Henchir Merouana (ancient “Lamasba”) in Numidia: A new Dedication to the goddess of fertility and fecundity "Bona Dea".

Abstract

A recently discovered Latin inscription comes to enrich the rather thin epigraphic file of “Henchir Merouana” (the ancient Lamasba in southern Numidia). The religious text of this document (still unpublished) attests for the first time, the construction of a temple dedicated and devoted to the cult of the good roman goddess “Bona Dea”. This discovery leads to a re-examination of what is known or may be known about Lamasba in antiquity. Thus, our contribution crosses historiographic, archaeological and epigraphic data, in order to explore a number of questions concerning all the information related first to the conditions of our discovery and then to the state of the monographical knowledge (identification and history) currently available on the site of Henchir Merouana. In addition, Special attention has also been paid to the study of the paper that has not yet been published, following an epigraphist-specific approach: description, copy, development, translation and interpretation of the text. Therefore, and based on the results of the previous section, particular interest will be given to a brief comparative reassessment of the new data with those of the already known documents of the North African epigraphic corpus on “Bona Dea”.

Key words : Lamasba; Roman Numidia; Latin Epigraphy; Bona Dea.