Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [89]
Though Shisur may still have been the modest place it had been since the discovery of frankincense, now it was the only settlement of consequence beyond the Dhofar Mountains. In contrast to the 'Adites living in the mountains, the Ubarites dwelt not in stone and brush houses but in tents. Compared to the cramped, smelly structures at Hagif in the mountains, tents were spacious and airy. Their flaps could be adjusted to bar a sandstorm or to capture a gentle breeze. They could be relocated when garbage accumulated. When in summer the desert heat became truly oppressive, the Ubarites could fold their tents and retreat to the higher elevations of the Dhofar Mountains, to live with their 'Adite kin and help with the frankincense harvest.
For several hundred years, Arabia baked and dozed in the sun, "fiery hot and scorched," in the words of Strabo. The incense trade continued with few innovations, few ups and downs, few threats. Then, between 1400 and 900 B.C., the picture changed. To the west of Shisur, toward the Red Sea, four new kingdoms rose and prospered: Ma'in, Saba (or Sheba), Qataban, and Hadramaut. These city-states raised dams, dug irrigation channels, and developed an impressive agriculture. They also sought a share of the incense trade. They harvested some aromatics themselves, including myrrh and low-grade frankincense. But for the finest frankincense, they were reliant on the People of'Ad.
In about 950 B.C., the Bible tells us, a queen of the Sabaeans journeyed north to Jerusalem to the court of King Solomon to work out a trade agreement to supply incense to Israel and other countries of the eastern Mediterranean. (The Israelites would serve as brokers.) Solomon's knowledge of the precise origin of the finest frankincense was probably hazy, and the queen was not about to set him straight.
Kingdoms in southern Arabia, 350 B.C.
She professed to be dazzled by his wisdom and, deal done, went on her way.
Incense had become indispensable in the Israelites' rituals. Even as a wanderer in the wilderness, Moses told his people to "take every man his censer, and put incense in them" (Numbers 16:17). Later, in the face of a plague, he told his brother Aaron, the high priest, to "take his censer and carry it quickly among the congregation, and make atonement for them.... And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed" (Numbers 16:46–48). In the Great Temple of Jerusalem, frankincense alone among incenses was reserved for the worship of Yahweh; any misuse or profanation of it was punishable by death.
At Shisur, the needs of Israel and the other civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean had their impact, as did the uncomfortable proximity of Arabia's new city-states, especially the kingdom of the Hadramaut. There was an impetus for the Ubarites to assert themselves in trade—and in their standing with the unseen, with their gods.
Sometime after 1000 B.C., a cluster of stone, mud, and brush buildings rose on the hilltop overlooking Shisur's spring. Juris Zarins dubbed this "Old Town." At its heart was a small temple. This modest complex to some extent echoed the faraway, highly developed religion-centered architecture of Mesopotamia. The mythologist Joseph Campbell has made much of the Mesopotamian "hieratic city." Rather extravagantly, he declares:
The whole city now is conceived as an imitation on earth of the celestial order—a sociological middle cosmos, or mesocosm, between the macrocosm of the universe and the microcosm of the individual, making visible their essential form...[It is] the sanctuary of the temple, where the earthly and heavenly powers join. The four sides of the temple tower,