Among the later additions of the Vandal period are the Square Chamber on the S. side of the memorial chapel, which also was used as a burial-place, with its small ante-room, and the Baptistery, accessible only from the atrium by three steps, containing remains of the old font.
To the same period belong the other additions to the basilica. Extending round the church from the memorial chapel on the E. to the W. side of the atrium are twenty-seven square chambers, partly built of heathen tombstones, commonly supposed to have been the Monks’ Cells, though unusually large for that purpose. Between these and the castellated Monastery Wall, whose towers do not project externally in the usual Byzantine fashion, probably lay the Monastery Garden, which was used down to the Moorish period as a burial-ground.
Lastly we note the small ‘Emergency Chapel’ on the N. side of the memorial chapel, a small church, probably hastily built subsequent to the irruption of the Berbers (p. [315]), with nave and two aisles, portico, choirscreen, rounded apse, and a square sacristy added on the N. side.
The Quadrangle, 60 by 46 yds., on the S. side of the main street, formerly called the forum, was once divided into four sections by two cross-ways bordered by marble balustrades. In spite of the unevenness of the ground these sections are supposed to have been basins (watering-places for cattle and horses?), the water being supplied from the square reservoir still existing at the S.E. corner of the quadrangle. From the cross-ways steps ascended to narrow terraces enclosing the quadrangle on three sides, that on the S. side being a porticus of twenty-two columns.
More enigmatical still is the West Building, 53 by 24 yds., a hall with three aisles borne by pillars. This was afterwards converted, by the insertion of two low partitions, into a central chamber of three aisles with eleven two-storied side-rooms on each side of the outer aisles. The curious stone boxes or troughs (mangers?) on the partitions, together with the holes in the walls, of a kind that recur in many Byzantine buildings (perhaps for the rings to which horses were attached), have led to the conjecture that the building was a stable.
The small building behind the Porticus of six columns on the N. side of the main street, opposite the so-called stables, contains similar stone boxes.
The Kubba Sidi Djaballah, about 5 min. to the N. of the Basilica, near the Catholic cemetery, is a Roman mausoleum with a Moorish dome.
On the way back to the town we call at the Bureau des Ponts et Chaussées, on the right, a little off the road, 2 min. before the Arch of Caracalla, to ask M. Coggia, the curator, for the key of the museum.
The so-called *Temple of Minerva, the best-preserved Roman temple in Algeria, now used as a museum, dates from the 3rd cent. A.D. The only relic of the old temple-court is the gateway wall, adorned with Corinthian pilasters, now forming the façade of a zaouïa (Mohammedan school) in the main street, close to the Arch of Caracalla. The temple, a pseudo-peripteros of 19¾ by 10 yds., on a substructure 13 ft. high, is in a side-street, adjoining the N. town-wall. A new flight of twelve (once twenty) steps ascends to the portico, with four Corinthian columns in front. The structure of the temple shows many of the peculiarities of African provincial art. Instead of an architrave there is a frieze with bulls’ skulls and eagles grasping serpents; above it is an attica in similar style, overladen with reliefs but without a cornice. Instead of a pediment there was probably a flat terrace on the summit. The present roof and the whole front-wall of the cella are modern.
The Town Museum contains antiquities from Tebessa, Morsott, etc. (catalogue for the use of visitors). In the court are relics of antique and early-Christian buildings, inscriptions, altars, Saturn-stelæ and tomb-stelæ, some of them with bowls on the pedestal for the repasts of the deceased. The cella contains bronzes, vessels and sculptures in clay, etc.; a sarcophagus with the Muses; two mosaics from the baths which were removed to make way for the cavalry barracks, one with Nereids and sea monsters, the other with a home-coming ship and numbered figures of a game (bull, ostrich, gazelle, boar, etc.; comp. p. [292]).