According to a chronicle
preserved in the Nefta mosque, the founder of the town was Kostel, son of
Sem, son of Noah; he called it Nefta because it was here that water
boiled, for the first time, after the Deluge. The Romans called it Nepte,
but, in confirmation of this old story, I observe that the Arabs of to-day
invariably pronounce Nefta as _Nafta_. It is quite likely, too, that the
name Hecatompylos, the city of a hundred gates, which has been applied to
Gafsa, is a misreading for Hecatompolis, the land of those hundred cities
which, they say, studded the shores of this great lake.
For it was a lake, or series of lakes, and nothing else; geological
evidence is opposed to the supposition that the Chott country was ever a
gulf of the Mediterranean within historical times--it was merely a chain
of inland waters. And another surprising discovery has been made of late,
namely, that these depressions lie at different levels and have, each of
them, its own system of alimentation. This fact came to light between 1872
and 1883, when a number of studies were undertaken with a view to the
restoration of this ancient Libyan Sea.
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