Red Castle

We dedicated the entire morning to the history of Libya which was presented in a nutshell in "Red Castle" located in the center of Tripoli. Starting in date order with the 6000BC, artifacts, cave paintings and rock carvings, it progresses through Punic, Greek and Roman statues and articles collected from sites around Libya but mostly from Leptis and Sabratha.



One of those rock carvings reminded me of flower design in Perspolis's stone reliefs which had 12 petals; symbol of the number of months of one year, but at the one in this museum as I counted its petals, they were 16 and I didn't realize what they actually stood for:





There was another item that turned on my flash-back machine
and made me compare the statues on display in "Academia museum"
in Florence with the ones in here. That museum especially with its Michelangelo's David was indeed breathtaking!
But in the statues that I saw today and I put one as a sample in here, the delicacy of some of bodies was quite impressive with considering the fact that these went back to first century A.D and their sculptors, I believe, should be given credit for creating such works!



And then there was a section that brought up a part of my childhood memory; the time that our national TV in Iran used to show "Lion of the desert" (Omar Mokhtar) over and over. I was thinking that at the time of watching this movie, in my wildest dream I've never would imagined someday I would be looking at his real weapons and glasses in his own country!