Royal Mausoleum of Ptolemais

Mausoleum Ptolemaidis

MausoleumCreta et Cyrenaica · Western quarry necropolis, Tolmeita, LibyaBuilt 150 BCE

About

A tower tomb roughly twelve metres square rose over fourteen metres above the western quarries of Ptolemais, taller than any other funerary monument in Cyrenaica. Locals came to call it Gasr al-Phira'oun, Pharaoh's Castle, long after its Hellenistic builders were forgotten. European travelers began recording the ruin in the eighteenth century, struck by its scale and lonely survival among the quarry cuttings. Raised around 150 BCE, it had already stood for nearly three centuries when Ptolemais fell under Roman provincial rule.

What happened here

The tomb is built where the traffic is: on the road out of town, facing the carriageway, close enough to read at walking pace. That is the design brief. Inside there may be a single chamber for one family or niches for dozens, with cremation urns or, increasingly, bodies laid out. Outside there is a portrait, an inscription giving the dead their offices and their years, and often a bench, because visitors come back. The family returns on the anniversary and at the February festival of the dead, brings wine and food, and eats a meal at the graveside. Endowments are left to keep it up and lawsuits follow when they are not honoured. A grand tomb is the last public building a family gets to commission.