Excavating the Land of Sheba

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To most people, Yemen is an obscure part of southwest Arabia that appears to have escaped major currents of history. Yemen’s greatest claim to fame is that it is known as the birthplace of the queen of Sheba and that it was once the center of a series of fabulous kingdoms that developed along the incense route.

According to the Bible, the queen of Sheba, having heard of King Solomon (who lived, according to the biblical chronology, in the mid-tenth century B.C.), came to Jerusalem bearing enormous quantities of gold, precious gems and spices, which she presented to the king only after testing his vaunted wisdom and finding it true. He, of 045course, reciprocated—satisfying “every desire that [the queen of Sheba] expressed” (1 Kings 10; 2 Chronicles 9)—and she departed for her own land.

The incense trade probably started as early as 1300 B.C., roughly contemporary with the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 B.C.) and Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.) of the Levant.¹ Not until the eighth century B.C. did it really take off, however. Its great riches were well known to such classical authors as Herodotus (484–425 B.C.), Agatharchides (second century B.C.) and Pliny the Elder (23–79 A.D.).²

Indeed, the growth of south Arabian civilization was founded on the trade in frankincense and myrrh that originated in what is now the Dhofar region of southern Oman, passed through the oases of the Hadhramaut, Timna (in Qataban), and Marib (in Saba) and then went northward through Najran (in Saudi Arabia) to Palestine, Egypt and Mesopotamia. North of Saba, the route followed the Saudi Arabian Hijaz mountains, where numerous 046oases provided stopping places and supply points for merchants and their pack animals (initially probably donkeys, and later camels). Although relatively little textual information survives that explicitly states how wealth was generated by the incense trade, it seems most likely that tariffs imposed on the caravan trade produced substantial revenues for local rulers, part of which could be invested in large-scale irrigation systems, such as found at Marib.

These major public works in turn generated food and fodder that could be used to supply the passing caravans. The dams and irrigation systems required massive labor to maintain them. This resulted in episodic influxes of population, which then led to a further increase in the size of the towns and the field systems needed to accommodate and feed the swelling labor pool. As Italian archaeologist Alessandro de Maigret has observed, agricultural resources were fundamental to the growth of the cities of southern Arabia, even though trade may have been the catalyst for that growth.³

This pretty much summarizes the basic 047components of what is known about the growth of early south Arabian civilization. What is less clear is how this civilization was able to develop out of what, until recently, was seen as a virtual vacuum. The answer that has been commonly suggested is that civic institutions, technical knowledge, and a significant part of the population moved into southern Arabia from the Levant.⁴ This theory received some support from the apparent absence of any pre-existing complex society in the region. Southern Arabia seemed to have lacked a Bronze Age. As recently as 1988 two scholars reported that there was an occupation gap in western and southern Arabia during the third and second millennia B.C. before the rise of the incense trade and Sabaean civilization.⁵ According to this view, western and southern Arabia became extensively populated only at the end of the Late Bronze Age or the beginning of the Iron Age (around 1300–1000 B.C.). Sabaean civilization, according to this scenario, appears to have been founded as a state without any substantial predecessor.

Today the whole picture has changed, and the void has been at least partially filled in.

The first steps towards recognizing predecessors for the Sabaean state were made only in 1981 by the Italian team directed by de Maigret. In the semi-arid Khawlan foothills southwest of Marib, de Maigret surveyed numerous small settlements that must have been semi-sedentary villages from about 2600 B.C. As de Maigret noted, however, these were hardly likely to have been the immediate predecessors of the noble Sabaean state. Nevertheless, the Italian team had laid a superb foundation for later investigations.⁶

In 1994 McGuire Gibson and I, both with the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, along with Christopher Edens of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies, decided to survey an area of the high plateau in the Yemen highlands near the modern town of Dhamar in order to investigate the origins of a spectacular system of terraced fields, as well as possible prehistoric antecedents of the Sabaeans.^a

Most of Arabia is, of course, arid desert. Because the plateau we explored lies on the path of the Indian Ocean monsoon, however, it receives considerably greater annual 048rainfall (10 to 40 inches) than other parts of Arabia and is therefore remarkably verdant. Rain falls mainly in the spring and summer as a result of precipitation from moist monsoonal air masses that rise over the mountains of Yemen and southwest Saudi Arabia. (From evidence of ancient lakes in both the mountains and interior deserts of Arabia, we know that this region was considerably wetter between 9,000 and 5,000 years ago.) It is thus possible to grow crops in both winter and summer, circumstances that significantly increase the potential of the land to support human populations. Because the area of cultivable land is often limited to narrow valley floors in the wetter parts of the area, the inhabitants have had to construct millions of terraced fields to increase the cultivable area. By the 19th century A.D., the highlands had population densities as high or even higher than many parts of the fertile crescent.

In earlier times, too, the Yemen highlands must have been inhabited by large numbers of people. The construction of thousands of terraced fields and stone houses may well have erased part of the record of earlier settlement, rendering it less visible than the early tells and temples of the more sparsely settled desert fringe where the spice route later developed.

Our aerial photographs made it immediately evident that the area we had selected to survey contained thousands of archeological sites, some 322 of which we have recorded so far. Because most ancient settlements in the region are located on hilltops, the aerial photographs indicate which summits had once been occupied. Not only did this make our ground survey more efficient, but it saved us the laborious and often exhausting task of having to climb every hill (between 7,000 and 10,000 feet above sea level). We determined approximate dates for the Bronze Age sites by ceramic typology; these dates were then anchored by radiocarbon dates for charcoal recovered from soundings performed at a number of key sites. Now, after five field seasons, 56 Bronze Age sites have been recorded.

Many of the earliest sites are small strongholds 7 to 12 acres in area and positioned on naturally defended hilltops. By the Late Bronze Age (1500–1200 B.C.), the largest settlements had shifted to lower ground and covered between 35 and 40 acres.

In contrast to the oval buildings of the small villages (less than 3 acres in area) in the semi-arid desert fringe, buildings in the highland settlements, both on the hilltops and lower down, are usually rectangular and frequently densely packed.

The best example of a hilltop site so far is the 12-acre settlement of Hammat al-Qa, situated on a small mesa northeast of Dhamar. Some 60 to 80 rectangular buildings were mapped stone by stone (by Christopher Edens, Glynn Barratt and me). Groups of buildings were separated by streets, forming blocks. The entire 049settlement was enclosed by a circuit wall entered by small, rather fragmentary gates.⁷ Assuming that each house accommodated five or six people, we calculate that the population of the settlement would have been in the range of 300 to 500 people.

Scattered over the surface of these sites and around their perimeters were numerous obsidian tools and flakes obtained from small-scale factory sites at nearby volcanic outcrops. We also found a wide range of hand-made ceramic ware.

The inhabitants grew their food in the surrounding lowlands and on the hillsides below the settlement. We were able to trace the outlines of ancient terraced fields on the sides of hills and to find agricultural installations, such as threshing floors.

It is clear that these settlements did not exist in isolation. In some desert fringe oases, early stages of irrigation agriculture can now be traced back to the third millennium B.C. At Sabir, near Aden, a massive late-second-millennium B.C. mound includes buildings of monumental scale.⁸ In short, the Bronze Age is suddenly appearing in the history of what was, until recently, terra incognita.

After about 1000 B.C., settlement in the highlands continued in the form of hilltop towns. Some of these settlements were situated upon high natural strongholds, while others were protected by partial outer walls. It was during the first millennium B.C. that civilization really took off in the oasis caravan cities of the desert fringe. Not only did cities grow to attain the massive scale of Marib 050(250 acres), but monumental temples were also constructed. One of these, the seventh- to fifth-century B.C. oval-shaped Awwam temple, located just outside Marib, is best known from the 1951–1952 excavations by Frank P. Albright for the American Foundation for the Study of Man. (This temple is also entertainingly described by the American archaeological explorer Wendell Phillips in his 1955 book Qataban and Sheba: Exploring the Ancient Kingdoms on the Biblical Spice Routes of Arabia.) These caravan cities obtained their wealth via the trade in incense from eastern Oman and southern Yemen; they then reigned supreme until the first centuries B.C. and A.D., when the new Himyarite state developed on the high plains of Yemen.⁹

In the highlands during the first century B.C., or somewhat later, the architecture of the settlements changed quite dramatically. In some of the larger settlements, we find buildings embellished with showy detailing sculpted either in an indigenous south Arabian style or in the Hellenistic/Roman “naturalistic” style. The former style, when it appears in the highlands, is austere in its geometric and mainly rectilinear design. It provides a marked contrast with the naturalistic style, which favors floral or curvilinear motifs.

It was at almost the same time that the classic south Arabian “tower house” was introduced. These buildings, probably the ancestors of the well-known “skyscraper” houses of Yemen, were apparently several 051stories in height. They were crafted of superbly cut masonry and appear to have been the homes of people of some wealth or status.

Moreover, many large settlements moved to lower slopes in order to be closer to the fields that were now receiving irrigation waters from large, well-constructed dams. These irrigated fields provided crops that supplemented the food supply conventionally obtained from small family-maintained plots.

At about the same time, we find monumental inscriptions indicating an official hand in the construction of public works, such as dams for irrigating gardens. By the early centuries A.D., the highlands had become a full-fledged state, albeit retaining a cohesive tribal structure.

It is now apparent that throughout the third, second and first millennium B.C. the highlands were fairly densely occupied by social groups organized into clans or tribes. At first, these small-scale communities occupied hilltop settlements without monumental or ostentatious public architecture and with relatively weak links to the outside world of the Levant, the Horn of Africa and other parts of Arabia. This relative isolation is in dramatic contrast with the first-millennium B.C. kingdoms of Saba that had strong political and mercantile links with all these areas (as the Bible indicates), as well as with Mesopotamia and countries of the eastern Mediterranean.

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The small-scale communities of the highlands supplied a crucial social context for the development of the various south Arabian states that emerged.

It seems that during the Iron Age the highlands were connected by social and tribal links to the affluent Sabaean state. Nevertheless, their inhabitants were probably subordinate to the Sabaeans, in part because the kings and rulers of the desert fringe controlled the valuable resources of the incense trade and wielded considerable political power. It is therefore this linkage between the highlands and lowlands that provides us with a hint concerning the social interactions that took place in the first millennium B.C., during the early stages of development of the Sabaean state.

The picture now emerging is that of early small-scale polities with hilltop towns that eventually developed in the highlands, certainly by the third millennium B.C.

The highlands continued to be rather densely populated throughout the second and first millennia B.C., with only minor changes taking place. However, with the substantial rise in the incense trade beginning around 1000 B.C., the incense states grew rapidly in the desert fringes on the edge of the existing mountain core as well as along the route leading north from the incense-producing lands to the Levant.

Later, during the Roman and early Byzantine period, there was a new emphasis on maritime trade. The incense states dependent on the overland route went into steep decline. The focus of wealth, power and state administration then altered, becoming concentrated in the high mountains south of Dhamar. The new capital was located at Zafar. Since then, the Yemen state has been centered on the plateau, most recently at Sana.

The high verdant mountains of Yemen thus formed a densely populated core that provided the preconditions for the growth of both the Sabaean and the Himyarite states. When these states consisted of a thriving string of bustling oases, the highlands continued to be a densely occupied patchwork of tribal polities that contributed labor to the incense-trading towns. It is therefore no longer necessary to posit mass movements of people from the Levant to account for the development of the Sabaean state, nor do we need to assume that with the rise of the Himyarite state there was a mass exodus from the desert fringe. Rather, since at least the third millennium B.C., there were enough original inhabitants in the region to provide the demographic foundations for a state-level society.

No such society could develop, however, unless other conditions conducive 058to the rise of a state were present. These must have included large-scale trade, the accumulation of wealth, a written language and major public institutions. These conditions likely came about as a result of trade links with the Levant, Egypt and Mesopotamia.

From at least the Early Bronze Age, numerous general similarities can be observed between the cultures of southwest Arabia and the Levant. For example, some Bronze Age pottery from the Yemen highlands loosely resembles pottery from Early Bronze Age I/II (early third millennium B.C.) of the southern Levant. The architecture of the straggling Early Bronze Age villages recorded by de Maigret resembles examples recorded from Israel’s Negev.¹⁰

By the first millennium B.C., when the incense trade was thriving, the links between Yemen and Palestine became more explicit—as is suggested by shared pottery sequences¹¹ and a shared alphabetic script. For some 5,000 years the Levant and southern Arabia have maintained distinctive ties, a relationship recognized by the Hebrew Bible in the story of the queen of Sheba. No doubt future archaeological investigations will expand on and strengthen this connection.

To most people, Yemen is an obscure part of southwest Arabia that appears to have escaped major currents of history. Yemen’s greatest claim to fame is that it is known as the birthplace of the queen of Sheba and that it was once the center of a series of fabulous kingdoms that developed along the incense route. According to the Bible, the queen of Sheba, having heard of King Solomon (who lived, according to the biblical chronology, in the mid-tenth century B.C.), came to Jerusalem bearing enormous quantities of gold, precious gems and spices, which she presented to the […]