Portus Magnus (Mauritania)

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Portus Magnus ( Latin : "Great Port", also Portus Magnos ) is an ancient port city in the area of ​​today's Arzew , Ain el Bia and Béthioua (Saint-Leu) in the province of Oran in northwest Algeria .

Research history

The mosaic of Portus Magnus; Drawing: Viala du Sorbier (1862)

Although the name Portus Magnus was known from the Itinerarium Antonini , the geographer of Ravenna and two references from Pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela , the English traveler Thomas Shaw first incorrectly identified the place Vieil Arzew (today Béthioua) as a location in 1732 of ancient Arsenaria . This error persisted for decades.

Only the discovery of an inscription that mentioned the short name of Portus Magnus allowed the French archaeologist and philologist Adrien Berbrugger in 1858 to determine Vieil Arzew as the location of the ancient Portus Magnus . This inscription was later placed on the "Promenade de Létang" (today "Promenade Ibn Sina") in Oran . There were other inscriptions, including a miliarium , a milestone on a Roman road . Since the discovery site in Vieil Arzew presented itself to the researchers as partly built over in a modern way, a systematic excavation of Portus Magnus was difficult.

During excavations on a farm (ferme Robert near Saint-Leu) two beautiful mosaic floors were discovered in 1862 . The larger of the two mosaics was probably in the triclinium (dining room) of a town house. It measured around 9.5 × 6 meters, dates from the 3rd or 4th century AD and shows four mythological scenes ( Dionysus on the tiger, Apollo and Marsyas , arrival of the Latona in Delos , Chiron and Heracles ). It was drawn by the French architect Gilbert Viala du Sorbier from Oran immediately after it was found. The second mosaic found in the house depicts the triumph of Dionysus.

In 1884, Louis Demaeght, French military and archaeologist, warned that the site would be destroyed in a few years if the residents of Béthioua as well as the colonists of Saint-Leu (now Arzew) started using the rubble of Portus Magnus as building materials at the same rate . From 1935 to 1960, Malva Maurice Vincent carried out further research in Portus Magnus, but this was only partially published in articles. Their investigations focused on the northeast. In the process, she exposed several buildings with unusual floor plans.

history

The port city was probably founded by the Phoenicians . The discovery of a Carthaginian coin dates the city to the 2nd century BC. After the Punic Wars , which ended with the complete destruction of Carthage, the Romans took control of the city. In the first decades of the 3rd century AD, Portus Magnus reached its peak under the Romans. In the Roman Empire, the city was in the province of Mauretania Caesariensis . The strategic location on the coast of the Mare Nostrum ( Mediterranean Sea ), on the west side of the Gulf of Arzew, gave Portus Magnus its importance as a naval base for the Mauritanian fleet (Classis Mauretanica) and for the export of grain and salt . The residents of the city made considerable wealth. Roman rule ended when the city was destroyed in 430 by the Vandals under King Geiseric . In 533 it fell back to the (Eastern) Roman Empire ; it came to an end in 647 due to destruction by the Muslims .

Finding

The city of Portus Magnus rose on a gentle hill above the ancient port. The approximately 36 hectare area was partly paved or leveled by embankments. Remains of the city wall and buildings, cisterns for rainwater, traces of streets and a forum (50 × 40 meters) were found from the ancient city itself .

In addition to villas, the buildings also included a palatial complex from the 3rd century. There were remains of colonnades ( porticus ) and a thermal bath . On one side of the forum was a small building that once adorned an apse made of marble slabs and a statue (Acropolis). Behind a Curia was a temple of unknown dedication and another large temple dedicated to Venus , around 120 meters west of the forum.

Confirmation of findings and remains

Portus Magnus was declared a National Heritage Site in 1952 and 1967. It is now under the protection and administration of the Office national de gestion et d'exploitation des biens culturels protégés (formerly Agence nationale de protection des Sites et des Monuments historiques d'Algérie ). Exposed and partially restored parts of Portus Magnus can be viewed east of Béthioua. Other parts were victims of stone robberies, are modernly built over or threatened by expansion plans by the state oil company Sonatrach , which operates several plants for the production of liquefied natural gas (GLN-1, GLN-2 and GLN-3) that are directly adjacent to the site. Parts of clay jugs are carefully collected in a garden. The mosaics are now, along with other objects from the Portus Magnus site, in El-mathaf El-ouatani Ahmed Zabana (formerly the Musée municipal Demaeght ), the city museum of Oran.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Itinerarium Antonini, 13, 8; Geographer of Ravenna, 40, 47; 88, 8-9; Pliny, Naturalis historia 5, 19: Portus Magnus a spatio appellatus ; Pomponius Mela, Chorographia 1, 29: Portus cui Magnus cognomen from spatium . See also Claudius Ptolemy , 4, 2, 2; Iulius Honorius , Cosmographia .
  2. ↑ Thomas Shaw: Voyages de Monsieur Shaw, MD dans plusieurs provinces de la Barbarie et du Levant , Jean Neaulme, La Haye 1743, pp. 37-39 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Louis Demaeght: Province d'Oran, Portus Magnus (Saint-Leu) . In: Bulletin trimestriel des antiquités africaines recueillies par les soins de la Société de géographie et d'archéologie de la province d'Oran , Vol. 2, 3rd year, Oran 1884, pp. 113–121 ( online ); CIL 8, 9760 .
  4. ↑ CIL 8, 22590 .
  5. ^ To the mosaic Carl Robert : The mosaic of Portus Magnus. In: Yearbook of the Imperial German Archaeological Institute 5, 1890, pp. 215–237 ( digitized version ); Katherine M. Dunbabin: The Mosaics of Roman North Africa. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1978, pp. 41-42. 176-177. 267–268 Fig. 14.
  6. ^ Edward Lipinski: Itineraria Phenicia (= Studia Phenicia , Volume 18). Peeters, Leuven 2004. ISBN 90-429-1344-4 , pp. 409-411 ( Porto Magnus / Arzew in the Google book search).
  7. ↑ See Lassus (1956).
  8. ↑ See Lipinski (2004), p. 410.
  9. ^ Salvatore Settis: Per l'interpretazione di Piazza Armerina . In: Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome. Antiquité . 87, 2, 1975, pp. 873-994, here: pp. 903-905 Fig. 19 ( online ).

literature

Web links

Coordinates: 35 ° 48 ′  N , 0 ° 16 ′  W