| History & Patrimony |
| Essaouira, the Mogador Island |
| Antique sites of Morocco |
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Essaouira, the Mogador Island - 1
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Essaouira, the Mogador Island - 2
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| The island of Mogador, located close to the current city of Essaouira on the Atlantic Ocean, conceals the traces of a Phoenician site. |
| The first archaeological excavations, carried out in 1950, manage to collect on the site coins, ceramics fragments and amphoras from the Roman era. The sonar research made on the site in 1951 brought to light a definitely older material (Punic lamps, Semitic epigraphy). The excavations undertaken between 1956 and 1959 brought to light, in the lower levels, an abundant Phoenician ceramics, with fragments of Greek amphoras and Cypriot vases dating from the VIIth century. B-C, which enables to |
match the first occupation of the site to the second half of the VIIth - beginning of the VIIth century. B.-C
At the 5th century, the Mogador site seems to be abandoned while the Punic penetration accentuates in the north of Morocco; only some amphoras prove that the island is still, episodically, attended before the Mauritanian settlement. In Mogador are located king Juba’s II Purpuraires islands. A large Mauritanian residence was discovered during the works of 1957; it will be reshaped and widened during the Roman era. |
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