With the exception of two epigraphic references and a surviving example at Ptolemais, paintings have vanished from the ancient buildings of Cyrenaica along with the walls that supported them. Only the rock-cut tombs offer a rich conspectus of funerary paintings from Hellenistic to early Christian times. These attracted the attention of several early travellers and archaeologists, but they have never been the object of detailed interpretative study.

Here an account is given of ten painted tombs, beginning with the Hellenistic ‘Tomb of the Swing’ at Cyrene, the painted metopes of which are now in the Musée du Louvre. Roman imperial occupation of Hellenistic tombs at Cyrene is represented by the Tomb of the veteran Gaius Ammonius. Several tombs at Cyrene were decorated in late antiquity; here the tomb of the Good Shepherd and the Tomb of Demetria are discussed. Of particular interest are the late Roman tombs in rural sites such as Beit Ammer and Zawiet Asgafa, in which classical myth and Homeric epic are treated, the products of a culture still nourished by the remote past.