Ernest Charles François Babelon

“ The Berber tribes, whose racial unity is attested by their common spoken language and by the comparatively numerous Berber inscriptions that have come down to us, bore in ancient times the generic names of Numidians, Gaetulians and Moors or Maurusiani. Herodotus mentions a great number of these tribes. During the Roman period, according to Pliny, there were settlements of 26 indigenous tribes extending from the Ampsaga as far as Cyrenaica. The much more detailed list of Ptolemy enumerates 39 indigenous tribes in the province of Africa and 25 in Mauretania Caesariensis. ”

“ In all the towns of Algeria and Tunisia museums have been founded for storing the antiquities of the region; the most important of these are the museums of St Louis, Carthage and the palace of Bardo (musee Alaoui) near Tunis, those of Susa, Constantine, Lambessa, Timgad, Tebessa, Philippeville, Cherchel and Oran. ”

“ The country was studded thickly with burgi (small forts) and clausurae (long walls) , the ruins of which still subsist. In 647 the Arabs penetrated into Ifrikia, which was destined to fall for ever out of the grasp of the Romans. In 697 Carthage was taken.
The bulk of the population of Roman Africa was invariably composed of three chief elements: the indigenous Berber tribes, the ancient Carthaginians of Phoenician origin and the Roman colonists. ”

“ This scholar examined first the ruins of Lambessa, an account of which he published in 1854 in his Mélanges d’epigraphie; subsequently he made his important collection of Inscriptions romaines de l’Algérie (1855–1858) which formed the groundwork of the volume of the Corpus Inscr. Lat. of the Academy of Berlin, devoted to Roman Africa. A little later General Faidherbe published his Collection complete des inscriptions numidiques (1870) . Apart from the province of Constantine, Algeria is less rich in Roman remains than Tunisia ”

“ Besides the Afri (Aourigha) of the territory of Carthage, the principal tribes that took part in the wars against the Romans were the Lotophagi, the Garamantes, the Maces, the Nasamones in the regions of the S.E., the Misulani or Musulamii (whence the name Mussulman) , the Massyli and the Massaesyli in the E., who were neighbours of the Moors. The non-nomads of these Libyan tribes dwelt in huts made of stakes supporting plaited mats of rush or asphodel. These dwellings, which were called mapalia, are the modern gourbis. ”

“ The results of all these labours have been published, from about 1850 onwards, annually, and, indeed, almost from day to day, in various scientific periodicals. Among the principal of these are:—Memoires de la Société archéologique de Constantine, Bulletin de la Société géographique et archéologique d’Oran, Revue africaine of Algiers, to which we should add the Revue archeologique of Paris, the Archives des missions scientifiques and the Bulletin archéologique du Comité des travaux historiques and the Mélanges of the French School at Rome. ”

“ The powers of the proconsul, however, extended scarcely beyond the ancient Africa Vetus and the towns on the littoral. Towards 194 Septimius Severus completed the reform of Caligula by detaching from the province of Africa the greater part of Numidia to constitute a special province governed by a procurator, subordinate to the imperial legate and resident at Cirta (Tissot ii. 34) . ”