Problems with Marsala

I’ve said elsewhere it looks as though Marsala’s (ancient Lilibeo) street grid is aligned so that the Decumanus Maximus faces the winter solstice sunrise. After looking through George Scheidt’s plans published in Kokalos and my own data I’ll revise that. It looks as though Marsala’s (ancient Lilibeo) street grid might be aligned so that the Decumanus Maximus faces the winter solstice sunrise. If I went straight off the plans then I’d say I was wrong, the street points to 128 degrees, and the sunrise would be around 120~121 degrees. Seven degrees might not sound a lot, but it is comfortably measurable. If hold out your hand at arms length and look at your little fingernail, that’s about half a degree, so imagine fourteen of those in a line and there’s your error.

However, it’s not that simple. The north orientation on the photographs on which the plan is based has the street aligned at 120 degrees. My own data has it at 121 degrees. The article does have one city plan explicitly measured from north. Unfortunately it’s a plan of Carthage. At the moment I think it probably faces the winter solstice sunrise, but it is possible there’s an error somewhere that I haven’t found. As the discrepancy is so large I’m trying to track down better plans of Marsala.

On the whole the Carthaginian cities in Sicily do broadly share a similar pattern of orientation. Palermo deviates, but in a peculiar but predictable way given its landscape. I’ll need more data to see whether the pattern is meaningful or in the eye of the beholder.