gems, archaeology, archaeogemology, Africa, Libya, carbuncle

It may be misleading to use the term “nationalism” in the sphere of ancient history. What is meant here is the Libyan resistance to foreign occupation which forced the indigenous tribes and groups to withdraw from the fertile coastal plains. It is not altogether true to claim that when the Phoenicians came to Tripolitania in about the eighth century BCE to establish their markets, and the Greeks to Cyrenaica in the seventh century to found Cyrene, their first colony, they found the coastal plains desolate and unpopulated. Prehistoric sites have been discovered throughout Libya. In the second millennium, if not earlier, the names of Libyan groups appeared in Pharaonic inscriptions, along with depictions in Egyptian reliefs. Among these names, the most prominent are the Tehenu, the Temehu, the Libu, and the Meswesh. The last two groups exerted pressure on Egypt’s western frontiers in search of refuge. Pursued by the Sea Peoples, they spread terror and destruction along their path. The Pharaohs of the XIXth and XXth Dynasties eventually succeeded in repelling them back into their Libyan homeland. An expedition from the University of Pennsylvania in the spring of 1963 sought traces of Bronze Age Libyans in Cyrenaica. The memory of those Libyans is well preserved in Egyptian records, where they are shown as intermediaries in trade between Africa, Egypt, and the Aegean Sea.