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The Fishing Village of Abu Kammash
Abu Kammash is a small Berber village by the sea, located
about 25 km from the Tunisian border.
A low reef runs parallel to the shore for about two
miles, enclosing a beautiful fishing harbour, and
a small jetty with blue-painted fishing boats
moored on both sides. The fist part of the jetty
(or the landing-stage) is built of rocks and stone,
and terminates in a wodden section, just as in the
photo below. This small harbour does
not look old, and one is left to presume that the
ancient anchorage has been claimed by the sea, waiting
to be discovered by future underwater archaeology.
Indeed this has been already indicated by the recent discovery
of a buried city and cemetery by the coast of Abu-Kammash
(see below for photos).
The village
was originally inhabited by a few Berber families from
Zuwarah
who used it
as a fishing village and as a crossing point to
the peninsula of Farwah. This was partly due to the fact
that Zuwarah, until recently, was a huge region spanning
from al-Manqoub
to the Tunisian border, rather
than the present day town. Abu-Kammash is well known
for catching
"fish",
and hence its name comes from the Berber
verb
"ekmesh"
(to catch), which may thus mean
"the place to catch good fish".

Fish Caught in Abu Kammash: Berber name "bouri" or "bouree".
Fishing pots - that is pots used for fishing: the pots,
connected with a rope, are used to trap squids
and octopuses, who use them as homes. Octopuses
belong to the 150 species of marine mollusc, most
of which have external shells. The
octopus does not have a shell, just a soft white
flesh, locally considered as a delicious delicacy, especially
when dried and preserved in salt.
The name octopus comes
from the Greek oktopous
(via Latin), which means octo (eight)
and pous (foot), from the
fact that it has eight arms, each
of which bears two rows of suckers.
The Arabic name okhtabut was derived from this Latin
form, as clearly preserved by the etymology of octo (okhta).
The Berbers call it abelboul, the etymology of which
is unknown.
The Turkish Fort of Abu-Kammash:
The Turkish Fort
at Abu Kammash After Recent Restoration.
The ancient Turkish fort was built close to the beach
of Abu Kammash. The building
blends beautifully well with the surrounding flowers
and the rich-blue water of the harbour. The fort
was guarded by Turkish soldiers until the Italian
wars at the start of the 20th century. The
above photo was taken after the fort has been restored,
and unfourtunately we have no photos of what the
actual fort looked like before then.
The Newly Discovered Archaeological City in Abu-Kammash:

Is This The Ancient Punic-Roman Town of Pisindon?
The history of the village is not known, as there are
hardly any written sources about Abu Kammash. According to At-Tijani's Travels in North Africa,
Abu-Kammash once was part of Zuwarah and was inhabited
by tribes from Zuwarah - a name which originally signified
a whole region rather than a particular town. A recent
archaeological discovery of an ancient city and a
cemetery will, however, shed more light on its early history
once it has been properly studied.
The city was discovered by chance while workers were digging to install water pipes during the start of the new millennia (around 2001). The site extends a few kilometres along the coast and stretches in both directions: north beneath the sea, and south across the coastal road. Unfortunately,
it was reported that many of the
excavated graves and tombs were robed by Moroccan labourers
who were employed during the initial excavation shortly
after the discovery. The excavated parts have so far yielded funerary chambers with several group graves of cremated bodies, whose bones were preserved in jars. Although the city appears to be of Roman character, excavations showed an earlier Phoenician or Punic layer beneath the city. The practice of building new buildings on top of earlier and much older ones was very common in the ancient world.
Unstudied & Newly Discovered Tombs.
Pisindon & Lake Tritonis:
Being in close proximity to Shat al-Jareed (the
Palm Shore), the ancient Lake Tritonis, one can,
with great reserve, suggest a link between
the area of Abu-Kammash (as a whole) and prehistoric
Lake Tritonis, where Herodotus informs us that the
Libyan Amazons worshiped the Libyan Triple Goddess
Neith. But, in addition to its
geographical proximity, the ancient Greco-Phoenician
name of Abu-Kammash, namely Pisindon, may be
connected with the Libyan Sea-God Poseidon. To venture
into the sea in those days one must seek the blessing
of the gods, particularly Poseidon and Neith,
both of whom were associated with water. In fact ancient
Egyptian and Phoenician boats clearly carried the symbols
of Neith as a form of protection. The association of
Pisindon with Poseidon and the sea is also apparent from
another ancient harbour with an identical name, namely
the
Pisindon
Harbour, near today's Zwagha (Sabratha), which some think is Zuwarah
itself. According
to the Greek philosopher Plato, Poseidon was the
king and also the chief God of the lost Atlantis,
which Robert Graves connects with Lake Tritonis,
and which others have connected with the Atlas Mountains
in North Africa - so named after Poseidon's son Atlas.
Is The Search For Atlantis Over?
Of course, the popular subject of Atlantis has defied
the imagination, generated more than 5000 books,
and has slowly but steadily steered away from its
source and agreeably became an international taboo
respected scholars dare not mention, in public. It
is not my intention to associate this location with
Atlantis nor this is the place to cover
this issue. But it is important to familiarise
oneself with the local culture once present in this
region.
It is often neglected that the statements of
the classical Greek scholars, the source of all this
mystery and nonsense, were originally based on the
account given to them by their Libyan teachers: the
Berber priests of the Egyptian Delta, and hence the
first people, ever, to mention the legend
of Atlantis were the ancient Libyans, from the Tehenu
natives of the Delta. It has been already suggested that although
the original Libyan account of Atlantis was part of the
oral local literature and as such part of the Libyan
oral history (during a period when writing was
yet to be invented), the Greek
philosophers habitually used the information to write
works of fiction which epidemically spread like an
infection. And, likewise, Greek mythology is powerfully
rich in references to Libya and to this particular
period from which it is blindingly apparent that
the area of Lake Tritonis once was a major
centre of civilisation and advanced culture: the
seat of Poseidon and the capital of Neith's power,
which Zeus and, later on, the Argonauts,
could not resist to visit; and from which many writers
had blatantly fabricated their
money-making and perhaps Aryan-oriented ideas.
The big question
which scholars have miserably failed to ask, let alone
answer, is:
what was Zeus doing in Libya?
Was he a divine tourist? Was he there to
ask his Mother for forgiveness? Why was Zeus struck
by a terrible headache while walking along the shores
of Lake Tritonis in west Libya? The key to these
questions, I think, is to decipher what Greek mythographers
meant by
"headache", and also to analyse the Greek's remedy
for it:
to
relieve Zeus of his agonising headache,
a hole was dug in his head, out of which Neith was reborn
as Athena whom he had later foolishly swallowed
and regurgitated as "daughter"
!
A Tree House From Abu Kammash.
The view of Farwah from Abu-Kammash. |
Abu-Kammash Chemical Complex
The chemical complex of Abu Kammash was built in the
1970s to produce household and industrial chemicals, including about 100,000
tons of ethylene dichloride per a year; 60,000 tons of PVC per a year;
and 60,000 tons of vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) per a year.
Project Name: Design of administration and conference
hall buildings of Abu Kammash Chemical Complex.
Year of Completion of Design: 1997.
Name of Client: General Company for Chemical Industries.
Scope of Work: Structural designs for both buildings
GCCI, Noell - LGA,
Abu Kammash: New Ethylene Tank
Construction of ethylene storage
Hambrug, Germany
8000 m3
tank with belonging steel structure, piping, painting
and insulation works.
Works completed: 1998
Project Name: Rehabilitation of Abu Kammash Marine Jetty.
Name of Client: Libyan Transport and Port Administration
Scope of Work: Site Supervision of the rehabilitation
works of the reinforced concrete and steel elements
The jetty is about 2 Km long and about 25 years old.
Project Name: Evaluation and assessment of Abu Kammash
Jetty.
Year of Completion: 2007.
Name of Client: Maritime Transportation and Ports Authority
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