Asir and Najran

During the short-three week excavation season, we had the opportunity to do some traveling in the regions of Asir and Najran, as always with a police escort.

Our archaeological site of Jurash is located on the outskirts of the city of Khamis Mushayt. We were near an airforce base, so we were repeatedly buzzed by jets during our time at the site. Curiously, lots of baboons live around the periphery of the base.

The baboons of Khamis Mushayt

There are plenty of mosques around. One evening there was a partial lunar eclipse and so special prayers were held to mark the occasion. That was the first time I have come across such a practice.

We made a couple trips to the capital city of Abha, some forty minutes drive away. It, like the Asir mountains as a whole, has a mild climate, and so is a major draw for Saudis on vacation during the summer months.

We went to see a number of archaeological sites. Much of Saudi Arabia and the Asir region remain little explored. A regional survey is planned to be part of the next Jurash season. One major rock art site we saw was at Bir Hima, north of Najran at a point where the ancient trade routes bifurcated. At Bir Hima are two rock-cut inscriptions of Dhu Nuwas, the Jewish ruler of South Arabia in the 520s A.D., who was the ruler who massacred the Christians of Najran, an incident mentioned in the Quran (chapter 85, verses 4-9).

The excavation team in front of one of the Dhu Nuwas inscriptions at Bir Hima

Our visit to Bir Hima was part of a weekend trip to Najran, where we were hosted by the Najran office of the Department of Antiquities. We saw the archaeological site of Ukhdud (old Najran) and the archaeological museum there.

General view of the citadel area of the Ukhdud archaeological site

The excavation team and museum staff at the Najran museum

Among the other noteworthy things we saw was an early 20th century mud-brick palace in Najran. Multi-story traditional mud-brick buildings remain common in the region.

The entrance to the mud-brick palace at Najran

Jurash

Me at the Jurash excavation

The dig team flew into Abha, the capital of the Asir province on August 3 and we were met by our Saudi colleagues, who took us to a school that served as our dig house on the outskirts of the nearby city of Khamis Mushayt. The dig house is about a kilometer from our excavation site of Jurash.

Jurash is a large city site spanning the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. The core part of the site of some 500 m by 200 m is surrounded by a fence, as are many other archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia. We spent three weeks this first season working at the site.

I excavated a 3 x 3 meter trench on a high mound down to a depth of 2 meters, but we did not bottom out during the 13 work days available. My trench had a couple of mudbrick walls and lots of garbage dump layers of ash filled with animal bones. The lower levels of my square produced virtually no pottery, so I do not really know the dates of what I was excavating, although my layers seemingly spanned numerous centuries. This season was only the second time that I have actually excavated a trench with multiple phases of occupation and lots of mud brick, as opposed to single-phase buildings defined by standing stone architecture.

My excavation trench at the start of the season

My excavation trench at the end of the season

We had 20 workmen, all Pakistanis from the region around Peshawar, who spoke Pushtu but only halting Arabic; 18 of the 20 had “Khan” as part of their names. My four workmen were the best that I have ever had. The workmen received a salary of 35 US dollars a day and stayed in a tent on the site.

My four Pakistani workmen

We worked at the site from 7:00 am to 12:00 and then returned to the school and had an afternoon session from 4:00 to 6:00 back at the site. Our first day we worked in the afternoon from 3:00 to 5:00, but the afternoon prayer time came around 3:30. The Pakistani workmen stopped work to pray, while we continued to work. That was not a problem for us, but the neighbors living in the apartment buildings adjacent to the site complained about us working through the prayer time, so we shifted our schedule to 4:00 to 6:00.

Jurash is over a kilometer high up in the Asir mountain range, so the temperatures were moderate, with daily highs in the low 80s/high 20s. The 4:00 to 6:00 period was especially pleasant. It even rained a couple of afternoons, including one substantial downpour with hail.

The set-up in our dig house / school was great. The dig team was so small that we each got our own private class room with carpeting and air conditioners, which however we did not really need to use. The meals prepared by a cook and assistant from Sudan were the best I have had on an excavation. The only thing lacking in the school was an internet connection.

Our dinner table at the school / dig house

The dig team consisted of seven of us from the US and Canada, directed by David Graf, from the University of Miami, all with lots of previous excavation experience, along with our Saudi colleagues. It did not work out to have women on the team for this first season although some women may join for the second season next year.

Due to security concerns we were always escorted by police whenever we went to the site, or anywhere else. At the end of the first week, people from the US embassy in Riyadh came to visit the site, including the deputy chief of mission with his convoy of security guards. We had a big banquet at the school for them.

The banquet with the US embassy staff

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

I am now back in Amman, Jordan, where I am spending a few days at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, and I now have the opportunity to get caught up with my blog entries about my past month in Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh

On the night of July 31-August 1 I flew from Frankfurt to Riyadh, which entailed several less than thrilling wee hours of the morning in the transit area of the Cairo airport. At noon on August 1 I was met at the airport by people from the US embassy, who took me to an apartment in the US embassy housing compound. All of the foreign embassies are located in a separate diplomatic quarter of the city with tight security. A couple of blocks away from the apartment is a small shopping complex with some fast-food outlets. Otherwise there is nothing of interest in the neighborhood. It was not possible for us to leave the diplomatic quarter without having embassy drivers take us, so we did not see much of the city. In general Riyadh is a hot, dusty and remarkably uninteresting city with only a few skyscrapers in a flat desert landscape. I must say that Riyadh is the first large city that I have been in, where I have no interest in spending any more time.

The next day, August 2 the dig team went to the US embassy to meet the deputy chief of mission and then we had a meeting with people at the Saudi ministry of tourism and antiquities. That evening the US embassy hosted a dinner for us; curiously wine and some other hard liquor was available. The degree of security around the US embassy is very tight and has some elements of overkill to it. We would be taken to the embassy in an embassy vehicle and at the entrance to the parking garage we passangers would have to show our US passports, while the vehicle got thoroughly searched. Our embassy minder, a Syrian national who has been working for the US embassy in Riyadh for seven years and who always prominently wears his security clearance badge, however, would have to get out of the vehicle and go through a security clearance office, before rejoining us to escort us through the embassy.

On August 3 we were to fly to Abha, the capital of the province of Asir in the southwest part of the country. However, our embassy minders had us fritter away so much time chatting over breakfast that we missed our flight. Saudi airlines cuts off check-in for flights 45 minutes before departure, and we arrived at the counter with only 37 minutes before departure. So we went back to the embassy apartments, while the embassy staff made arrangements for us to get on another flight to Abha that evening. That worked out okay. The deputy chief of mission accompanied us to the airport to be sure we got on the flight. It was interesting to observe the security precautions for him. His car had a vehicle full of Saudi security personel in front and another behind, who made sure that no other vehicle got close to his car as we drove down the highway to the airport. They came close to causing accidents as the hind car would swerve out to cut off cars that would attempt to overtake the convoy.

After the end of the project the dig team returned to Riyadh for a couple of days, and we had further meetings with US embassy people and people at the Saudi Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. We also had the opportunity to visit the spectacular new Saudi National Museum.

I flew to Amman on Thursday August 25; two other members of the dig team, however, were not allowed to leave, because they had not noticed the fine print on their Saudi visas that restricted their allowed period of residence to 14 days, while I and the others had received one month. Paying a fine for overstaying their visas was not an option, so they had to return to Riyadh and wait until the weekend of Thursday and Friday had passed, before they could apply for permission from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities sponsors to leave the country.

Germany Thursday July 31, 2008

I spent the past two weeks back in Bamberg, working on the sites and monuments of Jerusalem project with my two German colleagues, Klaus Bieberstein, who is the professor for Old Testament studies at the University of Bamberg, and Hanswulf Bloedhorn, who came from Tübingen twice for several days of collaborative work. There is still a lot of work to do on this project, and I will probably need to spent a few months back in Germany in mid-2009 to get everything done.

One weekend I traveled to the state of Saxon-Anhalt, going first to Eisleben, the town where Luther was born and died. I toured the two museums at the houses where he was born and died and the main church of St Andreas, but heavy rain killed my enthusiasm for seeing anything else. The next day I spent in Halle. In mid-2007 I had spent a couple of days there using the university library, which is being built up as the main library in Germany for Oriental Studies.

I visited the zoo and the Frankische foundation, a remarkable cluster of buildings established as a charitable educational institution in the 18th century, but first went to the recently reopened pre-history museum to see the Nebra sky disk. This disk was discovered near Halle only a few years ago and was such a spectacular find that it prompted the renovation of the museum to have an adequate place to house it. The disk dates to prior to 1500 B.C. and can be used to determine sunrise and sunset on the winter and summer solistices, making it the oldest known astronomical device.

The Nebra sky disk

Then during my last days in Germany before my new adventure in Saudi Arabia, I travelled to Kassel in Niedersaxon to see the famous gardens at Wilhelmshöhe. These extensive gardens in the English style with fountains and water cascades were built by the megalomaniacal rulers in the 18th and early 19th centuries and are so excessive that they have made the list of UNESCO world heritage sites. The rulers had wanted to built a three-kilometer stretch of water installations down from a hillside along a straight road to the city of Kassel, but they only got the first half kilometer or so done.

The tower with the huge statue of Hercules that crowns the hill top was under renovation, but I toured the palace and the pseudo-medieval fairytale castle from the early 19th century and spent a lot of time walking around enjoying the greenery.

The water cascades at Wilhelmshöhe with the tower for the Hercules statue in the distance

The view towards Kassel from the Hercules tower

The Devil's Bridge at the Wilhelmshöhe gardens

Then on Thursday July 31 I headed to Frankfurt for my evening flight to Riyadh.