Yesterday I had a good drive around with my wife in the Green Mountain.  Both of us needed a break.   I drove to Slontah to have a look at the ancient Libyan temple over there, a place I always wanted to visit.  The temple goes back in history to an era prior to Greek times in Cyrenaica.   After driving for two hours, we arrived in Slontah which is located on a hillside, about 50 km south of Al Beda.   The town streets were deserted,   but finally I found a shopkeeper who gave me directions to the temple. it was situated halfway uphill between the town houses.  We found a front wall with a locked iron door, and from the back it was protected by a meshed wire fence.  I could climb and jump over the wall and my wife went to look from the back.  What I saw is better described by Paul Sieveking who visited the sight in June 2007.  Quote;

“A small boy (that I didn’t find around!) unlocks a metal door in a breezeblock wall, revealing a semicircular space bordered by low limestone ledges. A round base, 120cm (almost 4ft) in diameter, indicates the temple was once inside a cave, the roof supported by a pillar. The ledges are carved with faces and teeming figures of humans and animals (pig, lion, sheep, horse, deer, dog, etc.). Those on the left are much eroded and difficult to interpret, although one group of figures appear to be in an erotic embrace. Behind the pillar base is a giant horizontal snake accompanied by figures carrying baskets and a crocodile devouring a calf; along to the right is a row of five heads peering from beneath a ledge. On the furthest right is a group of figures – maybe four adults and two children – adjoining another group with a large head and a female figure in a long robe.” Unquote.

I started taking pictures and walked around in the small enclosure of what remained of the temple.  The place must be of tremendous historical value, though it is left in a very bad shape, and eventually, the forces of nature will finally succeed in destroying whatever left of its remains.  Who were those people who left us these remains?  What were their beliefs and how they lived?  What period of history they lived in?  Were they one of the ancient Libyan tribes that lived while the Pharos ruled in ancient Egypt?  Many questions that have no  answers.

 

  

I climbed back to the present and drove to Al Beda and then headed back west until I arrived to the Valley of the Lion – Wadi el Kouf.  The place was crowded with picnickers and their unnatural noise, however, we succeeded in finding a quite place near to the western edge.  We walked around, we admired nature , we felt sorry of the amount of garbage people leave behind, and we looked for wild berries – Shamari.  Eventually it was not the season yet, the trees were either beginning to bloom or the fruit was just not ripe yet.I built a small fire and grilled some chicken legs and we had a late lunch.  Finally, we called it a day, and started the drive back home, refreshed to meet another busy week to come.