Garamantes

The Garamantes were people who lived in Sahara, who used an elaborate underground irrigation system, and founded a kingdom in the Fezzan area of modern-day Libya, in the Sahara desert. They were a local power in the Sahara between 500 BC - 500 AD.

There is not much information about the Garamantes, not even the name they used to call themselves; Garamantes was a Greek name later adopted by the Romans. Most of what we know comes from Greek and Roman sources, and recent archaeological excavations in the area.

Garamantian life

Archaeologists excavated part of the Garamantes' capital in the 1960's and named it Garama. Current research indicates that the Garamantes had about eight major towns, three of which have been examined as of 2004. In addition they had a large number of other settlements. Garama had population of some four thousand and another six thousand living in villages within a 5 km radius.

The Garamantes were farmers, engineers and merchants. Their religion was based on Egyptian models, and some of their dead were buried in small pyramids. They used the Libyco-Berber script for writing.

The Garamants' diet consisted of grapes, figs, barley and wheat. They traded wheat, salt and slaves in exchange of imported wine and olive oil, oil lamps and Roman tableware. According to Strabo and Pliny, the Garamantes quarried amazonite in the Tibesti Mountains.

Foggara tunnels

The Garamantes constructed a network of underground tunnels and shafts to mine the fossil water from under the limestone layer under the desert sand. It was built approximately 200 BC - 200 AD. The network of tunnels is known to berbers as foggaras'. The network allowed agriculture to flourish, but it required the use of slaves to maintain the network.

History

The Garamantes were probably present as tribal people in the Fezzan by 1000 BCE. They appear in the written record for the first time in 5th century BCE; according to Herodotus, they were a numerous people, who herded cattle and hunted Africans for slaves from four-horse chariots. Roman depictions describe them as bearing ritual scars and tattoos. Tacitus wrote that they assisted the rebel Tacfarinas and raided Roman coastal settlements.

The Romans kept close trade contacts with Garamantes; archaeologists have even found a Roman bathhouse in Garama. The Roman chronicler Maternus accompanied a Garamantian ruler on a 4-month military expedition to what is now the border area of Nigeria. Still, despite of the trade relations, Romans did not really consider them civilized and even thought their slaves second-rate.

In the first century BC, the Garamantes raided North Africa and clashed with Roman forces. According to Pliny, Romans eventually grew tired of Garamantian raiding and Lucius Cornelius Balbus captured 15 of their settlements in 19 BC. After a Roman punitive expedition in 70 AD, the Garamantes were forced into an official relationship with Rome and might have become one of the Roman client states.

By around 150 AD the Garamantian kingdom covered 180,000 square kilometres in modern-day southern Libya.

As the fossil water does not replenish itself quickly, over the six centuries of the Garamantian kingdom, the ground-water level fell. The kingdom declined and fragmented. Byzantine records claim that the king of Garamantes formed a peace treaty with Byzantium in 569 and accepted Christianity. Later Muslim records say that in 668 the king of Garamantes was imprisoned and dragged off in chains. The area was eventually absorbed into the Muslim sphere of influence.