Leptis Magna

Leptis Magna, or Lepcis Magna, is the ruin of an ancient port city at the mouth of the Wadi Lebda on the Mediterranean coast of Libya, near modern Al-Khums and about 130 kilometres east of Tripoli. Founded by Punic settlers in the seventh century BCE, it grew into one of the great cities of Roman Africa and reached its height as the birthplace of the emperor Septimius Severus. Buried under drifting sand after its abandonment, it now ranks with the finest surviving Roman cities around the Mediterranean.

The Punic town dates from the later seventh century BCE. Little is known of its early centuries, but around 515 BCE it was strong enough to drive off a Greek attempt, led by Dorieus, to found a colony nearby. Like other Punic towns on this coast it became part of the sphere of Carthage, and after Carthage's defeat by Rome in the Punic Wars it came under Roman influence while keeping much independence.

During the Jugurthine War, in 111 BCE, Leptis sought the friendship of the Roman Senate and helped Rome against the Numidian king Jugurtha. It remained a self-governing ally, minting coins with Punic inscriptions and images of Hercules and Dionysus, and grew rich on the olive groves of its hinterland: by 46 BCE it could pay Julius Caesar a tax of three million pounds of oil a year.

Under Tiberius the city and its territory were formally incorporated into the province of Africa within the Roman Empire. An amphitheatre was built under Nero, and the town became a municipium in 64 or 65 CE and a colonia under Trajan. Saharan trade brought ivory, gold dust and wild animals for the arena.

Its greatest age began in 193, when Septimius Severus, the son of a wealthy local family, became emperor. He lavished money on his hometown, building a grand new forum and a huge basilica and rebuilding the harbour, and he visited with the imperial family in 205. In the early third century the city may have had about 100,000 inhabitants, and its port is described as the third largest in the Mediterranean.

The prosperity did not last. After the Third Augustan Legion, which defended the region against Berber incursions, was disbanded in 238, the city lay open to raids, and during the third-century crisis its trade collapsed. Diocletian made it a provincial capital again, but by the mid-fourth century much of it was deserted, even before the tsunami of 365 wrought further destruction. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus describes a corrupt governor, Romanus, who demanded bribes to defend the city during a tribal raid and later had its complaining envoys punished.

In 439 the Vandals under Gaiseric took Carthage and with it Leptis, and Gaiseric had its walls pulled down to discourage revolt; in 523 Berber raiders sacked the undefended city. In 533 the general Belisarius recovered the region for the emperor Justinian I, and Leptis served as a provincial capital of the Byzantine Empire. New churches were built, but Berber attacks continued, and in 544 a parley with the Leuathae confederation turned into a massacre that forced the governor Sergius to withdraw. When Arab armies conquered the region around 647, the city held little more than a garrison and fewer than a thousand people. It was then abandoned, and by the tenth century it had been absorbed into Al-Khums.

Sand dunes covered and preserved the ruins. Parts of a temple were taken to Britain in 1816 and re-erected in 1826 at a royal residence in what is now Windsor Great Park. After Italy occupied Libya, archaeologists such as Renato Bartoccini excavated from the 1920s, uncovering the Arch of Septimius Severus and, by the early 1930s, almost the entire city. UNESCO listed the site as a World Heritage site in 1982. In 2000 a German team from the University of Hamburg found a set of fine mosaics in a Roman bath, including a weary gladiator, and kept the discovery secret for several years to deter looters.

During the 2011 civil war there were reports that pro-Gaddafi forces hid vehicles among the ruins, but the Libyan archaeologist Hafed Walda reported no visible damage afterwards. As state support collapsed in the later civil war, local people organised to guard and maintain the site. Its coastal position also leaves it exposed to erosion and to rising sea levels in the long term.