African Buildings in Antiquity
Hathor temple at Naqa (modern Sudan), ca. 10 AD
Trade continued to increase, Africa kept on getting richer, and more people built stone buildings in the first centuries AD. In East Africa, the queens of Kush (in modern Sudan) built stone temples and palaces.
Being part of the Roman Empire made North Africa much richer than it had been before, and between 100 BC and 400 AD people built many stone buildings all over North Africa, from Egypt to Morocco. About 100 AD, they built the great amphitheater at El Djem (modern Tunisia), one of the largest amphitheaters in the Roman Empire. They built a great city at Lepcis Magna (modern Libya) with triumphal arches, a forum, and many stone houses with mosaic floors and marble decorating the walls.
Theater at Lepcis Magna (Libya), ca. 100 AD
Near the Atlantic coast in Morocco, Volubilis - the capital of Juba and Cleopatra Selene - grew bigger and gained a stone city wall, a sewage system, stone temples, an aqueduct and public baths, and a basilica, as well as many fine houses. It may have housed about 20,000 people.
Further east in Egypt, people also built many new stone temples, houses, theaters and all sorts of buildings. By the 300s AD, newly Christian monks and nuns re-created India's rock-cut Buddhist monasteries in Egypt's desert on either side of the Nile River. In and around Carthage, Christian congregations adapted Roman basilicas into some of the earliest Christian churches.
Across the Sahara Desert in West Africa, people were still building mainly in mud-brick at Djenne-Djenno. Down the coast of East Africa it was the same story. Even though people were beginning to get richer by trading with India and with the Arabs, they still built mainly in mud-brick.