Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 5, 1992 TAG: 9202050199
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
EXPLORERS FIND FABLED CITY ANCIENT DESERT SWALLOWED
The fabled lost city of Ubar - celebrated in both the Koran and "The Arabian Nights" as the queen of the lucrative frankincense trade for 3,000 years before the birth of Christ - has been discovered by a Los Angeles-based team of amateur and professional archaeologists.Using a combination of high-tech satellite imagery and old-fashioned literary detective work, they discovered the fortress city buried under the shifting sands of a section of Oman so barren it is known as the Rub`al Khali or Empty Quarter.
Built nearly 5,000 years ago, Ubar was a processing and shipping center for frankincense, an aromatic resin grown in the nearby Qara Mountains. Used in cremations and religious ceremonies as well as in perfumes and medicines, frankincense was as valuable as gold.
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.
T.E. Lawrence called it "the Atlantis of the sands," and like the undersea Atlantis, many scholars doubted Ubar's existance.
In a press conference today in San Marino, Calif., the researchers will announce that remains excavated over the past two months reveal an unusual eight-sided structure that must have been every bit as magnificent as it was portrayed in legend.
Moreover, the researchers say they have documented how the city fell, and it did not appear to be by divine retribution for wickedness.
In building his "imitation of Paradise," the legendary King Shaddad ibn Ad unknowingly constructed it over a large limestone cavern. 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.
The discovery is expected to shed considerable light on the early history of the region, which has been shrouded in myth, according to Los Angeles lawyer George Hedges, who with filmmaker Nicholas Clapp was one of the leaders of the expedition. Scholars do not know, for example, whether the Queen of Sheba, who would have been contemporaneous with Ubar, actually existed.
Clapp had persuaded scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to scan the region with a special radar system that was flown on the last successful mission of Challenger.
The radar was able to "see" through the sand and loose soil to pick out subsurface features.
Using the imagery, the team was able to pick out the ancient trade routes, which were packed down into a hard surface by the passage of hundreds of thousands of camels. Junctions seemed likely locations for the lost city.
At the center of the city that was discovered was a permanent fortress ringed by eight walls, each about 2 feet thick, 10 to 12 feet high and 60 feet long. At each corner stood a tower, roughly 30 feet tall. The towers were the primary distinguishing feature of Ubar, described in the Koran as "the many-towered city . . . whose like has not been built in the entire land."