Roko Rumora, Ph.D., is Assistant Curator of Ancient Art at the Toledo Museum of Art and specialist of Roman sculpture across the Roman Empire. His scholarly training at the University of Chicago and J. Paul Getty Museum investigates the evolution of sculptural display practices in the Roman Empire, with a focus on the interaction between statues and architectural space.
Face of Oceanus, mosaic. Found at Chott Meriem near Sousse. Roman, 3rd century CE. Sousse Archaeological Museum. (Photo: Roko Rumora, May 2025)
What was the purpose of your trip to Tunisia?
This was my first trip to Tunisia, and it had long been on my list. I’m a specialist in Roman sculpture, and I’ve been interested in Roman North African sculpture workshops for a while, especially how they compare in terms of style and subject matter to their counterparts in Anatolia and the Roman East.
Walk us through your trip and where you visited.
I spent about ten days in Tunisia in May 2025, starting and ending in Tunis. I gave myself a full day at the Bardo Museum, which was smart, because it is not only a huge collection in terms of number of objects on view, but also many of the objects themselves are enormous, requiring time and attention to appreciate properly.
From Tunis, I took two full-day trips, first to Dougga, then to Bulla Regia and Chemtou. I had booked a local driver (through a tour company I found online) to take me to the sites and back to my Tunis hotel. After four days, I switched bases and went to Sousse, where I again spent a full day at the Sousse Archaeological Museum, and another day visiting El Jem. For my last day, I went back to Tunis, spent the afternoon among the ruins of Carthage and watched the sunset at Sidi Bou Said – could not have ended better!
Roko Rumora in front of the 3rd century CE amphitheater at El Jem. May 2025.
Tell us more about your PhD dissertation topic, scholarly publications, and current role at the Toledo Museum of Art.
A lot of my academic work on Roman sculpture is essentially about how curatorial work operated in ancient Roman cities – how the individuals in charge of displaying sculpture in public spaces made the decisions about what goes where. I am sure a big part of my interest in this topic comes from my own curatorial work.
I’m the Assistant Curator of Ancient Art at the Toledo Museum of Art, which has one of the country’s great collections of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities and one of the most important collections of ancient glass in the world. At the moment, Toledo is preparing for a museum-wide reinstallation of its collection, and I am very excited to present new research on the collection and share new stories when we unveil the new galleries in 2027.
Floor Mosaic with Dionysus from a Roman Villa. Likely from Tunisia, 140–160 CE. Toledo Museum of Art, 1990.73. Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey.
What had been your previous interactions with ancient art in Tunisia prior to your visit?
Like most specialists in ancient art, I always thought “Tunisia = mosaics.” Certainly, when you study art of the Greek and Roman world, the mosaics of Roman Tunisia are often used not just as a high point of Roman art in North Africa, but also as emblematic of the Empire as a whole – one can think of the famous Virgil mosaic, now in the Bardo, which graces many a Latin textbook cover around the world.
Face of a statuette of Dionysus as a boy holding a rhyton; bronze with inlaid eyes. Found near Béja. Roman, likely 2nd–3rd century CE. Bardo Museum, Tunis. (Photo: Roko Rumora, May 2025)
However, in graduate school I began to study Roman sculpture from Tunisia more in depth, everything from the Mahdia shipwreck finds to the marble sculpture found in the theater of Roman Carthage. More recently, my work at Toledo has me working more on Carthaginian glass production, which is best known to audiences through the large colorful ‘head beads’ with prominent eyes.
Pendant bead in the shape of a male head, glass. 4th-3rd century BCE. From Necropolis near Ste. Monique, Carthage. Bardo Museum, Tunis, on loan from the National Museum of Carthage. (Photo: Roko Rumora, May 2025)
What sites stood out most to you during your visit? Whether for their preservation, scale, or importance.
In terms of sheer scale, the Bardo was breathtaking. Over the past decade, it has been upgraded and renovated to a great degree, with wonderful air conditioning and solid signage in English and French. The galleries devoted to mosaic are bursting with natural light, and this is an image that sticks with me – sunlit mosaics covering every surface.
Installation view of the gallery of Roman marine mosaics from Carthage. Bardo Museum, Tunis. (Photo: Roko Rumora, May 2025)
Among the archaeological sites, I was most impressed by Dougga. While I love Roman houses and villas, I am always more interested to explore an ancient city’s civic buildings – the baths, theaters, and council houses, and Dougga had so much to offer. The iconic Capitolium façade is just the beginning!
Were there any unexpected discoveries of lesser-known sites that particularly impressed you?
Yes—Chemtou. The Chemtou Archaeological Museum completely exceeded my expectations. Tucked away near the marble quarries of ancient Simitthus, it was built in the late 1990s as part of a Tunisian-German project and is beautifully designed.
What makes it special is its focus on site-specific storytelling. The museum is embedded in the landscape it interprets, allowing visitors to explore the ancient quarries firsthand. Inside, the displays weave together geology, Numidian history, Roman engineering, and human stories—from Numidian royalty to convicts who labored in the quarries. It’s a compelling example of how great museum work can be done on a modest budget, with smart design and thoughtful narrative.
Did you encounter any preservation or interpretation strategies at sites that stood out to you?
Chemtou is again a standout with respect to interpretation. In Roman law, being sent to work in the quarries was considered just as severe a punishment as being thrown to wild animals in the arena – that’s how bad it was. And the museum does not shy away from treating this brutality with dignity, even when dealing with the most sensitive topics:
Installation view, Chemtou Archaeological Museum. (Photo: Roko Rumora, May 2025)
In the center of this case they show a chip of Numidian marble, found at the quarry’s prison camp, on which an enslaved prisoner called Dorus crudely carved his vow to Mercury. With no explanation, he bluntly states two things: that he was “pedicatur,” a term that unambiguously refers to being penetrated sexually, and that he was in love, with a woman called Volusia.
Inscription of Dorus on Numidian marble. Found at Simitthus (Chemtou). Roman, 2nd–3rd century CE. Chemtou Archaeological Museum. (Photo: Roko Rumora, May 2025)
Was this a cry for help, or a boastful brag, or something entirely different? We cannot know, but this is an incredibly rare record of sexual and emotional vulnerability by one of the Roman Empire’s most powerless inhabitants – and the first known explicit description of same-sex relations in Roman Africa!
What were 2–3 highlights of your trip?
1. Sipping an 8pm coffee and people watching at Cultural Café Liber’Thé in Tunis, one of the city’s more inclusive gathering spots, where grungy teens, cool freelancers, and chill retirees all share the same comfortable space.
2. Crisscrossing the dozen or so used bookstores around Rue d’Angleterre in Tunis, chatting with booksellers ranging in age from about 15 to well into their 80s.
3. Coming face to face with the plaster funerary masks at the El Jem Museum. These extremely rare objects, among the few surviving Roman funerary masks, were cast directly off the faces of the deceased.
Death mask of a middle-aged man, plaster. Roman, 3rd century CE. From a sculptors’ workshop at El Jem. El Jem Museum. (Photo: Roko Rumora, May 2025)
What surprised you most about your time in Tunisia, creatively or culturally?
The variety of subcultures in Tunis, especially among young women and girls. While many of the guys seemed to wear the same old uniform of Adidas sweatpants and graphic t-shirts, the girls showed so much diversity – goths, punks, fitness influencers…each fully committed to her style. I don’t know what the future holds for Tunisia, but the girls seem to have a plan.
