19th-century illustration, Wikimedia Commons

Necropolis of Cyrene

Necropolis Cyrenensis

NecropolisCreta et Cyrenaica · Shahhat, LibyaBuilt 500 BCE

About

Rock-cut tombs spread across the hillsides ringing Cyrene, one of the largest burial landscapes to survive from the Greek and Roman world, with graves ranging from the 6th century BCE through the Roman period. The Western Necropolis holds the most monumental examples, its facades carved with Doric and Ionic porticoes along a dedicated funerary road. Temple-tombs and painted chamber tombs with rock-cut sarcophagi honeycomb the surrounding cliffs. Italian archaeologists continue to uncover previously unrecorded tombs here.

What happened here

The dead are outside the walls because the law requires it, so the approach to every town is lined with them. Tombs face the road in rows, grand ones in front and simpler markers behind, all of them addressed to the passer-by. Burial clubs let ordinary people and slaves pay a monthly subscription for a place in a communal vault and a decent funeral; the alternative is a pit. Families come out on anniversaries and at the February festival, eat at the graveside, and pour wine into a pipe set into the ground. Undertakers, stonecutters and letter-cutters work nearby and compete on price. Ground is bought by the foot, and the frontage on the road costs the most.

In ancient writing

Herodotus, Histories 4.150-158
Recounts the founding of Cyrene by settlers from Thera under the leader Battus, naming the city whose extensive rock-cut necropolis surrounds its ruins.