AD MAIORES
(Henchir Besseriani) Algeria.
ca. 5 km S of Négrine, an oasis 140 km S of Tébessa,
was a large military camp. Its site is indicated on the
Peutinger Table, and the minutes of the Conference of
Carthage in A.D. 411 indicate a bishop “plebis Nigrensium Maiorum.”
The camp was founded by Trajan in A.D. 105 on the
route that runs along, and defines, the S of the mountains
of Nememchas and Aurè, in a region which today is
desert. It was a rectangular fortress 170 x 110 m, with
four gates and a square tower at each corner. A fairly
extensive enceinte surrounded the camp, flanked by
numerous towers; it is still partly visible to the S. Vestiges of arches were left after its destruction by an
earthquake in 267. The town, of which there are only
minimal traces to be seen on aerial photographs, extended to the N where the mountain is still called Djebel
Majour, a corruption of its antique name. Here springs
were harnessed and channeled toward the town. Necropoleis to N and W have not been excavated. The unpublished epitaph of a soldier's wife shows that the
camp was occupied by the cavalry of a corps still unidentified, a wing or numerus.
A section of the Roman limes has been recognized
N of the route from Négrine to Nefta. The camp was
an important station at the crossing of the routes coming
on the one hand from Thelepte, Thevestis and Capsa,
and on the other from Gemellae; it is probable that
many of the remains designated as bazinas, Berber
tombs, are really buried towers of the limes.
One km N of the oasis, near the palm orchard of
Négrine el Kdima, in the middle of prehistoric stonefields, lie the ruins of a villa with apsidal chamber,
hexagonal pool, and mosaic-floored rooms, their decorations destroyed after the last phase of the Algerian
war; on the one hand, amid vegetal motifs in geometric
arrangement, is a checkerboard of 90 squares formed
by the letters of the name Flaviorum, probably a game;
on the other, framed by a decorative border of shells
and canthari, a gnomic text with some pretensions to
meter. In the Algiers Museum is an ostrakon of the
Byzantine period, with writing in ink on a pottery
fragment.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gueneau,
BAC (1907) 322-26
M; S.
Gsell,
Atlas archéologique de l'Algérie (1911) 50, nos.
152 & 128; Baradez,
Fossatum Africae (1949) 109-10,
118
P; Baghli & Février,
Bulletin des Antiquités algériennes 2 (1966-67) 6-8
P.
J. MARCILLET-JAUBERT