Germa Museum

The entrance to Germa Museum, Fezzan, Libya.

The Museum of Germa is a unique Libyan museum, housing some of the most interesting archaeological finds of the Garamantian Kingdom of Fezzan, including funerary items, costumes, Acheulean stone implements, and Berber inscriptions. The museum is often frequented by tourists, travellers and desert explorers, in search of the lost Garamantian Kingdom. No tour to Fezzan would be complete without paying a visit to this small but interesting museum of prehistory.

Some of the stone implements found in numerous sites from the Fezzan area are on display in Germa Museum. The stones were dated to the late Acheulean and the Aterian cultures, which span between 100,000 to 30,000 BC).

Stone Slabs:

Bodies were covered with leather in a vertical hole, then filled with sand, and covered with stone plates or flat stones (as those shown) to form a truly prehistoric burial chamber or grave. The Arabic text beneath the illustration of the graves says: from the evidence presented we are justified to date these graves to the Late Old Stone Age. (They probably meant to write Late Stone Age, which began about 50,000 years ago.) The stone age is divided into three periods: Old, Middle and Late, corresponding to the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic Periods. The transition from the Middle Stone Age to the Late Stone Age was marked by a technological improvements on the techniques used to prepare the stones, particularly the appearance of fine microliths (or small stone tools & implements).

Bir Ben Ghanima
Two people, each riding an animal, adjacent to lines sketching a geraf.

These hunting stones, used to hunt animals, are on display in Germa Museum.

Prehistoric Saharan painting from Germa Museum, Fezzan, Libya, showing a group of women (or priestesses) in what appears to be a ritualistic or ceremonial dance or offering of some sort; the presence of cattle and an ostrich may indicate the ceremony was undertaken in association with hunting, as to magically attempt to ensure the success of the hunt. The fat figure in the centre is the question one needs to ask. Is it a fertility ceremony? Or is it just a dance?

Stone Altars:

Garamentian Offering Tablets & Hand-Shaped Altars

These offering tablets were widely found in Fezzan an belong to the Garamentian civilisation. They were used for sacrificial purposes during worship. Some of the altars and tablets are clearly hand-shaped, recalling the famous Berber Hand, generally found across North Africa. The hand symbolism ties quite well with the idea of offering as the hand itself is often used to offer offerings to the gods.

Acheulian Oval and Pear-Shaped Hand-Axes & Stone Tools

Acheulean (Acheulian) culture belongs to the Lower Paleolithic era across Africa, particularly the central parts of Africa which now we know as the Sahara. It is characterised by the distinctive pear-shaped hand-axes, just as illustrated in the above poster from Germa Museum in southern Libya. The name itself, however, comes from the French village Saint Acheul where the culture was first identified. Further research led to Africa as the source of the culture as well as the people who carried the culture afar. Archaeologists generally agree that the Acheulian culture started in Africa and then spread to West Asia and Europe when waves of homo erectus left Africa to colonise Europe and Asia more than one million years ago.

This text from the museum gives a general description of life around the lake west of Alfuqaha oasis during the stone age