page_title: Ksour Essef
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Ksour Essef / History
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Cuirasse de bronze découverte à Ksour Essaf, Tunisie, catalogue du Musée Alaoui (Musée national du Bardo, Tunisie)
context_page_description: Ksour Essef or Ksour Essaf is a town and commune in the Mahdia Governorate, Tunisia, on the coast of the Sahel, about 200 km south of Tunis. As of 2014 it had a population of 36,274.
  Ksour Essef is noted as the birthplace of the poet Youssef Rzouga.
context_section_description: The creation of the city coincided with the arrival of Banu Hilal in 1050. After the destruction of the city of Salakta and the arrival of the Arabs, most of the punic, Greek and Roman inhabitants converted to Islam.
  One of the must beautiful pieces in the Bardo National Museum is a bronze cuirass found in a local sepulture, discovered in 1910. It is an import from Italy datable to c.300 BC. The deceased had been buried in a sarcophagus of cypress wood which had  traces of the ochre used at the funeral, as did the bones. This coffin is similar to that found at Gigthis with the following dimensions: 84 cm high, 180 cm long and 68 cm wide.
caption: Ksour Essef cuirass on display in the Bardo National Museum
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