Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [73]
"There's a good possibility that's translated wrong," he added. "Gold could mean not shiny metal stuff, but a 'gold grade' of incense, perhaps a balsam. The Bible tells us there were twelve, maybe more, kinds of incense. So the gifts could have been what you'd find not far from here: three kinds of incense. Golden balsam, silver frankincense, and myrrh."
If Shisur proved to date to biblical times, incense caravans may well have set out from here on a long and arduous journey north across Arabia—and, for some, on to Jerusalem. In order to return home before the scorching heat of summer, Arabian traders would have timed their arrival in Jerusalem for late December or early January.
Across the valley from Jerusalem are caves where the traders might have sheltered their camels from the winter rain and cold. Often, when local inns were full, traders and other travelers stayed in the caves. If an infant was born in their midst, Arabian wayfarers would have considered themselves blessed and offered the child gifts of their incense.
Week two at Shisur ... We dug. Slowly, with trowels and brushes. Excavation wasn't a process to be rushed. If there was anything here, it would be revealed in good time—and it was. At depths ranging from a few inches to a few feet, Juri and his students uncovered the stone foundation of what was once a wall. It ran along the ridge that had appeared to be a natural feature. The three small rooms Juri had noted backed onto the wall. He speculated that they could be storerooms or merchants' stalls: "In souks all over Arabia, you still see shops laid out like this."
Our student diggers were each assigned a three-meter square. As they carefully excavated, they recorded the positions of rocks—some of which were clearly the foundations of a wall—and noted subtle changes in the composition of the sand and dirt. Their initial modest finds included bits of worn orange pottery and tiny bones (probably mice). Juri circulated about, answering questions ("Is this worth anything?" "No"), making suggestions ("You can pull those little rocks out. Not structural"), and often pitching in with the spadework.
Four days after Christmas, poking about in an untouched square,
North ridge 2: wall revealed
Juri unearthed a shard. Easily overlooked, it was dull gray, a contrast to the orange ware he and his students had been finding. Picking it up, he turned it over, then over again. "Nice early piece" was all he could say, for he was stunned. This "nice early piece" was a fragment of a Roman jar, either brought here by caravan or copied in Arabia as "imitation ware." In either case, "early" meant before the time of Christ, possibly as early as 300 B.C.
Excavation intensified. To be sure that nothing was missed, each square's sand and dirt was collected in black plastic buckets and carted over to a sifting screen, where it proved, more often than not, to be sand and dirt, nothing more. Much of the screening fell to Absalom, one of three enterprising Baluchi laborers who had queried Ran at the coast, made their way to Shisur, and been hired. When a student spread the contents of a bucket on Absalom's screen, he shook it only briefly before answering repeated inquiries of "Anything? Anything yet?" with a dark Baluchi frown. Archaeology was not for the impatient.
It was student Julie Knight who found the next distinctive bit of pottery. Without reference texts, Juri couldn't be sure what it was, but guessed it was Greek (or imitation Greek), datable to 100 B.C. at the latest and 400 B.C. at the earliest.
In the coming days, a few shards were to become hundreds. More Greek and Roman pieces, and some that Juri could not immediately identify but thought might have come from