Royal Mausoleum of Mauretania 3 BCE

June 28, 2020

Royal Mausoleum of Mauretania 3 BCE

"The mausoleum was built in 3 BC by the last King of Numidia, and later King of Mauretania, Juba II, and his wife Cleopatra Selene II, She was an Egyptian-Greek Ptolemaic princess, the daughter of the Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and Roman Triumvir Mark Antony. Through her marriage to Juba II, she became the last Queen of Numidia and later Queen of Mauretania.

The mausoleum is probably the Royal Tomb that the 1st-century Roman geographer Pomponius Mela (1.31) described as the monumentum commune regiae gentis ("the communal mausoleum of the royal family"). If the geographer’s description of the mausoleum is correct, then the building was not intended just for Juba and Cleopatra, but envisaged as a dynastic funeral monument for their royal descendants.

The Mauretanian sepulchre looks similar to the Mausoleum of Augustus erected by the first Roman Emperor Augustus in Ancient Rome. Augustus began constructing his mausoleum between 29 BC-27 BC, some time before Juba II left Rome to return to Numidia.

In 1555, the Pasha of Algiers, Salah Rais, gave orders to pull down the mausoleum. After large black wasps swarmed out and stung some of the workers to death, the effort was abandoned. At the end of the 18th century, Baba Mahommed tried in vain to destroy the monument with artillery. Later, when the French occupied Algeria the monument was used by the French Navy for target practice."

-taken from Wikipedia