Travels in the footsteps of Bruce in Algeria and Tunis

by Sir R. Lambert Playfair

Unrivalled as this temple is as a work of art there is another monument of even greater interest, the celebrated mausoleum from which the Dougga bi-lingual stone was obtained.

Bruce has left a pencil sketch of this in outline merely ([Plate XXIV.]); but it is exceptionally interesting, as the monument itself was almost entirely destroyed by Sir Thomas Reade, the British Consul-General at Tunis, in extracting the stone on which the inscription was carved. We met people on the spot who were present at this sacrilege, and who described to us the manner in which stone after stone of this, beyond all question the most interesting, because the only pre-Roman, monument in the Regency of Tunis, was hurled by levers and crowbars into the valley below.

Such a proceeding would have been indefensible had the object been to enrich some great public museum, but destruction so wanton to secure an object of interest for a private collection cannot be too strongly reprobated. Half the sum expended in destroying the mausoleum devoted to making a plaster cast of the inscription would have sufficed for every purpose, and even if some future traveller had carried away the precious relic, at least the guilt would not have been chargeable to the British nation. The deed being done, it is fortunate that the two slabs containing the inscription were purchased by the British Museum at the sale of Sir Thomas Reade’s collection in 1852.

The monument was square in plan, two storeys in height, forming what might almost be regarded as two distinct tombs superposed one on the other, the whole surmounted by a graduated pyramidal roof of receding steps. It is supported on five steps, averaging 16·2 inches in height, with treads 10 inches wide. The lower storey 21 or 22 feet square, and 10 ft. 8½ in. high, with semi-plain and slightly projecting pilasters or antæ at the angles, surmounted by Ionic capitals, one volute being on each face, from which spring two lotus-like flowers, one from above and the other from below. A plain fascia, surmounted by a few bold simple mouldings, forms a cornice to the lower order, 1 ft. 9 in. high, or one-fifth the height of the pilaster; it runs in an unbroken line along the four faces of the tomb. A false window appears on three of the sides.

The arrangement of the courses of stone is peculiar. A narrow square plinth or base, rather less than eleven inches high, from which the pilasters appear to spring, is carried all round. Above this is a course four times as high, then a narrow band half as high again as the base, followed by another high course slightly lower than that beneath it. Above is a fifth course, half the height of that immediately beneath it, which contains the capitals of the pilasters, and formerly bore the inscription. The upper storey, of which very little now remains, resembled the lower one in its general divisions and style of construction. It was supported by three steps, 16½ inches high, with treads 10 inches wide, and appears to have been a sort of tetrastyle of the Ionic order, probably with pilasters at the angles, certainly with two intermediate, attached, fluted columns, 15 inches in diameter on each front, separated by an interval of 3 ft. 5 in. On the north and east faces, between these columns, were small doors, closed by portcullises of stone, giving access to the interior. They had dressings all round, and the architrave above them was very high. The construction of this storey is similar to that of the lower one, consisting of four unequal courses, dividing the height of the columns into six parts. The entablature in Bruce’s drawing ([Pl. XXIV.]) equals one third of the height of the columns. It is divided into architrave and cornice, the former consisting of a plain fascia, with narrow but bold mouldings. The latter has a distinctly Egyptian character, with a high and boldly projecting cavetto, surmounted by a fillet.

In a more recent view of this tomb, taken by Mr. F. Catherwood in 1832 with the aid of the camera lucida, for which I am indebted to Professor Donaldson, there appears an intermediate frieze between these two features, which would give the very unusual height of half the column to the entablature.[211]

Above this rose the pyramid, with a large upright block of stone at each angle as high as three or four of the steps, crowning classically the tomb underneath. Probably this never rose to an apex, but was truncated to receive a group of statuary, like the mausoleum of Halicarnassus. Sir Grenville Temple[212] mentions having dug up at the base, a portion of a draped figure, and at no great distance a small mutilated equestrian statue. He also says that on the base of the monument was a coarsely executed alto-relievo representing a quadriga with a warrior and the charioteer.

The monument contained two tiers of sepulchral chambers, one in each storey, divided into cells by vertical walls.

This mausoleum and the Medrassen in Algeria are the only monuments in North Africa of a pre-Roman origin, and the only examples remaining of the style employed by the earlier aboriginal races. The height of the courses, and the capitals of the antæ in the lower storey, would indicate a Greek origin, as does also the upper storey, which recalls the Tomb of Theron at Agrigentum, but the large cavetto of the cornice, and the lotus flowers with which the volutes of the capitals are ornamented, are identical with the Egyptian type. The whole is of a purer style than Roman tombs generally, and excels in this respect every other similar edifice in North Africa.