Taucheira, Wall

Of course, Taucheira always had city walls. They were renewed on several occasions. An inscription in the little museum of Taucheira commemorates a man named Aleximachus son of Sostratus, who had provided the money to improve the walls of the city somewhere in the first century BCE. They were built by the emperor Justinian (r.527-565), who also fortified other cities in Libya and built nearby Theodorias (the overall project is known as Ananeosis).

Except for the stretch along the shore, the lower parts of it have survived. It must have have had about thirty towers, of which twenty-three have been excavated. Older stones were reused, like the one with an inscription on which the words Autokrator Kaisar can still be read, the Greek translation of the Latin titles Imperator and Caesar.

The massive walls of Taucheira/Arsinoe enabled the Byzantine commander Apollonius, when besieged by the Muslim forces who had invaded the Cyrenaica in 641, to hold out until 645.