Dougga

Dougga or Thugga was a Punic Berber and Roman settlement near present-day Téboursouk in northern Tunisia. The current archaeological site covers 65 hectares (160 acres).UNESCO qualified Dougga as a World Heritage Site in 1997, believing that it represents "the best-preserved Roman small town in North Africa". The site, which lies in the middle of the countryside, has been protected from the encroachment of modern urbanization, in contrast, for example, to Carthage, which has been pillaged and rebuilt on numerous occasions. Dougga’s size, its well-preserved monuments and its rich Numidian-Berber, Punic, ancient Roman and Byzantine history make it exceptional. Amongst the most famous monuments at the site are a Libyco-Punic Mausoleum, the capitol, the theater, and the temples of Saturn and of Juno Caelestis.

Names

The Punic name of the settlement is recorded as tbgg (????????‬????‬????‬) and tbgʿg (????????‬????????‬????).The Root B GG in Phoenician means ("in the roof terrace"). Camps states that this may represent a borrowing of a Berber word derived from the root tbg ("to protect"). This evidently derives from the site's position atop an easily defensible plateau. The name was borrowed into Latin as Thugga. Once it was granted "free status", it was formally refounded and known as Municipium Septimium Aurelium Liberum Thugga; "Septimium" and "Aurelium" are references to the "new" town's "founders" (conditores), Septimius Severus and M. Aurelius Antoninus (i.e., Caracalla). For treatment of liberum, see below. Once Dougga received the status of a Roman colony, it was formally known as Colonia Licinia Septimia Aurelia Alexandriana Thuggensis.

In present day Berber, it is known as either Dugga or Tugga. That was borrowed into Arabic as Doggā (Arabic: دڨة‎ or دقة) and Dougga is a French transcription of this Arabic name.

Location

The archaeological site is located 4.6 km (2.9 mi) SSW of the modern town of Téboursouk on a plateau with an...