Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [61]
A goodly number of the "standing stones" cited in the Old Testament were betyls. And, a legacy of ancient times, the betyl of all betyls is the Ka'aba, the windowless black basalt cube at the heart of Mecca. It is revered as the Bayt Allah (same as bet-yl): the dwelling place of God. An Islamic tradition has it that the very first Ka'aba was constructed in heaven, where it remains to this day. After his expulsion from Paradise, Adam built the first earthly Ka'aba on a spot directly beneath the heavenly one. God was pleased and appointed ten thousand angels to keep watch over the site. But these angels, despite their numbers, were remiss in their duties. Adam's Ka'aba fell into disrepair and was destroyed by the Flood. After Abraham traveled to Arabia from Syria, it fell to him to rebuild the structure with the assistance of his son Ishmael, who became the progenitor of all Arabs.
Whatever the veracity of this primordial history of the Ka'aba, it is certain that long before the advent of Islam, pilgrims from all Arabia journeyed to Mecca. They worshipped the holy cube by circling it, by anointing it, by touching and kissing it. As the mirror of a heavenly archetype, it had an elemental appeal. According to the late Iranian philosopher Ali Shari'ati, the glory of the Ka'aba was that it was no more or less than a simple cube, representing "the secret of God in the universe: God is shapeless, colorless, without simularity. Whatever form or condition mankind selects, sees or imagines, it is not God."3 Though the pre-Islamic Arabs may have been reaching out to more gods than one, this was the essence of what drew them to Mecca—and to the veneration of betyls throughout all Arabia.
There were once rival Ka'abas in the Arabian cities of Nejran and Sana'a, and in remoter areas stones of all sizes and shapes were worshipped. George Sale, an acerbic Arabist of the 1700s, noted that pre-Islamic Arabs "went so far as to pay divine worship to any fine stone they met with."4
To me, the triliths of Dhofar—with their inscribed capstones—appeared a natural and logical part of all this. They were betyls, each inhabited by a god's essence. But also, on a homely level, as al-Kalbi noted in his Book of Idols, triliths supported the traveler's cooking pots—they were his stove as well as his shrine. This juxtaposition of the sacred and profane might at first seem jarring, but for a practice that has been documented at Petra, a northern terminus for Arabia's incense trade routes. Betyls large and small were everywhere at Petra, and their worship was an everyday event. After worship, groups of thirteen men would often ritually assemble inside rock-cut family tombs to dine in the presence of their departed ancestors. In their honor, the men would eat off golden plates and drink wine from a shared golden goblet.
With clay bowls and cups instead of golden ware, similar rites could have taken place twelve hundred miles to the south, on the far side of the Dhofar Mountains. It was not hard to imagine the People of'Ad ritually circling the triliths and anointing their holy capstones with water, oil, or even blood. The capstones could then have been removed, and a ritual meal prepared in honor of the tribe's departed ancestors, who were all about, entombed in the valley walls and likely underfoot as well.
Here the People of 'Ad would have sought the blessings of their ancestors and gods before trekking out across the vast desert to the north. On their way to their mysterious city. The city we sought: Ubar.
14. The Empty Quarter
JUST BEYOND THE DHOFAR MOUNTAINS lay Thumrait, an Omani airbase that would serve as our staging area in the search for Ubar. Airwork, the British company handling aircraft maintenance there, kindly offered us sleeping quarters, good food, and a place to store everything from an 8,000-gallon gasoline tanker to frozen food to boxes of dental picks (for touchy bits of excavation). At Thumrait we sorted our desert gear, two truckloads of it driven from Muscat. With the aid of Airwork volunteers,