For Greek-speaking geographers, the third and final continent in the ancient world was Libya (Λιβύη), which would later become the Latin “Africa” of the following centuries. These terms define not only a geographical and political space, but also a rich set of mental images associated with the territories and peoples of North Africa. The gradual understanding of the pre-Islamic “Maghreb” during the Roman period (third century BCE – seventh century CE) allowed for the transformation of some initial ideas, while many others remained firmly entrenched over time, leading to policies ill-suited to the environment and dynamics in the relations in a heterogeneous region with tremendously diverse communities. The original Herodotean “nymph” Libya, whose name already appears in inscriptions from Pharaonic Egypt during the second millennium, would in the late Republican and Imperial periods become a place visited and revisited by authors—always fertile, though associated with a desert territory (“solitudines”) due to an extremely hot, dry climate, teeming with barbarian populations and wild animals that were regularly brought to amphitheaters throughout the empire, enhancing the image of a fertile continent. 

In her talk, Prof. Esther Sánchez Medina, from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, will be presenting the frequently depicted image of the Maghreb from a diachronic perspective, through its textual representation, from the time of colonization to the late period, an era of contact with Arab-Berber expansion. 

Esther Sánchez Medina holds a bachelor’s degree in History from the UAH, where she also earned her PhD with an international distinction. Since 2015, she has taught at the UAM in the undergraduate History and Classical and Ancient Studies programs, as well as the Inter-university Master’s Program in History and Ancient Sciences (MIHCA, UCM-UAM) in the specialization on Ancient Rome and Hispania. Furthermore, she is taking part in the Ongoing Education Master’s Program in Byzantine Studies (UCM-UAH). She is a member of the MIHCA inter-university academic committee, which she coordinated for five years. 

Her main lines of research focus on the Western Mediterranean during the Early Empire and Late Antiquity, with special attention placed upon Roman, Vandal and Byzantine Africa. She is a member of the “Occidens” research group . 

She has produced over fifty publications, including monographs, articles, book chapters, reviews, and more. She has also been involved in numerous educational innovation projects and R&D and knowledge transfer activities. 

This scientific outreach activity has resulted from the coordinated research project MAGNA II: “Transits and transformations in Maghreb space and population” (TRAMAGHIS. PID2021-122872NB-C21 and DIANA. PID2021-122872NB-C22), funded by MICIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the ERDF. A Way to Make Europe. 

Image: Marble relief depicting the nymph Cyrene subduing a lion and being crowned by Libya, Cyrene; Roman period (circa 120–140 CE). 101.6 x 65.58 cm.6 x 65.58 cm. ©️ The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.