The ancient North Africans.

I was looking about for classical descriptions of Egyptians and Libyans. Where the term Libyan is used, it refers to Caucasian North Africans, Ethiopian is the classical term for black Africans, at one point Herodotus writes about the the Ethiopians that live in parts of Libya. Herodotus considered Egyptians to be the third race of people in Egypt in north Africa.

 

Libya to the Egyptians and Greeks meant all of North Africa.

This is a map drawn by Herodotus himself. He names the Libyan people as the Nasamones, and interestingly, the Nile was believed to originated in the Atlas mountains instead of it’s real origin , a straight line southwards.

Foreign prisoners of Ramesses III: Libyan, Nubian, Syrian, Shasu Bedouin, and Hittite (The Hittites were an Indo-European people from Turkey).

A Libyan and a Nubian on king Tutankhamun’s staff.

And the mural of the races from the tomb of Ramses, from Belzoni’s illustration and the rather damaged original. Showing Libyans, a Nubian, a Syrian and an Egyptian.

And another freize showing various people, Syrians, Nubians and Libyans.

The Tassili Ladies, dated about 3,000 BC from  Southern Algeria.

The Greek historian Herodotus, who lived from c.480 – c.425 B.C wrote of the Nasamones..

They are a numerous race, who in the summer leave their flocks behind by the sea and go up to the region of Augila to gather the fruit of the date-palms, which grow in great numbers and very large and are all fruit-bearing: they hunt the wingless locusts, and they dry them in the sun and then pound them up, and after that they sprinkle them upon milk and drink them.
Their custom is for each man to have many wives, and they make their intercourse with them common in nearly the same manner as the Massagetes, that is they set up a staff in front of the door and so have intercourse. When a Nasamonian man marries his first wife, the custom is for the bride on the first night to go through the whole number of the guests having intercourse with them, and each man when he has lain with her gives a gift, whatsoever he has brought with him from his house.

The forms of oath and of divination which they use are as follows: they swear by the men among themselves who are reported to have been the most righteous and brave, by these, I say, laying hands upon their tombs; and they divine by visiting the sepulchral mounds of their ancestors and lying down to sleep upon them after having prayed; and whatsoever thing the man sees in his dream, this he accepts. They practice also the exchange of pledges in the following manner, that is to say, one gives the other to drink from his hand, and drinks himself from the hand of the other; and if they have no liquid, they take of the dust from the ground and lick it.

 The Nasamones bury bodies in a sitting posture, taking care at the moment when the man expires to place him sitting and not to let him die lying down on his back.

They have dwellings composed of the stems of asphodel entwined with rushes, and so made that they can be carried about.

Herodotus, Histories, 4.172-173, 190

Herodotus also describes the Garamantes, the Lotophagi (lotus eaters) and Macae.

Further inland to the southward, in the part of Libya where wild beasts are found, live the Garamantes, who avoid all intercourse with men, possess no weapons of war, and do not know how to defend themselves. Along the coast to the westward the neighbours of the Nasamones are the Macae. These people wear their hair in the form of a crest, shaving it close on either side of the head and letting it grow long in the middle; in war they carry ostrich skins for shields. The river Cinyps, which rises on a hill called the Hill of the Graces, runs through their territory to the sea. The Hill of the Graces is about twenty-five miles inland, and is densely wooded, unlike the rest of Libya so far described, which is bare of trees.

…Ten days’ journey west of the Ammonians, along the belt of sand, there is another similar salt-hill and spring. This place, called Augila, is also inhabited and it is here that the Nasamonians come for their date harvest. Again at the same distance to the west is a salt-hill and spring, just as before, with date palms of the fruit-bearing kind, as in the other oases; and here live the Garamantes, a very numerous tribe of people, who spread soil over the salt to sow their seed in. From these people is the shortest route—thirty days’ journey—to the Lotophagi; and it is amongst them that the cattle are found which walk backwards as they graze. The reason for this curious habit is provided by the formation of their horns, which bend forwards and downwards; this prevents them from moving forwards in the ordinary way, for, if they tried to do so, their horns would stick in the ground. In other respects they are just like ordinary cattle—except for the thickness and toughness of their hide. The Garamantes hunt the Ethiopian 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.

The faces of the Carthaginians

A selection of coins from Carthage showing: the goddess Tanit and the Greek Pegasus (top) then Hannibal Barca’s own coinage, and then an electrum coin from 250 BC. A cathaginian coin minted in SIcily, and a coin from Massinissa. A coin of  Hadsrubal Barca (Hannibals brother), a tetradrachm from the Carthaginians in Sicily from circa 320 BC, and finally another coin of Hannibal complete with an elephant, 230 BC.

Hannibals coins were minted by order of Hannibal himself, not on the orders of some third party. So they are probably close to what he looked like in life.

I’ve been unable to find any statues, it seems the Romans did a very thorough job of destroying them