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Also known as Nassamones, Amazigh Nasamones tribe

The Nasamones () mentioned by Herodotus (c. 484–425 BCE), were a nomadic Berber tribe inhabiting the coastal region of the Gulf of Sirte and traveling inland to the oasis of Augila where men lived around a spring of water and migrated at fixed seasons each year. During the summer, they left their flocks by the sea and journeyed to Augila to gather dates from the palm trees where they grew in great abundance. They also hunted locusts, which they dried in the sun, ground into powder, and sprinkled into milk to drink. They were believed to be a Numidian people.

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The Nasamones () mentioned by Herodotus (c. 484–425 BCE), were a nomadic Berber tribe inhabiting the coastal region of the Gulf of Sirte and traveling inland to the oasis of Augila where men lived around a spring of water and migrated at fixed seasons each year. During the summer, they left their flocks by the sea and journeyed to Augila to gather dates from the palm trees where they grew in great abundance. They also hunted locusts, which they dried in the sun, ground into powder, and sprinkled into milk to drink. They were believed to be a Numidian people.

== History == They took their name from Nasamon (Νασάμων), the son of Amphithemis and the nymph Tritonis. They practiced polygamy. However, according to W. F. G. Lacroix, the Nasamones were sheep herders. Ptolemy later located them around Samah, a town between Zillah and Awjilah in Libya, and Lacroix suggested that their name derived from this place, as Na-Samah-nes. Pliny the Elder recorded the name Nasamones, explaining that it derived from a term meaning "in the middle of the sands".

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Nasamones” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.