CYRENE UNDERGROUND

By H. S. Stringer

Between Tocra and Derna the highest of the two plateaux of the North African coast averages 1,350 feet and rises to just over 2,500 feet at its highest point. The whole thing is limestone. The geologists classify three layers of this stone as the upper-, middle-, and lower Eocene, as coral limestone, cave limestone, and shelly limestone respectively. This is obviously a pot-hole paradise. The average rainfall of that region is above that of the British Isles, falls only during a very few months of the year, and disappears from the plateaux comparatively quickly without there being (with a few notable exceptions) any watercourse from the hills right down to the sea.

In addition to that intriguing situation there are the waters of Lethe and the fresh water river at Blue Lagoon, near Bengasi. The quantity of water available even to-day in that coastal region is amazing and I never understood why it was allowed to remain desert in other nearby regions.

The oddest water hole I ever came across is the round pool at Kufra, an oasis 600 miles from Bengasi and 800 from Luknor. Not a shrub between, and yet at Kufra, four miles from the oasis is a perfectly round pool over a quarter of. a mile across, 14 feet below sand level. More salt than the Dead Sea, you can walk in it quite easily. A frightened non-swimmer with us fell in, and his face and cries as he realised he was out of his depth and was not sinking I shall never forget. The slides slope at 60 per cent, under water and at 40 above to the level desert. The startling thing is that you can stand in the salt water, facing the bank and scoop a pool with your hands. It fills with fresh water and this you use to wash the salt off your skin.

It is easy to imagine how the waters of Lethe gained fame. To a man who had travelled over hundreds of miles of hot waterless waste, a cave always containing thousands of gallons of really cold water must have been supernatural. It is inexplicable to-day. I saw air photographs, and it does seem that two pools in the desert indicate continuous under­ ground flow from Lethe to the Blue Lagoon by the sea.

The caves at Lethe are entered from a large inexplicable Wadi in the centre of the first plateau up from the coast.

After descending the rock floor of the Wadi at a gentle slope to a depth of about 30 feet the roof closes in to form the rock cave. The cave is approximately 50 feet wide and of con­ siderably greater length. It contains fresh water to a depth of about eight feet, and the level does not appear to alter summer or winter. The Italians built a kind of landing stage in the cave very close to the water which confirms that it never did rise in winter more than a few inches. I can personally vouch that the level does not sink in summer. There are two further caves beyond the first, but so far as I and other ill-equipped investigators could tell there is no outlet, and we could not find any way by which the water came in other than by the dry wadi.

At the Blue Lagoon there is a lake varying from eight to 20 feet in depth of fresh water covering some three to four acres. The inlet is underground and impossible to explore. The outlet is to the sea by an interesting river through the sand dunes. The river is half a mile in length, about six feet deep, and with banks of really soft shifting sand. Yet it is the only place I know on the North African Coast where the flow of fresh water is so strong that throughout the year the sand is unable even to form a delta at the mouth. The speed of the current in this short river is such that you must run fairly fast to keep up with a man swimming towards the sea, and progress can be made against the current only by an exceptionally strong swimmer for a few yards. So far as I could learn from natives the river had always been there and had always flowed at the same pace.

Apart from these two places I found no physical evidence of underground water tunnels although I explored very many places and dry pots. I think the explanation may be that there is a third bed of limestone which is now beneath the sea in all except a very few places. The water may find its way through this last drowned plateau out to sea.

The most interesting of all these places on this coast is at Cyrene. The road from the Jebel (mountain land) falls to sea level below Cyrene from just over 2,000 feet in 10 miles, or from Cyrene itself for 1,660 feet in 6J miles. Throughout its length the road is laid on limestone. Cyrene, and Apollonia below it, were two thriving settlements of the Greek civilisation, 600 B.C. to the Vandals, 1,000 years. Cyrene was the most important place in Africa預 thriving commercial centre, and the centre of the religious cult of Apollo. The baths cover a tremendous area, and the Temple of Apollo itself had an Inner Sanctuary Baptismal Chamber continually supplied with fresh running water. This water still runs at the controlled height made by the ancient priests of the cult.

I spent a lot of time finding where this water came from and how it had been stored for the dry summer months for use in the quantities that would have been necessary. After exploring long tunnels which turned out to be the Greek drains, and huge caves connected by tunnels which were then pronounced to be the old wine storage vats, I found a man-made tunnel about 30 feet from the top of the second escarpment roughly following the contour about 30 feet from the top of the cliff. This tunnel was about three feet in height, and just wide enough for one’s shoulders, and ran for a very considerable distance. There seemed to me to be no purpose in it unless it had been cut along the natural strata of limestone to gather the percolating water. At one place the tunnel was broken on the inside of the cliff. It was possible with difficulty to get through the hole and this led one to the edge of a lake the extent and depth of which I was unable to explore on account of insufficient room.

Higher up the escarpment was a second tunnel also the width of a man’s shoulders, but this was some four to five feet in height, and every six feet or so a niche was cut in the wall, obviously to hold lights. The ruins of the temple show that the contour of the ground is not much altered, and if this is so then this larger tunnel had no connection with any of the secret entrances to the temples and sanctuaries inside the area of the Temple of Apollo (which covers the main part of the centre of the second plateau above the sea at Cyrene). It is interesting to think that the Greek engineers had found the secret of the water flow through the limestone from the holes, and that the lower tunnel was their main conduit from natural caves, and the higher tunnel the route of inspection by their engineers. The lower tunnel was damp and the higher one perfectly dry.

While trying to explore all this I found two damp pot-holes, and in the process of acquiring camel ropes made of palm fronds in order to get down them I met an archaeologist who proved to me that they were the private priests’ entrance to the Inner Sanctuary of the Temple of Apollo, and the exit by which the initiates of the order were brought to the surface in a mechanical lift so that they could never know where they had been. From these two ” pots ” I was shown the almost perfect remains of the three circular^ caves comprising the Inner Sanctuary of Apollo’s Temple. I believe that an attempt is to be made to prove beyond doubt that the centre one is the holy of all holies which was the real home of the Oracle. It is a round cave of perfect beehive shape. Round it seats are cut in the rock sufficient to hold twelve initiates, and a throne for the priest. At the back of it, entered from another place, we found a narrow passage up which it was just possible to crawl to a tiny chamber in the rock. To stand in the cave and hear the voice of a person hidden in the chamber behind this cave was a most eerie experience. In the next chamber were seats cut round a square cave, con­ taining a large tank hewn out of rock, which was said by archaeologists to have been the chamber where baptism by immersion took place. The old entrance to these chambers, now blocked by a fall, was a tunnel seven or eight feet in height containing water at a controlled height of about ten inches. It was perfectly made, like old oak fashioned with an adze, and ran for 30 odd feet, at a gentle curve all the way, with two right angles in it. The impression caused was that of having walked a long way into the rock, while the fact is that the tunnel nearly follows the outside cliff. There was one window hole in the tunnel, and the theory is that this was the means by which the priest intoned prayers and issued instructions to initiates passing through the tunnel.

The whole place is fascinating both from an archaeological and a geological view, but I do not feel competent to write about it. It requires a romantic pen, continually quoting from the classics, and I had better leave it as it is, almost forgotten and unknown, but leaving a longing to return in everyone whom I know who played there.