Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [68]
Sometime before 1500 B.C. (the approximate date of Juris orange potsherd), a more technologically advanced people—almost certainly the People of 'Ad—passed this way but didn't linger, other than to build simple shelters and corrals. The valley was a rest stop on the Incense Road.
"What about Ubar?" Kay asked.
There was a considerable pause, then Ron broke the silence. "To me, it comes down to water. No water, no city. There's certainly no water out here now, and frankly, I doubt that there was three or four thousand years ago. Considerably before that, yes. But when lakes like this dried up, that was it." Juri nodded in agreement and pointed out that if the region's lakes had been spring-fed rather than dependent on rainfall, early man would have followed the springs down, digging them out as the water table dropped. That is how springs become wells. One or two almost certainly would still be in use.
We discussed the practicality of a city out here. Uncertain, shifting sands and violent sandstorms would have been a problem. Beyond that, what would have been a city's imperative? If Ubar was a staging point for caravans and a trading city—an "Omanum Emporium"—what was it doing sixteen days by camel from the incense groves? Out here, Ubar's control of the incense trade would have been shaky at best. Judging from our space images, there already would have been at least two opportunities to bypass such a settlement and avoid the tolls and tribute that the ancient Arabians were fond of extracting.
Simply put, a city out here would have been an economic disaster.
For the last few days, our conversation had been determinedly on the light side. We now knew why. Humor had kept us from facing the fact that we might well be chasing, as the bedouin doggerel described it, "a ghostly city of the mind."
Though we were all tired, nobody turned in for a while. The valley had spoken to us and told us what we didn't want to hear. But it nevertheless had affirmed—with a bit of orange pottery and an impressive road—that the people we sought had passed through. How and where had they begun their journey? Answer that, and we might answer the mystery of Ubar.
The valley also showed us that the Rub' al-Khali was not, as it has often been called, nature maligna.
The Arabs once believed that the stars were the lamps of thousands of angels. They shone brightly now, as did the crescent moon. Every curve of every dune was thrown into relief, cool blue upon dark blue. In its stillness, the valley inspired not fear, or even uneasiness, but serenity.
There is a little-known alternative translation for the phrase "Rub' al-Khali." Though it has been taken to mean the Empty Quarter since at least the 1400s, it may once, far longer ago, have meant Moon Quarter. The ancient Arabians associated different territories with different gods. The Arabian sands, then, would have been the realm of the moon god, ascendant and paramount among the gods. Rising to the sigh of cool breezes, the moon spelled relief from the heat of the day and was a lamp for caravans moving by night. The moon presided over the stars, which in turn foretold the destiny of men and nations.
By the moon's waxing and waning, all time was measured. All birth, life, and death. Long ago, an invocation cited the moon as...
...a creature of night to signify the days.
May the dead rise and smell the incense.5
Monday, December 16. Day 4: the road to—or from?—Ubar. We followed the Ubar road beyond our valley and deeper into the dunes. Our Landsat 5 / SPOT composite image was very helpful; we could cruise across the sands directly to a "blowout," a place where the road lay exposed for no more than