TUBUSUCTU
or Tubusuptu (Tiklat) Algeria.
Situated 3 km from El Kseur and 30 km S of Bougie, on
the Soummam River. Its ancient name is attested in Plin.
(
HN 5.21); Ptol. (4.2.7); Ammianus Marcellinus (29.5.
11); the Ravenna Geographer, and Julius Honorius (
GLM
48); it is missing from the
Antonine Itinerary, on the
route joining Saldae (Bougie) and Rusuccuru (Dellys)
via the interior.
Like Saldae, it was a colony founded by Augustus with
veterans of the 7th legion, hence its appellation of Colonia
Iulia Augusta Legionis VII. Bishops of the town are mentioned in 411 and 484.
The town lies in a valley on the left bank of the Soummam, occupying an eminence and the plain running along it on S and E, where there are still vestiges of ramparts. The ruins have suffered from the cultivation
of the region. To the S of the eminence are important
baths, 50 m square in plan. To the N, in the center of
the ruins, and to the E are the remains of immense cisterns. The N cisterns, fed by an aqueduct coming from
the W, measure 35.5 x 77 m and are made up of 15
connected basins; the vaults were semicircular in section
and there were interior and exterior buttresses. The ruins
of the E cistern, fed by an aqueduct leading from the
S, crossing the river via a bridge now gone, are confused
and disjointed. Not all the important waterworks appear
to be contemporary; it seems that the military importance of the site, in a region where there were numerous
revolts in the 3d and 4th c., justified these creations.
Alluvial flooding of the plain revealed, 900 m S of
the modern farm, a network of walls representing funerary edifices with concrete benches to which were fixed little cinerary urns; these must have been columbaria. One of the chambers terminates in a tripartite
sanctuary, preceded by a courtyard. Next to these funerary structures, traces of industrial establishments have been found. The region was particularly rich in olive trees; amphorae marked as coming from Tubusuctu have been found at Rome. There are numerous traces of agricultural establishments in the environs and, 1 km to N, the remains of a mausoleum. Several
Latin inscriptions are preserved in the garden of Tiklat
farm; certain epitaphs have an aspect very rare in
Africa, the form of a column-base; there are stelae to
Saturn and some pottery in the Bougie Museum.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
S. Gsell,
Atlas archéologique de l'Algérie (1911) 7, no. 27; J. Lassus,
Libyca 7 (1959) 278-93
PM; Birebent,
Aquae romanae (1962) 473-83
PM.
J. MARCILLET-JAUBERT
