Syrtis is referred to in the New Testament of the Bible[6] where the Apostle Paul relates being sent in chains to Rome to stand trial before Caesar Nero.

The crew of his ship was worried about being driven by a storm into Syrtis,[7] and took precautions to prevent it, resulting, eventually, in being shipwrecked on the island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea.

In Book IV of the Histories, Herodotus describes a violent ritual that took place in the region:During a festival dedicated to the goddess Athena, their young women divided into two camps and then set to fighting each other with blows from stones and wooden clubs, thereby enacting, as they say, a ceremonial that was instituted by their ancestors in honor of the indigenous deity whom we call Athena.

Some of them who die from the wounds are called false virgins.A modern counterpart to this festival of violence, involving two opposing gangs near the Shatt al-Jerid annually engaging in combat with stones and clubs was described in Une fete de printemps au Jerid (1942) by G.

The entire Gulf of Gabes, both larger and smaller versions, is underlain by the continental shelf of the African Plate,[11] and is nowhere deeper than 200 meters.