Then, as we got ready to climb down, Natalie Kampen spotted something.
We knew we were standing on a Byzantine fort, the stronghold of a wealthy bishop 1,500 years ago, but frankly we had no idea what might lie beneath us. The few English-language guidebooks we had were sketchy on the details.
So Kampen stretched her 5-foot, 3-inch frame along the cracked mortar of the roof, straining for a look beneath the eaves. Far below, barely visible, she could discern what looked like figures on a decorated surface.
''You see what's down there?" she said. ''I think it's a mosaic!"
This was the kind of moment Kampen had been hoping for. A professor of art history at Columbia University, she had spent years traveling the edges of the Roman empire: Tunisia, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Egypt. But not Libya. Libya has Roman ruins punching through the sands like ragged teeth, but for Americans it was long illegal and often dangerous ground.
A guard in a turban approached. Silently, he produced a key to the building and we stepped inside.
An unlighted roof arched in vaults over our heads. The room spread out before us into dusky nooks and apses. This building was no fort: It was a Byzantine church, small and elegant, its mosaic floor patterned with stags, trees, curling vines, a cross. We wandered through, documenting it with our cameras, mulling over the symbols beneath our feet. We climbed back into the bus alive with the sense of discovery.
In Europe, I thought, this little church attached to the fort would be a tourist attraction. It would have its own postcards and ticket booth. Here, it didn't even have its own name.
Libya has been open to Americans for more than a year, but if you are an average American tourist, the country probably occupies a spot on your to-see list somewhere between Cleveland and, say, North Korea.
If, on the other hand, you happen to be a member of that strange cult who spend their lives seeking remnants of the ancient Roman world, then you probably have already priced a ticket.
