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Notae lapicidinarum lepcimagnenses. Marchi e contrassegni punici e neopunici dal Tempio di Roma e Augusto a Leptis Magna: per una parziale integrazione al corpus già noto

Autore: G. Mazzilli

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Both limestone and sandstone ashlars walled into the structures of the Temple of Rome and Augustus by the Old Forum of Leptis Magna show numerous, engraved marks in the Punic and Neo-Punic alphabets. To date, only a few of them have been so far analysed and published, whereas attestations from other buildings at Lepcis have found space in contributions sometimes dealing broadly with the topic, other times of specific but partial scope. While waiting for a corpus presenting a systematic collection and analysis of the evidence from Lepcis Magna, in this current paper a partial addition to the already known set of marks from the temple along the North-West side of the Old Forum is presented, through the documentation archived at the Centro di Documentazione e Ricerca sull’Archeologia dell’Africa Settentrionale “Antonino Di Vita”, University of Macerata. Although this is still a partial sample, it allows hypothesizing the marks to be anthroponyms, possibly identifying both productive and commercial entities within the local stone supply (“construction companies”). Perhaps managing the entire building chaîne opératoire, they acted on a local scale, in close connection with the work in the quarries and with the related ownership or management.

L’arco di Traiano a Leptis Magna. Risultati preliminari di un nuovo studio del monumento

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The Arch of Trajan in Leptis Magna, placed along the so-called Via Triumphalis to commemorate the grant of colonial status in 109-110 AD, is a concrete example of the different meanings of honorary architecture of North Africa, from the urbanistic one to the symbolic, political and propagandistic ones. Moreover, as a building belonging just to Lepcis, still entirely made of local stone, it has a central place in the architectural history of a city which is going to be characterized by a monumental growth and by the use of imported marble architectural elements since the late age of Hadrian: local building techniques, influences from Magna Graecia and Italy through the mediation of Sicily, Roman models (the arch of Nero in Rome seems to be the main typological model), Alexandrian and Cyrenaic elements are the outline conditions of a very original architecture. The aim of these notes, moving from a short history of studies, is to give a summary about the knowledge of the monument, trying to contextualize it: they analyze its features and illustrate the data come to light till now in a new research about it.