Français – عربي – ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ – English
In the ancient world, the desert of Sirte served as the natural border between the Carthaginian Empire and the Greeks of Cyrenaica, while seamen feared the Gulf of Sidra because of its dangerous quicksand banks. The Phoenicians established a city, called Macomedes-Euphranta, on the location of the modern-day city of Sirte. Because of its isolation, the region of Sirte was the last part of the Roman word whose inhabitants still spoke the Punic language, at least until the 5th Century and potentially even after the arrival of the Arabs.
Macomedes-Euphranta was originally a simple Phoenician port. At this time, the coast of the Gulf of Sidra was known as highly dangerous, because of its banks of quicksand, known as the Syrtis (from the Greek word Σύρτις, spread), on which many ships ran aground. This is the reason why Macomedes-Euphranta never became an important city.
References to the region’s danger abound in ancient literature. In the myth of the Argonauts, the heroes of ancient Greece are shipwrecked on the coast of the Syrtis. Virgil, in his Aeneid, describes the region as “inhospîtable Syrtis”. It is also mentioned in the Bible: when the Apostle Paul travelled to Rome, the crew on his ship feared that they would run aground on the Syrtis.
The desert of Sirte, which was almost impossible to cross before the introduction of the camel, was the natural border between the Carthaginian Empire and Greek Cyrenaica. According to a legend, in order to determine the exact location of the border, two young men left Carthage and Cyrene on the same day, and travelled on foot along the coast until they met. A monument was built at the place where they met, to serve as border marker. This monument was already lost in the Roman era, but a new monument, the Arch of the Philaeni, was built during the Italian occupation, and then demolished in 1973. The bronze statues from this monument are still kept at the Madina Sultan Museum, close to Sirte.
The desert of Sirte was crossed for the first time in 308 BCE, by the army of Ophellas, the governor of Cyrenaica. Ophellas was on his way to Carthage, to join his ally Agathocles of Syracuse, who was laying siege to the city.
In the Roman era, the region of modern-day Western Libya was first known as Syrtica, then as Tripolitania. The region of Sirte was very isolated, and didn’t have an administrative center. For several centuries, it was infested by brigands on land and by pirates in the sea.
Around the 4th Century, another city, Corniclanum, was built on the site of the modern-day city of Ajdabiya. This site, which was chosen for its freshwater reserves, became an important stop on the road between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.
Because of its isolation, the region of Sirte became the last part of the Roman Empire where the Punic language was still spoken. A catacomb in Sirte, excavated in 1926, contains trilingual Christian inscriptions in Latin, Greek and Punic, dating back to the 5th Century. (Source)
Even later, in the 11th Century, the Arab historian Al-Bakri wrote that the inhabitants of Sirte spoke a language that was not Latin, nor Tamazight, nor Coptic: it is possible that they still spoke a form of Punic in his time. In that case, the proximity between Punic and Arabic certainly helped with their Arabisation.
The city of Sirte developed a lot in the Gaddafi era. The Libyan Supreme Guide, who was born in the region of Sirte, transformed the city into a major urban center. He had the ambition that it would become the capital of the future United States of Africa. Since the 2011 Libyan Revolution, Sirte, which was occupied by DAECH in 2015-2016, suffered a lot from the civil war and is now struggling to rebuild.
