Read more: Islamic State: how to save Syria's antiquities
Read more: Grieving for buildings
Reports in December suggested that Islamic State (IS) forces have taken control of the town of Sabratha in Libya. It lies on the Mediterranean coast, 50 miles west of Tripoli and was one of the three ancient cities which give the area its historic name, Tripolitania. Its extensive archaeological remains are a Unesco world heritage site and the incursion of IS has raised fears that they may be under threat of destruction. The news reports have all run photographs of its impressive theatre, one of the largest in the Roman empire, a three-storey structure from the third century AD, capable of seating 5,000.
IS has already demolished temples in Palmyra in Syria, and Nimrud in Iraq, as well as many churches and Shia mosques and shrines. This iconcoclasm is done in accordance with its Salafist ideology—which requires the removal of evidence of what they see as polytheism. But IS’s sophisticated propagandists are well aware that these acts of cultural cleansing generate considerable media coverage.
If the theatre is destroyed, it would not be the first time that the ruins of Sabratha have been used for propaganda. The theatre owes its existence to the part it played in Mussolini’s imperial ambitions. As a result of the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-12, Italy took control of several Ottoman provinces in north Africa and formed them into modern Libya. After Mussolini became dictator in 1925 there was a growing preoccupation with the monuments and achievements of the ancient Roman Empire. The idea of what was called Romanita was used to place national greatness in an historical context and justify the fascist project of an Italian empire around Mare Nostrum (our sea).
A great deal of money was spent on archaeology at home and abroad, excavating and restoring Roman sites. (Many of the city of Rome’s medieval remains were destroyed in order to reach the monuments beneath them.) In Libya the sites of Sabratha and the vast Leptis Magna further east became busy archaeological ant-heaps. These cities had greatly prospered during the reign of the first African-born Roman Emperor Septimius Severus (193-211AD; died in York) and there were rich pickings.
On his first visit to Libya in 1926 Mussolini visited Sabratha and wrote in the visitors’ book: “Between the Rome of the past and the one of the future.” The priority in these excavations was to uncover the Roman remains; the archaeologists ignored or cleared away most of the evidence of the earlier Phoenician and later Arabic settlements. In 1933 one of Mussolini’s oldest fascist colleagues, Marshal Balbo, became Governor of Libya and he was determined to restore the glory that was Rome in Africa. Tourism was also an important factor, as the government began to promote the North African coast as a series of archaeological parks, for which great visual impact was necessary.
Monumental restorations and reconstructions now became a priority, and the theatre in Sabratha was the largest and most lavish of those projects, incorporating the materials unearthed—pillars, reliefs and statuary—and imaginatively recreating the rest. By the time of Mussolini’s second visit to Libya in 1937 he was able to attend the inaugural performance—Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex—in the magnificently restored theatre. Two years earlier the Italians had successfully invaded Ethiopia and added it to their empire.
The modern study of history had been born in the 19th century and became a crucial resource for rising European nationalism. As Eric Hobsbawm observed: “Historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to the heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market. Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.” The science of archaeology became prized for its discovery of physical evidence to be used in support of these various national ideologies. Now many of these discoveries are targets for destruction in pursuit of IS’s own ideology of returning to the early days of Islam. The theatre at Sabratha was rebuilt to justify an empire and may be razed to bring about a Caliphate.
Read more: Grieving for buildings
Reports in December suggested that Islamic State (IS) forces have taken control of the town of Sabratha in Libya. It lies on the Mediterranean coast, 50 miles west of Tripoli and was one of the three ancient cities which give the area its historic name, Tripolitania. Its extensive archaeological remains are a Unesco world heritage site and the incursion of IS has raised fears that they may be under threat of destruction. The news reports have all run photographs of its impressive theatre, one of the largest in the Roman empire, a three-storey structure from the third century AD, capable of seating 5,000.
IS has already demolished temples in Palmyra in Syria, and Nimrud in Iraq, as well as many churches and Shia mosques and shrines. This iconcoclasm is done in accordance with its Salafist ideology—which requires the removal of evidence of what they see as polytheism. But IS’s sophisticated propagandists are well aware that these acts of cultural cleansing generate considerable media coverage.
If the theatre is destroyed, it would not be the first time that the ruins of Sabratha have been used for propaganda. The theatre owes its existence to the part it played in Mussolini’s imperial ambitions. As a result of the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-12, Italy took control of several Ottoman provinces in north Africa and formed them into modern Libya. After Mussolini became dictator in 1925 there was a growing preoccupation with the monuments and achievements of the ancient Roman Empire. The idea of what was called Romanita was used to place national greatness in an historical context and justify the fascist project of an Italian empire around Mare Nostrum (our sea).
A great deal of money was spent on archaeology at home and abroad, excavating and restoring Roman sites. (Many of the city of Rome’s medieval remains were destroyed in order to reach the monuments beneath them.) In Libya the sites of Sabratha and the vast Leptis Magna further east became busy archaeological ant-heaps. These cities had greatly prospered during the reign of the first African-born Roman Emperor Septimius Severus (193-211AD; died in York) and there were rich pickings.
On his first visit to Libya in 1926 Mussolini visited Sabratha and wrote in the visitors’ book: “Between the Rome of the past and the one of the future.” The priority in these excavations was to uncover the Roman remains; the archaeologists ignored or cleared away most of the evidence of the earlier Phoenician and later Arabic settlements. In 1933 one of Mussolini’s oldest fascist colleagues, Marshal Balbo, became Governor of Libya and he was determined to restore the glory that was Rome in Africa. Tourism was also an important factor, as the government began to promote the North African coast as a series of archaeological parks, for which great visual impact was necessary.
Monumental restorations and reconstructions now became a priority, and the theatre in Sabratha was the largest and most lavish of those projects, incorporating the materials unearthed—pillars, reliefs and statuary—and imaginatively recreating the rest. By the time of Mussolini’s second visit to Libya in 1937 he was able to attend the inaugural performance—Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex—in the magnificently restored theatre. Two years earlier the Italians had successfully invaded Ethiopia and added it to their empire.
The modern study of history had been born in the 19th century and became a crucial resource for rising European nationalism. As Eric Hobsbawm observed: “Historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to the heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market. Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.” The science of archaeology became prized for its discovery of physical evidence to be used in support of these various national ideologies. Now many of these discoveries are targets for destruction in pursuit of IS’s own ideology of returning to the early days of Islam. The theatre at Sabratha was rebuilt to justify an empire and may be razed to bring about a Caliphate.
