Nacéra Benseddik

Nacéra Benseddik (, Naṣīrah Bin Ṣiddīq) is an Algerian historian, archaeologist and epigrapher. She was born in Bordj Bou Arreridj on 4 December 1949.

Research Benseddik's focusses on the classical and late Antique history and archaeology of Algeria. She has published widely on the subject through books and articles, as well as conference papers and editing Wikipedia. She is interested in interactions between Roman migrants and people already living in North Africa, particularly in the late Antique period. She is responsible for creating a critical edition of classical and medieval sources from and on Algeria, as part of the Centre Recherche en Anthropologie Sociale et Culturale (CRASC). As a curator, Benseddik contributed to the 2016 exhibition Made In Algeria, which was a collaboration between the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA), the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF) and the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MUCEM). She currently teaches at the University of Algiers. Her doctoral research was undertaken at Paris-Sorbonne, where she studied the cult of Aesculapius and his assimilation with the Punic god Eshmun and a Libyan healing deity.

Religious history and archaeology

Benseddik is notable for her research into the cult of Neptune, including identifying previously unknown monuments. This is part of her ongoing study into how the gods of the classical pantheon were adopted and adapted in North Africa - particularly Neptune and Aesculapius and their roles in cults of healing in North Africa. She has also studied the cult of Mercury and its relationship to trade.

Women's history Benseddik is among the first to research women's lives in classical Algeria. In particular she is interested in how contemporary Roman and Greek writers have preserved snippets of information about the Berber women they encountered and these excerpts form some of the only surviving information we have about these African women's lives.

Frontiers Benseddik studies how frontiers were created in Roman North Africa and has examined inscriptions that portray these points, for example at the fort at Touda. Dating to the third and fourth centuries AD, this site demonstrates that forts were important to regulate the trade that came across the Saharan plateau and the High Plains. She has written on the Limes Mauretaniae - a Roman frontier territory 100 km south of Algiers.

Augustinian archaeology Benseddik has also studied the important site at Tagaste, where Augustine was born.

The history of museums in Algeria Benseddik has also drawn together the histories of collecting antiquities in Algeria, and written a full history of museums within Algeria, and about it but abroad. An important contribution to this history is the role of the colonial military, which Benseddik has examined in detail.