of great kings, proud queens and mighty heroes lay forgotten under the sands of the vast Sahara, or else in the hearts of nigh-impenetrable rainforests?

Garama, The City Under the Sands

"Men dwell there called Garamantes, an exceeding great nation who sow on earth which they have laid on the slat...these Garamantes go in their four-horse chariots chasing the Ethiopians". Herodotus, The Histories, IV.183

In its heyday, Imperial Rome controlled all of Europe to the east and the south of the Rhine and the Danube (with the addition of Trans-Danubian Dacia later on), Asia Minor and the Levant, and North Africa from modern Morocco to Egypt. Beyond these borders lay roaming barbarian tribes, petty client kingdoms (the Bosporians) and hostile Empires (the Parthians). Roman Africa, the Empire's granary and the birthplaceof poets, philosophers and emperors, stretched far deeper into the Sahara than is commonly shown in history book maps, bringing it into contact with desert tribespeople and the kingdom of the Garamantes, who shall be referred to as Garamantians for purposes of this work.

It would seem as though the unquiet ghosts of the Garamantians struggled to make themselves felt by modern man for a very long time indeed: In 1914,italian archaeologist Salvatore Aurigemma stumbled across a fascinating Roman mosaic in the modern Libyan village of Zliten, to the south of the ancient port of Leptis Magna. The mosaic showed a young woman being devoured by a leopard as two other victims await a similar fate. These sacrificial victims are depicted as having acquiline noses, straight hair and beards