from 20 km to the E, runs towards this quarter. Outside
the town are remains of a bridge that carried the aqueduct and a road across the
wadi.
Several houses, wholly or partly excavated, are of the standard Hellenistic
type with peristyle. The "Palazzo delle Colonne," pre-Roman in its origin
but with numerous additions in the 1st c. A.D., had a large pillared court and
two impressive oeci. It stood high, with an upper story. Its height contrasts
with a large, low Roman villa. Other houses have been dug out in the N part of
the city. One excavated in 1961 has a 4th-5th c. mosaic floor with Orpheus singing
to the wild beasts. Further excavations are in process.
Fragments of an unexcavated Doric building suggest that it may have
been a pre-Roman temple. The imposing temple tomb, Qasr Faraoun, W of Ptolemais,
is Hellenistic. The chamber tombs found in great numbers in the quarries E and
W of the city have yielded a few sculptured tombstones and numerous inscriptions.
A number of sculptures and important inscriptions, including the price edict of
Diocletian and an edict of Anastasius have come to light within the city.
A fortified Christian basilica has narthex, apse, chambers on either
side of the apse, nave, aisles, and is solidly built with a single narrow doorway
on the N side. A fortified building (75 x 45 m) probably 5th c., is commonly regarded
as the headquarters of the Dux of Libya Pentapolis; its walls are faced with good
masonry and provided with stringcourses to stabilize the rubble filling. Two other
forts within the city provided some security after the old walls had decayed.
O. Brogan, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Nov 2002 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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