Atlantis of the Sands

Atlantis of the Sands is the popular name given to a legendary city believed to have been destroyed by an act of God.

Introduction

One only has to consider Plato’s story of Atlantis to realise how appealing the idea of a lost city can be to the popular imagination. In modern times, the mystery of the lost city of Atlantis has generated a veritable industry of conjecture: books, films, articles, web pages, and a Disney cartoon. On a smaller scale, Arabia has its own legend of a lost city, the so-called Atlantis of the Sands, which has enjoyed an extensive debate among historians, archaeologists and explorers, and a degree of publicity that continues to this day.

"Guided by ancient maps and sharp-eyed surveys from space, archaeologists and explorers have discovered a lost city deep in the sand of Arabia," proclaimed the New York Times in 1992. When news of this discovery was announced in a blaze of publicity, there seemed few people willing or able to challenge the dramatic findings. A team of archaeologists led by Nicholas Clapp had visited and excavated the site of a Bedouin well at Ash Shisr in Dhofar province, Oman. The conclusion they reached, based on site excavations and an inspection of satellite photographs, was that this was the site of Ubar, or Iram of the Pillars, the name for an ancient city destroyed a natural disaster. Sir Ranulph Fiennes, another member of the expedition, declared that this was Omanum Emporium of Ptolemy’s famous map of Arabia Felix. Ranulph Fiennes (1993), Atlantis of the sands, Harmondsworth: Signet, ISBN 0451175778, 0451175778 “Welcome to Ubar, the Lost City of Bedouin Legend” proclaims a modern notice at the entrance to an archaeological site at Ash Shisr in the province of Dhofar, Oman. But is this really the site of the legendary lost city of the sands?

Early Explorers in Dhofar

In 1930, the explorer Bertram Thomas had been approaching the southern edge of the Rub al Khali. It was Thomas’ ambition to be the first European to cross the great sands but, as he began his camel journey, he was told by his Bedouin escorts of a lost city whose wicked people had attracted the wrath of God and had been destroyed. He found no trace of a lost city in the sands, but Thomas later related the story to T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”), who regarded Ubar as the “Atlantis of the Sands”. Thomas marked on a map the location of track that was said to lead to the legendary lost city of Ubar and, although he intended to return in order to follow it, he was never able to.

In March 1948 a geological party from Petroleum Development (Oman and Dhofar) Ltd, an associate company of the Iraq Petroleum Company, carried out a camel-borne survey of Dhofar province. Like Thesiger, the party approached Shisr from the south, along the Wadi Ghudun. Their first sight of Ash Shisur was a white cliff in the distance. As they drew closer, they could see that the cliff was in fact the wall of a ruined fort built above a large quarry-like cave, the entrance of which was obscured by a sand dune. The fort had been built from the same white rock as the overhanging cliff, giving the impression of a single structure. One of the geologists noted: “There are no houses, tents or people here: only the tumble-down ruin of this pre-Islamic fort.” The geologists, without the benefit of modern satellite analysis or archaeological equipment, were unimpressed by the ruin. Shisur, like Ma Shedid a few days before, was a simply ‘difficult water’ and their escorts spent the best part of their 3 day stay trying to extract water for their camels from the well. Morton, Michael Quentin (2006, 1st edition), In the Heart of the Desert (2nd edition) (In the Heart of the Desert ed.), Aylesford, Kent, UK: Green Mountain Press (UK), ISBN 0-9552212-0-X, 0-9552212-0-X {{citation}}: Check date values in: |publication-date= (help)

In 1953 oil man and philanthropist Wendell Phillips set out to discover Thomas’ track but was unable to follow it because of the heavy sands which made further travel by motor transport impossible. Wendell Phillips (June 1972), Unknown Oman, Librairie Du Liban Publications, ISBN 9780866850254, 0866850252

Some 35 years later, Clapp and his team uncovered a large octagonal fortress dating back some 2,000 years beneath the crumbling fort, and described a vast limestone table that lay beneath the main gate which had collapsed into a massive sinkhole around the well. This, some concluded, was the fabled city of Ubar, which was also known as Iram, or at least a city in the region of Ubar, once an important trading post on the incense route from Dhofar to the Mediterranean region. . In a 1996 interview, on the subject of Ubar, he said: “There's a lot of confusion about that word. If you look at the classical texts and the Arab historical sources, Ubar refers to a region and a group of people, not to a specific town. People always overlook that. It's very clear on Ptolemy’s second century map of the area. It says in big letters "Iobaritae" And in his text that accompanied the maps, he's very clear about that. It was only the late medieval version of The One Thousand and One Nights, in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, that romanticized Ubar and turned it into a city, rather than a region or a people.”

 In a more recent paper he suggested that modern Habarut may be the site of Ubar. 

By 2007, following further research and excavation, their findings could be summarised as follows:

• A long period of widespread trade through the area of Shisr was indicated by artefacts from Persia, Rome, and Greece being found on the site. More recent work in Oman and Yemen indicated that this fortress was the easternmost remains of a series of desert caravansaries that supported incense trade.
• As far as the legend of Ubar was concerned, there was no evidence that the city had perished in a sandstorm. Much of the fortress had collapsed into a sinkhole that hosted the well, perhaps undermined by ground water being taken to irrigate the surrounding oasis.
• Rather than being a city, interpretation of the evidence suggested that “Ubar” was more likely to have been a region—the “Land of the Iobaritae” identified by Ptolemy. The decline of the region was probably due to the decline of the frankincense trade caused by the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, which did not require the incense for its rituals. Climatic changes led to desiccation of the area, and sea transport became a more reliable way of transporting goods.
• The archaeological importance of the site was highlighted by satellite imagery that revealed a network of trails, some of which passed underneath sand dunes 100 m tall, which converged on Shisr. Image analysis showed no further evidence of major undocumented sites in this desert region, such as the Ubar of legend.

Modern academic opinion is less than convinced about the accuracy of Clapp’s findings. Clapp himself did not help matters by including a speculative chapter about the king of Ubar in his book, The Road to Ubar, which simply undermines his narrative authority. As one reviewer noted, “its fictional drama pales next to the gripping real-life story of the Ubar expedition recounted in earlier portions of this volume.”

The case for Shisr being Omanum Emporium has been questioned by recent research. Nigel Groom has pointed out in his article “Oman and the Emirates in Ptolemy's Map” published in 2007, Ptolemy’s map of Arabia contained many wild distortions. The word “Emporium” in the original Greek meant a place for wholesale trade of commodities carried by sea, and was sometimes an inland city taxes were collected and trade conducted. Thus the term could be applied to a town that was some distance from the coast. This, Groom suggests, may have been the case with Ptolemy’s ’Omanum Emporium’ He suggested that the Hormanus River, the source of which is marked on Ptolemy’s map as being north-east of Omanus Emporium, was in fact the Wadi Halfrain which rises some 20 kilometres north east of Izki. Thus, Groom concludes, Omanus Emprorium was likely to have been located at Izki, possibly Nizwa, or in their vicinity. . H. Stewart Edgell contends that Ubar is essentially mythical and makes arguments against any significant historical role for Shisr beyond that of a small caravansary.

Conclusion

Perhaps the fate of the people of Ad was a simply parable designed to warn against the dangers of ignoring God’s message; and perhaps the Atlantis of the Sands only exists in the imaginations of those who are looking for it. There is, however, evidence to support the contention that Ubar was a region and that the pre-Islamic fort at Shisr was built to protect caravans on the incense trail and to protect an important source of water.

External links

• example.com