In ancient times, Cyrenaica in eastern Libya existed as a kind of Mediterranean island, separated from the rest of Africa by the desert and linked to Crete and mainland Greece by the sea. Excavations show the Aegeans visited this part of Africa (known today as Barqa), where they traded with the local population, as early as the 14th century BC. It was here, according to myth, that the Argonauts received pledges, in the form of a handful of earth offered them by Eurypylos, the local deity.

The only known indigenous cult site in the region is the enigmatic temple sanctuary of Slontah (Aslonta / Suluntah), tucked away in a fold of the plateau known in Arabic as Jabel al Akhdar, the “Green Mountain”. A small boy unlocks a metal door in a breezeblock wall, revealing a semicircular space bordered by low limestone ledges. A round base, 120cm (almost 4ft) in diameter, indicates the temple was once inside a cave, the roof supported by a pillar. The ledges are carved with faces and teeming figures of humans and animals (pig, lion, sheep, horse, deer, dog, etc.). Those on the left are much eroded and difficult to interpret, although one group of figures appear to be in an erotic embrace. Behind the pillar base is a giant horizontal snake accompanied by figures carrying baskets and a crocodile devouring a calf; along to the right is a row of five heads peering from beneath a ledge. On the furthest right is a group of figures – maybe four adults and two children – adjoining another group with a large head and a female figure in a long robe.

Some 20 miles (32km) to the north-east of Slontah lie the wonderful and very extensive ruins of Cyrene, the earliest Greek city overseas. Here, at the entrance to the Sanctuary of Apollo, archæologist Dr Fadhl Ali Muhammad provided me with a copy of his booklet on Slontah, which is the only publication in English I have seen on the subject. Despite the ubiquity of snakes in ancient religions, he speculates that the Slontah snake derives from the Babylonian god of fertility, brought to Cyrenaica by the Phœnicians.

He divides the carvings into five groups. Of the second group, he says (and I quote verbatim): “These group are existed on stone table and over it there was an altar which consists of four big pigs, their faces towards the south, and the heads of three western pigs were broken separated from each other by small canals to allow the blood to pass during slaughtering of scarifies. Under the broken western head’s pig are two breaded human heads, and under this table there are decorated frieze from east to west, and under it there are group of relief status with two queues of men and women, of which the women with long fold dresses in the lower queue. All of them were raising their hands beside their heads, which indicates that they were carrying baskets to submit them to the temple.”

Herodotus (484–425 BC) recounts that Cyrene was founded by emigrants from the Aegean island of Thera (Santorini), which had suffered a seven-year drought and faced a crisis of over-population. The traditional date is 631 BC, (although Pliny makes it 20 years later). Seeking a cure for his stammer, so the story goes, Aristoteles (who later took the name Battus and became first king of Cyrene) consulted the Oracle of Apollo in Delphi. “You came for a voice,” proclaimed the oracle, “but the Lord Apollo sends you to found a city in Libya, which gives good pasture to sheep.” The advice proved to be less irrelevant than it seemed, for after his arrival in Libya, Battus encountered a lion and was so startled that he yelled loudly and clearly, and his stammer never returned.

The first settlement, on the island of Platea, was unsuccessful, and two years later Battus and his men moved to Aziris on the Libyan mainland, where they remained for six years, but water was scarce. Then the local Giligammæ tribe led them west to the future site of Cyrene where a spring (which the Greeks named after the nymph Cyrene) still bubbles forth. It lay high on terraced hills in a cleft between two spurs of the Green Mountain overlooking a fertile plain that stretched to the Mediterranean about eight miles (13km) to the north. “Here, O Greeks,” said the Giligammæ, “ye may fitly dwell, for in this place there is a hole in the heavens.” (Actually, it was not their land to give away, as it lay within the territory of the neighbouring Asbystæ tribe. However, the local population proved amenable, providing the colony with wives and labour.) Rainfall was indeed plentiful – there was good arable soil and ample pasture. Even today, winter rains justify the name Green Mountain.

Sons of Cyrene included Aristippus (born c.428 BC), a disciple of Socrates and founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy; Callimachus (died c.240 BC), a poet and historian who taught Apollonius of Rhodes; Eratosthenes (c.285–c.205 BC), head of the Alexandrian library, who accurately calculated the circumference of the Earth; Carneades (c.214–c.129 BC), a leading sceptic philosopher, who founded the New Academy in Athens; and Synesius (c. AD 370–413), a Neo-Platonist turned Christian bishop, several of whose writings are still extant. According to some accounts, Cyrene was the birthplace of St Mark and of Simon, who carried Christ’s cross; and also the setting for St George’s defeat of the dragon.

In the late 6th century BC, the Green Mountain briefly formed the western extremity of the Persian empire after the army of the emperor Darius I sacked the Greek city of Barca, 60 miles (96km) west of Cyrene. Two centuries later, Alexander the Great took Egypt, where he founded a new city at the mouth of the Nile in 332 BC – later called Alexandria. He then marched 200 miles (320km) west along the desert coast to the village of Parætonium, where ambassadors from Cyrene gave him a golden crown, 300 horses – and their whole territory.

Alexander didn’t go to Cyrene, but turned south 180 miles (290km) across the Libyan Desert, intent on visiting the world-renowned oracle of Ammon at the oasis of Siwa (see FT82:44–45, 160:50). Ammon was the Siwan name of the Egyptian god Amun-Ra, whom the Greeks equated with Zeus. Plutarch tells us that when Alexander’s men became lost, “they were set right again by some ravens, which flew before them on their march and waited for them when they lingered and fell behind.” When Alexander arrived at Siwa, the high priest greeted him as the son of Ammon – not surprising, as he had come as pharaoh: to Egyptians every pharaoh was the son of their chief god. After this visit, the Macedonian warrior began wearing the two rams’ horns, symbol of Zeus-Ammon. For centuries to come, he was known as “the Two-Horned”, and many saw him as a god.

Herodotus enumerates the Libyan tribes of Cyrenaica from east to west, starting at the Egyptian border: the Adyrmachidæ, the Giligammæ, the Asbystæ, the Auschisæ, the Nasamonians, the Psylli, and then, to the south, the Garamantes (who later rose to prominence as trading partners with Rome – see FT176:24). According to local legend, the south wind blew for a long time and dried up all the water cisterns of the Psylli. As their land was devoid of springs, they declared war on the wind and rode south into the desert to do battle – but the wind got the better of them and buried them all in sand dunes, whereupon the lands of the Psylli passed to the Nasamonians. Barry Baldwin pointed out to me that the Psilli return as medicine-men in Roman history when they are summoned to try and save Cleopatra from expiring from her asp-bite.

The Slontah temple lay within the territory of the Asbystæ who, Herodotus informs us, “inhabit the regions above Cyrene, but do not reach to the coast, which belongs to the Cyrenæans. Four-horse chariots are in more common use among them than among any other Libyans.” [Histories 4:170]. The circular tombs on Crete are said to be based on similar tombs from the Libyan Bronze Age. It is not known whether the Asbystæ constructed the Slontah temple, or whether it predates them. After all, evidence of human habitation in the Hawa Al Ftaeih cave on the Green Mountain goes back 70,000 years. The Slontah carvings became known in modern times when a nomad pointed them out to a German explorer, G Haimann, in 1886, and the site was excavated by Italian archæologists between 1912 and 1928. (The Italians occupied Libya from 1911 until 1943, when they were ousted by General Montgomery’s Eighth Army). The Italian army shifted vast quantities of sand from many of the ancient cities, where the rusty remains of their narrow-gauge railways can still be seen.)

In the 23 centuries since the death of Alexander the Great, Cyrenaica has been ruled successively by Græco-Egyptian Ptolemies, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Ottomans, Italians and, briefly, by the British after World War II. In 2006, billboards from Tripoli to Tobruk reminded the visitor that it was the 37th year of the revolution. Since the departure of the aged King Idris in 1969, Libya has been ruled by the eccentric Colonel Muammar Gaddafi (or Qadhafi), known as The Guide. After Fidel Castro and Omar Bongo of Gabon, he is the world’s most senior autocrat.

He once took charge of a bulldozer to ram the gates of a Tripoli prison to release 400 inmates – although presumably he could have just asked for the doors to be opened. In 1997 he announced that when the “oppressed” were set free, “the sun will shine continuously… and then the ozone layer, which is disintegrating because of the body odour of the rich and the tyrants, will heal.” In a speech made last September, he said that the essential ingredients of Coca Cola came from African plants and that the US soft drinks giant should pay back a percentage of every can or bottle sold in Africa. He also spins a good line in etymological humour, stating that America was named after Emir Ka and Shakespeare was really Sheikh Zubayr. (For more of the Colonel’s wit and wisdom, see FT97:14).

For the last decade or so, Gaddafi’s “Third Way” syndicalism, laid out in his Green Book, has been opening up to market forces. In 2000, he sacked his long-standing minister of finance and tore up the budget document, live on television. However, tourism and international corporations have so far made few inroads. We wandered for hours round Cyrene and the grandiose Roman city of Lepcis (or Leptis Magna), on the coast some 440 miles (708km) to the west, without seeing anyone apart from a guide and one or two men clearing undergrowth. (It occurs to me that the great earthquake of AD 365, which shook down a large proportion of both these cities, must have been quite a belter. The region seems seismically dormant now.)

Libyans in general are very friendly and among the world’s craziest drivers (even though all alcohol is banned). Crossing the road is an adventure. We spent an entertaining evening – the penultimate Thursday before Ramadan – on a balcony in the wild hill town of Al Bayda, watching more than a dozen wedding motorcades, horns blaring. Some cars performed hand brake turns, while others played chicken as three traffic lanes merged into two. Petrol is almost free (6p a litre) – though we had an Alice in Wonderland morning in Tobruk trying to find a gas station that had any.

Slontah lies at latitude 32˚ 35’ 25 (N), longitude 21˚ 42’ 57 (E), altitude 2,568ft (782m). It is 325 miles (520km) north-west of the Siwa oasis.

Wonder Plant of the Ancients

Silphium, also known as silphion or laser, an extinct plant possibly of the genus Ferula, brought fame and wealth to Cyrene. Aristæus, son of Apollo and the nymph Cyrene, is said to have introduced silphium to the region. It became the city’s emblem; a 6th-century BC cup shows King Arkesilas of Cyrene supervising the weighing and loading of silphium for export. It supposedly resisted attempts at cultivation and transplantation and Pliny asserts it died out in the first century AD – although Arrian (second century AD) speaks of it in the present tense and it’s possible Synesius attests to it in the fourth century AD. In any case, there seem to be no later references.

Silphium was described as having a thick root, a stalk like fennel, large alternating leaves with leaflets like celery, spherical clusters of small yellow flowers at the top and broad leaf-like, heart-shaped fruit called phyllon. Its flowers provided perfume, the stalk was used for food or fodder, while its root and sap were much in demand as a medicine and a dressing. Describing the fruit as “heart-shaped” refers to the traditional heart icon found, for instance, on playing cards; it obviously bears little relation to the shape of an actual human heart. Perhaps the heart icon derives from silphium.

Aside from its culinary uses in sauces and garnishes, silphium was said to be effective in treating coughs, sore throats, fevers, indigestion, fluid retention, seizures, aches and pains. The sap was said to remove warts and other growths, and to be useful against snakebite. Pliny – who said it “was sold for its weight in gold” – mentions that mixed with wine it caused serpents to explode. He also said it put sheep to sleep, made goats sneeze, and was useful in treating leprosy, restoring hair, promoting menstruation and as a contraceptive. The timing of administration suggests it probably functioned as an abortifacient similar to preparations made from related plant species. Paradoxically, it is also referred to in some sources as an aphrodisiac.

Silphium is represented on the column capitals of the ruined Shrine of Aesclepius in Al Bayda, near Cyrene.