Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg

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Column Fragment

Bild aus CA-Sammlung Baluster

Bild aus CA-Sammlung Baluster

 The collection contains four exhibits that hail from Algeria. In contrast to the sarcophagus of Dellys, the canopy fragment of Sillègue and the canopy fragment of Ain Soltane, whose originals are preserved in the National Museum of Algiers, is the original of the fourth exhibit kept in Sétif, a city in the northeast of Algeria, about 300 km from Algiers. Sétif was founded as a veterans’ colony by the Romans in the 1st century. The city attained a local importance within the province Mauretania in the 3rd century. In the 19th century French soldiers occupied the area and began to build a booming city on a part of the ancient city of Sitifis. The column fragment is found in one of its gardens, the garden Emir Abd-el-Kadr. Unfortunately, it is not known to which local or temporal context the fragment belongs. The ornamentation, which covers the shaft in remarkable balance with widespread foliage and vine scroll decoration, offers a starting-point for identification. Owing to a lack of knowledge about other copies, efforts to pin down other details about this piece of art have run into difficulty.

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