Royal Mausoleum of Mauretania
About
King Juba II and Queen Cleopatra Selene II, daughter of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, were said to be entombed beneath this vast circular monument between Tipaza and Cherchell. Sixty engaged columns ring its drum, which rises in a stepped cone roughly 40 meters high on a base over 60 meters wide. No royal remains have ever been found inside, likely lost to ancient tomb raiders. Arabic tradition later renamed it Kbor er Roumia, the tomb of the Christian woman, for the cross-shaped lines on its false door.
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.
In ancient writing
- Pomponius Mela, De chorographia 1.31
Marks the common tomb of the royal house on the coast road west of Icosium.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →