The Aurelius rock inscription at Zinkekra: a commentary

Abstract This article offers a full commentary on the Greek inscription Αοὐρελιους found at the Garamantian site of Zinkekra, in the central Sahara. The inscription is important because it is the only known example of Greco-Roman writing produced in the ancient Sahara. The article begins with an examination of the writing as a piece of textual evidence, arguing on linguistic and historical grounds that the author was a native Latin speaker from North Africa, probably Tripolitania, who wrote in Greek for reasons of prestige. The article then studies the inscription within its wider geographic and material context, as one carving among many at Zinkekra’s sacred environment, and as evidence of a Roman in the Garamantian heartlands. It hypothesises that the carver was a trader who ventured into the Fazzan to buy or sell goods as part of active Saharan exchange networks with Rome, the Garamantes, and sub-Saharan Africa.