Larache, Morocco · c. 8th c. BCE
Lixus
lks
The African bank
Up the Loukkos from the Atlantic, facing Gadir across the Pillars. A Phoenician door on the African bank. Later Rome laid mosaics on the hill.
Lixus above the Loukkos
Later Roman work on a Phoenician Atlantic door · Larache / lks · Morocco
Archaeological site of Lixus
Wikimedia Commons · 08 Lixus Morocco 2011
Gad Yaton: Up the river from the Pillars. Gadir’s sister on the African bank. Honest: this floor is Roman. The door is older.
Across the Pillars
Lixus sits above the Loukkos near Larache. Tradition puts it with Gadir and Utica among the first western doors. Archaeology of the hill agrees it was early: a Phoenician Atlantic town, then Punic, then Roman. Garum vats. A quay that fed the Pillars from the African bank.
The photograph is later work — mosaic, columns, a Roman floor on that hill. Honest: this pavement is not Tyrian. The hill is the African bank of the same strait Gadir holds.
The other Pillar
From Lixus you look toward Iberia. From Gadir you look toward Africa. The bulls run on one side. The river mouth holds the other.
We do not invent Mogador and every Atlantic beach. Lixus is the page because it faces the house-name.
Melqart, not Hercules
The hill above the Loukkos looked at the same strait Gadir holds. Tradition put Hercules to sleep here. The lord was Melqart. Garum vats, later mosaics, an Atlantic quay that fed the Pillars from the African bank.
They kept the Roman floor in the guidebook. They forgot the river door. From this bank the bulls are across the water. The gifts stayed. The givers were renamed.
Lixus sits above the Loukkos near Larache, an Atlantic quay that fed the Pillars from Africa. Garum vats, later mosaics. Tradition put Hercules to sleep on this hill. The lord was Melqart. Gadir looks this way. This hill looks back. Two banks, one strait, one house-name.
Gad Yaton: they told the west that Hercules slept here. The lord was Melqart. The river was a quay.