Royal Mausoleum of Syphax

The Royal Mausoleum of Syphax is a funerary monument located 12 km southwest of Beni Saf in Ain Temouchent Province, Algeria. The mausoleum is the tomb where the Berber King Syphax, sovereigns of Masaesyli, were allegedly buried. However, their human remains are no longer at the site. It is a funerary monument dating from the end of the 2nd century BC, located more precisely on one of the peaks of Skouna mountain (altitude 221 m), on the right bank of the Tafna, where it overlooks the site of ancient Siga, capital of the Massaesyle king Syphax. This is a tower-shaped mausoleum with a plan similar to that of Mausoleum B at Sabratha and that of Henchir Bourgou at Djerba, with its succession of alternating concave and rectilinear facades, although it displays a simpler Hellenistic formal vocabulary and larger dimensions. Likewise, its height must have reached at least 30 meters, making it the most imposing of the tower-shaped monuments in North Africa. Furthermore, it is the only one of these mausoleums to feature, beneath the paving that borders it, a series of underground chambers. The mausoleum has also been included on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2002 under the heading "Royal Mausoleums of Numidia, Mauretania and Pre-Islamic Funerary Monuments" for criteria (ii)(iii)(iv).

Monument data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).