Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [15]
To better understand the expeditions of the 1930s to the 1950s, I had already purchased a series of English operational navigation charts, the best available in the early 1980s. Designed for use by aircraft, they indicated prominent ruins with three little dots. I thought there was a remote chance that Ubar had been sighted and noted without anyone realizing what it was. But this was not the case. Though the rest of Oman was dotted with ruins (medieval or later), there was nothing whatever in the vicinity of Bertram Thomas's coordinates for the road to Ubar. The area was, in fact, blank. No contour lines, no shading. A legend said only "MAXIMUM ELEVATIONS BELIEVED NOT TO EXCEED 1800 FEET." Even in the early 1980s, the land was uncharted.3
That the landscape of the area had long been a blank was clear on maps going back as far as the 1500s. Huge swatches of desert were written off as "great Sandy Space" and "deserts très arides." The maps did note a number of old towns, survivors from antiquity, but not Ubar. An exception was the Reverend William Smith's 1872 Atlas of Ancient Geography, in which "Wabar" appeared in the middle of a surprisingly detailed map of Arabia. This was heartening, for it meant fabled Ubar was more than a recent bedouin invention.
Reaching further back, into medieval times, I couldn't believe my luck in finding a map that was all I could ask for. I first saw it as a reproduction, then obtained detailed slides of it from the British Library, where it resides. On the Psalter Map, a mappa mundi compiled circa 1225 and less than four inches across, tiny triangles marked the location of eighty-four of the world's major cities—among them, it would appear, Ubar! And what a city it must have been. Though it didn't appear on the Psalter Map by name, the area where the road to Ubar had been found in southern Arabia was marked:
This says are liberi n colime er culis, Latin (not-very-good Latin, I was told) for "the altar of Liber and the Pillars of Hercules." In classical mythology, the Pillars of Hercules marked the edge of the known world, and "Liber" (often "Father Liber") was another name for Dionysus, god of the vine and wine, patron of revelry and ecstatic carrying-on.
But what were these two monuments, altar and pillars, doing in Arabia, let alone at Ubar? Dionysus was a Greek god, as was Hercules. And the Pillars of Hercules, I recalled, were said to have marked the Strait of Gibraltar. Delving into classical accounts, I pieced together what I thought was a plausible explanation.
First, consider Dionysus. According to the historian Diodorus Siculus, the god was born at Nysa, a "happy mountain" in Arabia Felix. It was only natural, then, that the Arabians should venerate Dionysus as one of their own, especially at a city known for its wanton ways. I found ancient Arabia's fascination with Dionysus confirmed by the Greek historian Herodotus: "The way they cut their hair—all round in a circle, with the temples shaved—is, they say, in imitation of Dionysus."4
Concerning the Pillars of Hercules, it seems that in the lore of the ancient world there were more than one pair. In particular, a chronicle of the conquests of Alexander the Great relates that Alexander found "Gates of Hercules" ninety-five days' march along the Babylon road, about what it would take a traveler to reach the Arabian Pillars of Hercules recorded on the Psalter Map. (Ever on the alert for spoils, Alexander ordered the pillars pierced to see if they were hollow or solid gold.)
It was late on a work night when I read this. Just for a moment or so, I closed my eyes.
Digging the great red dune was easier than we thought. Slowly but surely, we uncovered many buildings. Most had fallen to ruin, yet one was remarkably preserved. It was a temple. Two grand free-stand ing pillars dedicated to the god Hercules flanked its entrance. As described in an account of Alexander the Great's adventures, they were the