The Sousse Archaeological Museum (

Tunisian Arabic Tunisian Arabic, or simply Tunisian, is a set of dialects of Maghrebi Arabic spoken in Tunisia. It is known among its over 11 million speakers aeb, translit=Tounsi/Tounsiy, label=as, تونسي , "Tunisian" or "Everyday Language" to distingu ...

: المتحف الأثري بسوسة) is an archaeological museum located in Sousse,

Sousse Governorate Sousse Governorate ( ' ) is one of the twenty-four governorates (provinces) of Tunisia. It is beside the eastern coast of Tunisia in the north-east of the country and covers an area of 2,621 km2 and has a population of 674,971 (2014 census). ...

Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...

The Museum

The

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

is housed in the

Kasbah A kasbah (, also ; ar, قَـصَـبَـة, qaṣaba, lit=fortress, , Maghrebi Arabic: ), also spelled qasba, qasaba, or casbah, is a fortress, most commonly the citadel or fortified quarter of a city. It is also equivalent to the term ''alca ...

of Sousse's

Medina Medina,, ', "the radiant city"; or , ', (), "the city" officially Al Madinah Al Munawwarah (, , Turkish: Medine-i Münevvere) and also commonly simplified as Madīnah or Madinah (, ), is the second-holiest city in Islam, and the capital of the ...

, which was founded in the 11th century AD. It was established in 1951. The museum reopened its doors to the public in 2012, after the collections were rearranged and the edifice was renovated. It contains the second largest collection of mosaics in the world after that of the Bardo National Museum in the capital

Tunis ''Tounsi'' french: Tunisois , population_note = , population_urban = , population_metro = 2658816 , population_density_km2 = , timezone1 = CET , utc_offset1 ...

The Collections

Some votive stelae and urns displayed in the

punic The Punic people, or western Phoenicians, were a Semitic people in the Western Mediterranean who migrated from Tyre, Phoenicia to North Africa during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'' – the Latin equivalent of t ...

room date from as early as the 7th century BC. Artefacts dating from the antiquity up to the 2nd century BC were discovered by French

archeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

Pierre Cintas in the

Tophet In the Hebrew Bible, Tophet or Topheth ( hbo, תֹּפֶת, Tōp̄eṯ; grc-gre, Ταφέθ, taphéth; la, Topheth) is a location in Jerusalem in the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna), where worshipers engaged in a ritual involving "passing a child thro ...

of Sousse and in the

Sanctuary A sanctuary, in its original meaning, is a sacred place, such as a shrine. By the use of such places as a haven, by extension the term has come to be used for any place of safety. This secondary use can be categorized into human sanctuary, a sa ...

of Baal Hammon. In addition, the museum contains some gorgeous mosaics depicting mythological figures, such as the "Head of

Medusa In Greek mythology, Medusa (; Ancient Greek: Μέδουσα "guardian, protectress"), also called Gorgo, was one of the three monstrous Gorgons, generally described as winged human females with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Those ...

", Face of Oceanus, Neptune on his sea-chariot, or Nilotic scene to name but a few. The museum also exhibits some marble statues from the Roman time period such as the bust of

emperor An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereignty, sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), ...

Hadrian and the statue of Roman fertility and manhood

god In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

Periapus with his sizeable phallus. Some funerary artifacts from

Hadrumetum Hadrumetum, also known by many variant spellings and names, was a Phoenician colony that pre-dated Carthage. It subsequently became one of the most important cities in Roman Africa before Vandal and Umayyad conquerors left it ruined. In the earl ...

(the antique name of Sousse) are also part of the collection, which were discovered in Sousse's two complexes of catacombs dating back from the Roman period, named the Catacomb of Hermes and the Catacomb of Good Shepherd. The place is named after a marble tablet engraved with a figure of a sheppherd carrying on its shoulder a sheep discovered in the catacombs. This now famous tablet, displayed in the museum, is Christian representation of the

Good Shepherd The Good Shepherd ( el, ποιμὴν ὁ καλός, ''poimḗn ho kalós'') is an image used in the pericope of , in which Jesus Christ is depicted as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. Similar imagery is used in Psalm 23 ...

theme, illustrating Jesus self-description in the Gospel of John (''I am the good shepherd, who is willing to die for the sheep'') as well as illustrating the parabole of the lost sheep comparing God seeking lost humans as a sheppherd leaving his 99 sheep to look for the one lost sheep, "''When he has found it, he carries it on his shoulders, rejoicing''". Among other Christian artefacts in the museum are Christian themed decorative terracotta tablets (for example, a representation of Adam & Eve covering themselves after having eaten the forbiden fruit) and the pride of the museum, a

Byzantine period The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

baptismal font, covered with colorful mosaics and found in the nearby town of Bekalta. The museum also features some local

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and ...

from Greece found within the Punic tombs at El-Kasabah: oil lamps, and some marble funerary

epitaphs An epitaph (; ) is a short text honoring a deceased person. Strictly speaking, it refers to text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, but it may also be used in a figurative sense. Some epitaphs are specified by the person themselves be ...

engraved in

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

languages. File:Catacombes chrétiennes, Sousse, 23 septembre 2013, (23).jpg, Representation of the

File:Neptune Sousse.JPG, Mosaic of Neptune File:Sousse museum Smirat-retouched.jpg, Magerius Mosaic: Mosaic from the 3rd century AD discovered in the village of Smirat, Tunisia, representing a hunt of wild beasts in the amphitheater, with lengthy written explanations File:Sousse mosaic Gorgon.JPG, Mesmerizing mosaic from the 2nd century, of the

Gorgon A Gorgon ( /ˈɡɔːrɡən/; plural: Gorgons, Ancient Greek: Γοργών/Γοργώ ''Gorgṓn/Gorgṓ'') is a creature in Greek mythology. Gorgons occur in the earliest examples of Greek literature. While descriptions of Gorgons vary, the te ...

with wings on her brows, her head surrounded by snakes

References

Archaeological museums in Tunisia Sousse Governorate {{Tunisia-museum-stub

The Museum

The Collections

See also

References