Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [81]
Ubar and Ain Humran: comparative site plans
The antiquity of the site was clinched as Juri and his students unearthed shards of dot-and-circle pottery, the now recognizable hallmark of the People of'Ad. Here at last was a major coastal settlement built by the builders of Ubar.
With a city on the coast and another inland, the People of 'Ad could have dispatched their frankincense to faraway markets by either land or sea. Each route had its hazards. Ships were prey to storms and pirates; caravans were subject to high tolls and the depredations of brigands. Each year the 'Ad could have chosen the most promising path or could have used both routes. And if Ubar was "Omanum Emporium" on Ptolemy's map of Arabia, Ain Humran was most likely the same map's "Zaphar Metropolis," the "major city of Dhofar."
In late April, with hardly a riyal to spare, Juri and his students headed back to the United States. On the eve of his departure, the Sultanate of Oman promised to underwrite, for three years, the excavation of both Ubar and Ain Humran. In those years Juri would also record over 270 major and minor sites on the coast, in the Dhofar Mountains, and in the desert. They all had one thing in common: they defined in time and space the world of the ancient, no longer mythical, People of'Ad.
18. Seasons in the Land of Frankincense
1993: Season two at Ubar and Ain Humran. At Ubar, the next year was the season of the Citadel.
Juri put his students and the Airwork volunteers to work clearing away the structure's rubble and sorting out its chronology. Its earliest phase dated to about 900 B.C., when it would have been the focus of a growing community that Juri called "Old Town." In approximately 350 B.C. it was enlarged, and walls and towers were added to create "New Town," in which the Citadel hovered over an enclosed marketplace.
For the next six hundred years Ubar enjoyed the glory days of the incense trade. Its prosperity was mirrored in its finely crafted pottery—which, surprisingly, proved to be influenced more by the ancient cultures of the East than by those of the West. Though there was Greek and Roman ware here, much of Ubar's foreign (or foreign-inspired) pottery turned out to be Red Polished Indian Ware, a style indicative of a Mesopotamian/Persian influence.1 In particular, Ubar seems to have had very strong ties to Parthia, a not very well known civilization that thrived between 400 B.C. and 300 A.D. and, in Juris words, "gave the Romans fits" as their rivals to the east.
Descendants of nomadic horsemen, the Parthians were a prag matic lot, with little interest in philosophy and the arts. They preferred baggy pants to flowing togas. They traded widely—from China to Italy—and introduced to the West features of knighthood and chivalry, including jousting and coats of arms. On the field of battle, they frequently outflanked and outfoxed the Romans. The Parthian cavalry would appear to flee, then its riders would swivel in their saddles and with their bows deliver a "Parthian shot." The expression is with us today when we refer to a parting shot.
Foreign influences in Arabia, 200 B.C.
Juri hypothesized that a Roman-Parthian division of the Mediterranean world and the adjoining Fertile Crescent extended to client states in eastern versus western Arabia.2
As his team shoveled and sifted their way through the passageways and chambers of Ubar's Citadel, Juri was pretty sure he was unearthing an administrative center that could also have been a defensive refuge in case of attack. But then there was the curious fact that the Citadel was built out of alignment with Ubar's nearby walls.
At the time, back in Los Angeles, I was intrigued by this anomaly and looked for parallels elsewhere in the Middle East, faxing Juri what I found. Some three hundred miles west of Ubar, the British archaeologist Gertrude Caton-Thompson had excavated the "Moon Temple" of Hureidha back in 1939. Noting that its corners were aligned with the cardinal directions, she