The Sahara (9 page)

Having secured access to water, the Garamantes were able to expand their purview through a successful trade network, in which they again capitalized on their desert location. They dominated the whole eastern portion of the desert and acted as middle men between markets to the north and south. According to Strabo and Pliny, the Garamantes also extracted minerals from the Tibesti Mountains, more than 800 miles from Garama. Apart from salt, gold and semi-precious stones, there is little doubt that the Garamantes also engaged in the slave trade. Turning to Herodotus again, he writes unequivocally: “The Garamantes hunt the Aethiopian hole-men, or troglodytes, in four-horse chariots, for these troglodytes are exceedingly swift of foot-more so than any people of whom we have any information. They eat snakes and lizards and other reptiles and speak a language like no other, but squeak like bats.”

It is also likely that their growth depended on acquiring ever-larger numbers of slaves. More slaves meant more tunnels dug; greater access to water meant an increase in population. Archaeological digs in Garama, modern Germa, have uncovered an astonishing total of 120,000 graves. From this number of tombs one can extrapolate that the capital and its satellite towns supported a permanent population of not less than 10,000. According to one of the archaeologists responsible, David Mattingly, this was “the first time in history that a non-riverine area of the Sahara... had produced an urban society.” The graves also yielded a wealth of Nubian artefacts, suggesting significant contact between the Garamantes and black tribes of the eastern Sahara.

Herodotus’ statement about the Garamantes’ use of chariots is supported by numerous examples of rock art from across the Fezzan. Featuring teams of between one and four horses, these often-detailed works clearly show that the Garamantes had great equestrian skills by which they controlled trade along the so-called Garamantean Road, also referred to as the Bilma Trail, which passed through their territory. Running from Tripoli, it cuts through the centre of the Fezzan and on south between the Ahaggar and Tibesti mountains, and via the Kouar escarpment in north-eastern Niger, to Bilma, one of the major centres of the Saharan salt trade.

By the time the Romans arrived, the Garamantes proved themselves to be a persistent source of annoyance to the newly arrived superpower. When Rome’s fortunes in North Africa were in the ascendant after the destruction of Carthage, the Garamantes felt more than able to meet them head on. Their role as Saharan traders and brokers aside, the Garamantes had long been known for their frequent and successful raids, which saw them going as far north as Carthage, even at the height of Carthaginian power. In spite of their raids, however, the Garamantes were no keener to conquer and settle in the north than were the Carthaginians or Romans to conquer and settle in the central Sahara.

In time, notably after the Third Punic war, the Romans became less tolerant of Garamantean aggression, and they determined to end the habitual raids. In 20 BCE the Roman proconsul Cornelius Balbus Minor, from Gades, modern Cadiz, was confronted by a revolt among the Saharan tribes, which grew until it stretched the length of Rome’s southern border, from Mauretania to Tripolitania. In a brilliant piece of soldiering, Balbus crushed the unrest, marching his army four hundred miles into the desert and capturing the cities of Cydamae, modern Ghadames, and Garama, the capital of Phazzania, from which we take the name Fezzan. As a result of this campaign, Balbus was granted Roman citizenship and was honoured with a triumphal parade in Rome, the first time a foreign-born Roman was afforded such an honour. But in spite of Roman claims that the Garamantes were now absorbed into the Roman Empire, intermittent raids continued. Although the Garamantes were from this time nominally under Roman control, without a garrison in Garama, Roman control always had its limits.

Rome elected to march again on Garama, now employing the latest military advances and attacking for the first time in Roman history with a camel cavalry, which enabled their forces to venture deeper into the desert and faster than previously. The Garamantes knew they were outmanoeuvred, losing the advantage that isolation had once given them.

Regardless, the Garamantes again launched attacks against Roman coastal settlements, prompting Tacitus in his Annals to write in 70 CE that they were “ungovernable”, adding “the Garamantes [are] a wild race incessantly occupied in robbing their neighbours.” As late as 400 CE, the Numidian rebel Gildo recruited a Garamantean army to join him in a war against Rome.

Over time, however, Romano-Garamantean relations improved, in part because of growth in trade between the two, which meant there was more to be gained from trading than raiding. Even so, the impermanence of peace between Rome and the Garamantes led to the construction of “limes” - defensive borders that marked the limit of Roman territory in North Africa and across the whole of Europe. The most famous of these is Hadrian’s Wall, or Limes Britannicus, in the north of England, built to keep the marauding Picts in their place, that is, in Scotland.

The ruins of Garama

Looking south across the Sahara, the Limes Tripolitanus acted not just as a defensive wall but also the point at which the Romans collected taxes on goods coming into their territory. Many records, kept on clay
ostrakas
, have survived, such as those discovered at Gholaia, Libya, stating that there crossed into Roman lands on a certain day “Garamantes bearing barley, four mules and four asses”, while another fragment mentions “Garamantes leading four asses.”

From the perspective of the Garamantes, the collapse of Roman rule in North Africa marked the end of a valuable trading partner. When the Vandals became the dominant power in the region, their rule did not extend as far as the Fezzan, and while this provided the region with a greater degree of independence than had previously been the case, it also meant economic decline for the Garamantes and other former trading partners of the Romans.

In modern times, Libya’s leader Colonel Gaddafi drew inspiration from the Garamantes when he inaugurated the so-called Great Man-made River Project. This engineering feat in the desert, which extracts water at a rate of230 million cubic feet per day, should be a source of worry for the country’s future rather than the blessing it was trumpeted as. Today the land that failed to sustain the Garamantes’ water-heavy agricultural economy is green once again, but the underground tunnels lie unused, replaced by the modern means of drilling and pumping water. The ancient city was not finally abandoned untill937. In the new town water levels continue to drop and at least in the short-term future the inhabitants of modern Germa are unlikely to see a return to the glory days when theirs was the capital of the Garamantes Empire.

Camels

“The camel has a single hump;

The dromedary, two;

Or else the other way around.

I’m never sure. Are you?”

Ogden Nash, “The Camel”

For anyone who has the same problem as Ogden Nash, the dromedary, which one finds in the Sahara, has one hump, the Bactrian has two, and they are both camels. It is hard to imagine a desert scene without a camel caravan crossing it. Trudging along or watering at some palm-ringed oasis, one easily assumes that the desert and the camel have always been together, but they have not. The camel is a recent introduction to the Sahara, almost modern in the history of the desert.

A fixture in every nativity scene and featured in innumerable pictures of Bible stories, the camel has come to represent the quintessential beast of the Middle East. Yet it is not an Arabian or African native. The earliest cameloid fossil remains, which date back fifty million years, are found in North America. About two million years ago, one branch of the family crossed the land bridge that lay where the Bering Straits are now before spreading west through Asia and into Arabia. The major differences between the woolly coated, two-humped Bactrian camel and the leaner, single-humped dromedary reflect the species’ adaptation to climatic conditions in which they each now thrive.

Even today, there are notable differences between camels native to the north of the Sahara and those from the south. For example, native Sudanese animals have less hair than their northern cousins, and will suffer from the relative cold of the northern Sahara winters if taken there too quickly without a period of acclimatisation.

In
The Art of Travel
, the Victorian guide that covers everything for the intrepid traveller, the author Francis Galton says that “Camels are only fit for a few countries, and require practised attendants; thorns and rocks lame them, hills sadly impede them, and a wet slippery soil entirely stops them.” Although there may be limitations to the climates and terrains in which camels work best, it would be a great injustice to call them lazy. Further, whoever believes that a camel is a horse designed by committee betrays great ignorance of the genius of the animal. No other creature comes close to camels for their ability to live in the extreme conditions of hot deserts, as anyone who has lived or worked with them can attest. It is a constant source of amazement that a camel can travel in the desert without water for ten days, after which it can drink as much as 100 to 150 litres in a single session.

One reason for camels’ ability to go for so long without water is the fact that they do not sweat until their temperature gets above 106°F. In addition, they can lose 25 per cent of their body weight through dehydration before there is a serious risk of death through cardiac failure. Most mammals will die after a drop of 15 per cent.

A camel can carry twice the load of an ox, travel at twice its speed and cover greater distances. This is also achieved without the need for a cart, thereby providing access to places where the terrain is impassable to wheeled vehicles. Camels could, of course, also be made to carry carts across rough country; broken down into their constituent parts and strapped to the animals’ sides, they would be reassembled once on more suitable tracks. This was still being done in the nineteenth century, as Galton reports: “Mr. Richardson and his party took a boat, divided in four quarters, on camel-back across the Sahara, all the way from the Mediterranean to Lake Tchad [sic].”

The importance of camels to life in the Sahara can perhaps be summed up in the following exchange between Rosita Forbes and one of her guides: “‘What is Allah’s greatest gift to man?’ [the guide asked] me suddenly. I felt this was a test of my faith in Islam, so I promptly replied, ‘The Koran.’ He looked at me scornfully. ‘The camel! If there were no camels here, there would be no dates, no food, nothing!’ He paused and added solemnly, ‘If there were no camels here, there would be no men!”‘

When Herodotus talks about the Berbers’ regular trans-Saharan trading networks he was not suggesting this was achieved with camels. Instead, the literary and pictorial evidence from the period shows laden mules and horse-drawn carriages crossing the desert. Camels are notable by their absence from the earliest examples of Saharan rock art.

Exactly when the camel became established in the Sahara remains a matter of speculation, but it is most likely that there were a number of introduction events. And although they were not found across the whole of the Sahara until the first or second century CE, there is evidence of their presence in eastern parts of the desert several centuries earlier. The idea put forward by some writers that the River Nile formed a barrier that halted their spread is debatable, as camels are actually strong swimmers. It is probable that the camel was first introduced into North Africa by Assyrian invaders in the seventh century BCE, but it was not until the early Ptolemaic period in Egypt, around 300 BCE, that they were particularly numerous or widespread.

Once successfully introduced, the camel became indispensable for desert travel, its dominance being guaranteed once its usefulness as a draft animal was grasped. The Romans, enthusiastic developers of innovative military technology, soon understood the potential uses of the camel as a military vehicle. When Julius Caesar defeated the Numidian king Juba in 46 BCE, among the spoils he took were 22 camels. While not a large number of animals, they are important as the first textual record of camels in North Africa. Having first come across camels in Syria and Egypt, the Romans were soon putting them to use against the Garamantes and other tribes who were keen to attack Rome’s desert frontiers. Once the Romans took camel-mounted troops into battle, first in 69 CE, the isolation that had previously been the Garamantes’ main strategic advantage disappeared, and raiding from the Sahara likewise tailed off.