THAENAE
(Henchir Thina) Tunisia.
On the
coast, 12 km S of Sfax near the lighthouse. Mentioned
several times by ancient authors, the city marked the
termination of the royal fossa built by Scipio to delimit
Roman from Numidian territory. A civitas, then a
colony under Hadrian, the town prospered as the extent of the site and the richness of some of the excavated buildings indicate.
From 1900 to 1914, the site was rifled by the soldiers
of the garrison for funerary furnishings contained in
the tombs; several hectares of necropoleis which extended along the principal exit routes of the town were turned topsy-turvy. Mausolea—some of them hexagonal in form—were found. In the middle of the most important of these necropoleis, some great public baths of
exceptionally advanced, baroque plan were excavated
in 1904 and the only mosaic, representing Orpheus,
which had been laid aside, was destroyed during the
Second World War.
Later on, especially between 1947 and 1955, the
digging principally reached the monuments in the interior of the town, the most remarkable among them a monumental enclosure of which one side was 2.5 km comprising a gate with two semicircular towers.
In 1954-55 a bathing establishment situated in the
section SE of the town was uncovered. Constructed of
mediocre material and altered during the course of the
centuries, the edifice presented—in spite of a very bad
state of preservation—two important levels that indicate a change of function. A bath belonging to a private house must have been later converted into public baths because the plan of the edifice does not correspond with the usual type of plan for baths. Mosaics
paved the floor, some fragments of which are notable for
their decoration: a boxing bout, a rural villa, a ship manned by cupids. Some fragments of painted frescos were also collected there.
The Baths of the Months, excavated in 1961, are
more remarkable for their extent and their state of
preservation since the walls have survived to a height of
several meters, allowing the reconstruction even of the
roof, which was built of groin and barrel vaults. There
were luxurious latrines. Frescos and a veneer of marble
covered the walls. The whole was paved with geometric
and figured mosaics, among them the one called The
Seasons and the Months. In the course of the excavation,
a coin hoard dating from the end of the 3d c. and the
beginning of the 4th was found.
Two other houses, still unpublished, were uncovered
at the same time. The mosaic in the triclinium of one
is of a marine scene portraying cupids fishing, ships, and
fish, and includes a head of Oceanus. The other house
revealed a painted portrait of Dionysos with a nimbus,
remarkably well-preserved, which has been taken to
the Bardo Museum in Tunis. Several of these objects
found in the course of the excavations are on display
at the Sfax Museum.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CRAI (1955) 343; Thirion in
MélRome
(1957) 207-54; M. Fendri in
CahTun (1964) 47-67
PI.
A. ENNABLI
