Ptolemais Necropolis

Necropolis Ptolemaidis

NecropolisCreta et Cyrenaica · Eastern and western quarries around Tolmeita, LibyaBuilt 300 BCE

About

Ancient quarrymen at Ptolemais cut stone for the city's walls and buildings, then generations of families cut tombs into the same abandoned rock faces. Surveys have recorded roughly four hundred burial structures ringing the city, including one hundred forty-nine rock-cut chamber tombs mapped in a single 2009 study. Tower tombs, cist graves, and carved sarcophagi sit alongside the chamber tombs, spanning Hellenistic through Roman use. Funerary inscriptions found here name Libyan, Greek, Roman, and Jewish residents of the city.

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.