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Highlights
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round 1200 to 1000 bce, the rise of camel transport revolutionized Arabian commerce. With the accompanying emergence of sprawling caravanserais, the oasis at Tayma, in the northwest of today’s Saudi Arabia, became an early, vibrant crossroads on the frankincense route from Yemen north to Mesopotamia and the Levant. Thousands of merchants, joined on the caravans by scribes and armed guards, flocked to this vast palm grove, parts of which were enclosed by a six-meter-high (19’) wall. As a whole, Arabia grew rich on this trade. “Each station on the caravan route was like an oil well nowadays,” quips Al-Ghabban, noting that merchants paid the caravanserai owners handsomely for accommodation and food, grazing for their animals, and security. Tayma, and also Dedan (now al-‘Ula, 120 kilometers [75 mi] south and west), are mentioned several times in the Bible’s Old Testament.
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Dedan was emerging in the fertile al-‘Ula valley of fruit orchards, irrigated crops and pastures as the capital of one of the Peninsula’s least-known major ancient powers: Lihyan.
✏️ “was just as big and important as the [later] Nabataean kingdom, even though we know far less about it.” The first-century Roman historian Pliny the Elder makes only a brief reference to it when he calls the Gulf of Aqaba the “Gulf of Lihyan.” Lihyan covered much the same territory that was later ruled by the Nabataeans—and more, Al-Ghabban points out: from Aqaba south to present-day Madinah. For some 400 years, until their territory was conquered by the Nabataeans in the second century bce, the Lihyanites controlled the trade routes from China, India and Yemen to Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt.
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By the first century ce, Mada’in Salih, 22 kilometers (35 mi) north of al-‘Ula, became the southern outpost of the Nabataean kingdom and its center for domination of the Arabian caravan routes. The exhibition continues with photographs of elaborate Nabataean tombs cut into honey-hued cliffs and crags. The tomb façades show an eclectic mix of Egyptian cornices, Assyrian bas-relief crenellations and Greco-Roman triangular tympanums. The Romans occupied the region in the early second century, and a stone plaque, unearthed in 2003 by archeologist Daifallah Al-Talhi, attests to the restoration of the city’s ramparts during the reign of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. One of the rare Latin inscriptions found in the Arabian Peninsula, the text credits the local citizens for paying the Roman legionnaires ordered to carry out the construction.
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1000 kilometers (620 mi) south of Mada’in Salih, on the western edge of the Rub’ al-Khali (“Empty Quarter”) desert, there thrived another commercial hub, Qaryat al-Faw. For more than 600 years, from the third century bce to the fourth century of our era, it was an oasis of red-clay palaces, temples, markets, an extensive necropolis and at least 120 wells. It was a city of farmers and herders of sheep, cattle and camels that became “a staging point for travelers, merchants and pilgrims from the different kingdoms of Arabia,” according to Abdulrahman Al-Ansari, the veteran archeologist, in charge of excavations there from 1971 until 1995, who wrote about Qaryat al-Faw for the exhibition catalog. As the capital of the Kinda kingdom, Qaryat al-Faw was, he wrote, “an economic, religious, political and cultural center at the heart of the peninsula.” The principal market of Qaryat al-Faw—the name means “village of the gap”—was erected using limestone blocks and bricks in three stories surrounded by seven storage towers. Three temples and a separate limestone altar are evidence of diversity in Qaryat al-Faw’s religious life.
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“There was a great freedom in the culture, drawing influences from everywhere,” Al-Ghabban explains. “As the exhibition demonstrates, this openness of the Arabian peoples is not a new thing. It has existed for centuries and centuries.”
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the same period that Qaryat al-Faw prospered in the west, in the east the kingdom of Gerrha grew affluent from both maritime and caravan trade in incense, perfumes, pearls, spices, ivory and Chinese silk. “The people of Gerrha were masters of overland and sea transport due to their skill in shipbuilding and their knowledge of the seasonal winds,” notes ‘Awad bin Ali Al-Sibali Al-Zahrani, Saudi Arabia’s director of museums. “They also reaped the benefits of the rich pearl harvests in this region of the Arabian Gulf and levied customs duties on goods transiting through their country,” he observes in his catalog essay about the kingdom. Known across the ancient world, the Gerrhans occupied large residences decorated with ivory, pearls and precious stones, ate with gold and silver utensils and slept on gilt beds, according to first-century accounts by Pliny the Elder and the Greek geographer Strabo. But despite its history of more than 600 years, from roughly 300 bce to 300 ce, Gerrha then disappeared without a trace, becoming a kind of Atlantis of the sands whose location has tantalized and frustrated archeologists for years. Frustrated, that is, perhaps until the gold mask, the gem-studded gold necklaces with rubies, pearls and turquoises and the gold foil stamped with Hellenistic images of Zeus and Artemis were discovered in Thaj in 1998, says Al-Zahrani. Since then, palaces, houses and public buildings have been unearthed alongside an impressive wall 335 meters (1100’) long and nearly five meters (16’) thick. Based on the substantial mounds of ash and debris that have been detected, archeologists have concluded that Thaj was a major center for pottery-making—and ceramic figurines, incense burners and coins point to the likely existence of temples not yet located, Al-Zahrani adds. The evidence is leading scholars, including Al-Zahrani and Al-Ghabban, to believe the site is Gerrha’s capital.