Sbeitla / Subayṭilah, Hanshī / Sbeïtla / Sbeitla Vitalis / Sufetula / Suffeitula / (سبيطلة)

Described and illustrated in Davies (1962): a large oblong construction not conforming to the traditional shapes/types proposed by Ben-Pechat (1989) for paleo-Christian sunken fonts; the short sides of the font are straight but the long sides curve outwards in the centre, while the inside of these long sides brakes into a number of semi-cylinders, which give the inside of the font a strange shape, although it may be simply a 'sophisticated' variant of the more abundant cruciform shapes; four steps start down from one of the short sides; the upper part of the font rises a foot or so from ground level and is totally covered in a beautiful mosaic which forms a weaving of flowers in green, ochre and yellow colours on the upper surface; the centre part shows still the four round bases of the four columns which formed the ciborium (actually one of the bases sustains half of a column still standing); on the inside of one of the semi-cylinders a large dark cross (there may be another on the opposite side but it does not show on the sources. The font has obviously been repaired and restored in the last few years [ca. 1999], since Davies' illustration shows the font before reconstruction and Catlos' photograph of 1999 shows the font and the mosaics fully restored. Noted in Ferguson (2009)