At each corner stood a tower, roughly 10 feet in diameter and 30 feet tall. The fortress, they found, was ringed by eight walls, each about two feet thick, 10 to 12 feet high and about 60 feet long. In times of trouble, the fortress served as a safe haven whose walls and towers were never breached. So the bulk of the “city” would have left few permanent traces, except for fire pits, which the team found in abundance.īut at the center of the tent city was a permanent fortress that served as the home of the king, as a processing and storage facility for the frankincense and as a record-keeping center. Most Arabs in the past have lived not in traditional dwellings but in tents whose sides can be opened to allow cooling breezes. What they found was not a city in the conventional sense. Ultimately, the weight of the city caused the cavern to collapse in a massive sinkhole, destroying much of the city and causing the rest to be abandoned. In building his “imitation of paradise,” the legendary King Shaddad ibn ‘Ad unknowingly constructed it over a large limestone cavern. Moreover, the researchers say they have documented how the city fell, and that it did not appear to be by divine retribution for wickedness. In a news conference today at the Huntington Library in San Marino, the researchers will announce that the site excavated over the past two months reveals an unusual eight-sided structure that must have been every bit as magnificent as it was portrayed in legend. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, called it “the Atlantis of the sands” and, like the undersea Atlantis, many scholars doubted that Ubar ever existed. Ubar’s rulers became wealthy and powerful and its residents-according to Islamic legend-so wicked and debauched that eventually God destroyed the city, allowing it to be swallowed up by the restless desert.
0 kommentar(er)
