"If this were in Europe, there would be millions of euros in circulation every day!", I said to my companions when we arrived at the empty parking lot in front of Leptis Magna, one of the largest ancient archaeological sites in the Mediterranean - its area is 387.485 hectares.
An hour and a half earlier, we left Tripoli and headed east along the coast towards Leptis Magna. I have visited many such places - from Chichen Itza in Mexico to the Portuguese churches overgrown in the jungle in Goa, India, but I have not seen anything so big and grandiose.
Leptis Magna (Great Leptis) was an important city in Carthage and later the Roman Empire. Founded as early as 500 BC as a Punic settlement, Leptis Magna experienced its greatest expansion during the time of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus (193–211), who was born in this city. In the 3rd century Diocletian declared it the seat of a province and it continued to grow and prosper until 439 when it fell before the Vandal invasion. Before that, the city was destroyed twice - first by an earthquake and then by a tsunami. It became part of the Eastern Roman Empire in 533, but due to frequent attacks by the Berbers, it never regained its former importance. After the Muslim invasion in 647, almost the entire population left it, and hundreds of buildings ended up under a thick layer of sand.
photo: r. shepherd…ancient toilet
Accustomed to jostling with hundreds of other visitors in places like this in Europe, it seemed unreal to us to walk through such a large complex almost completely alone, like characters from an Agatha Christie novel. There are temples, villas, amphitheatres, markets and public baths with preserved antique toilets where visitors sat next to each other defecating, without a partition that would allow discretion, which was admittedly a practice in French courts until the end of the 18th century. Our guide in solid English tells us how a part of the ancient temple from Leptis Magna was transferred to the British Museum in 1816 and a part was installed in the royal residence of Fort Belvedere.
When the Italians occupied Libya in 1911, they made great efforts to re-display Leptis Magna to the public, which had been lying under the sand for more than a millennium. When he came to power, it was another proof for Mussolini that there are no occupiers here, but "they were there two thousand years ago", as he said in 1926 during his first visit to the site. During his time, the archaeological work accelerated further and the necropolis from the 4th and 3rd centuries BC as well as the Roman theater came to light. In 1982, Leptis Magna became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In June 2005, during Gaddafi's reign, archaeologists from the University of Hamburg found a 30-foot (9,14 meter) long mosaic dating from the 1st and 2nd centuries. The mosaic shows a fighter fighting a stag, four young men wrestling a wild bull, and a gladiator resting after a fight. It was located in the Roman Villa and experts consider it one of the finest examples of art from that period. It is currently in the Leptis Magna Museum in the nearby city of Homs.
During the Libyan revolution in 2011, according to some reports, tanks and combat vehicles of forces loyal to Gaddafi were hidden here. NATO refused to bomb them for fear of damaging the archaeological site under UNESCO protection. Immediately after the war, Libyan architect Hafed Walda reported that Letpis Magna had not sustained significant damage during the fighting. At the end of our walk, we reached the Amphitheater where we found a surreal scene: about thirty boys were practicing taekwondo with a coach and shouting slogans in Korean.
A few hours later in nearby Misrata, the regional center and the third largest city in Libya after Tripoli and Benghazi, we talk to two members of the City Council about tourism in the City Hall. Given Libya's still poor reputation for safety for foreigners, it will be difficult for people to decide to come with their families to a hotel for seven days - but if they have the option of a cruise ship docked at the port of Misrata and a half-day tour to Leptis is organized from there Magne with lunch in one of the local restaurants, it's something that could attract thousands of tourists in any case. Once they are convinced that there is a "regular situation" in Libya and that everything is safe - then they will probably be ready to come to the country for several days.
In this city, I also spoke with Mohamed Aldanfur, the president of the University of Misrata, who was visiting the University of Novi Sad at the time of the tragedy at the Novi Sad Railway Station on November 1 of this year. He says that they are arranging cooperation and exchange of students. He, like almost all the officials we met, remembers with nostalgia the time when Gaddafi and Tito laid the foundation for the cooperation between these two countries, which resulted in thousands of Libyan students in Yugoslavia, thousands of medics and dozens of our construction and other companies who found work in Libya. .
Before lunch, we visit the centuries-old mosque without a minaret, which was built by the ancestor of the current ambassador of Libya in Belgrade, Mohamed Galbun.
Lunch, which is rich in local specialties and spices (Libyan cuisine is quite spicy), we washed down with Coca Cola and grape juice, since alcohol has been completely banned in Libya since the time when Gaddafi declared the Jamahiriya in 1979. It is not even found in foreign hotels, where it can be found in most other Arab countries. You can possibly drink some beer or wine smuggled from neighboring Tunisia if one of the local Serbs (who are, of course, many times less than 15 years ago) invites you to a party.
We end the day at a resort on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The next morning, on Arandjelov's Day, we swam in the sea, the water is pleasant, there is no crowd on the beach because at this time of the year - there are no other guests.
