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'Routes of Arabia' Exhibition at Louvre Is Starting PDF Print E-mail
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Monday, 26 July 2010 16:43

PARIS — The most novel show of the year is now on view at the Louvre. “Routes d’Arabie” (Roads of Arabia) sets off the viewer’s mind dreaming like none other.

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Michael Harvey/Musee du Louvre, via European Pressphoto Agency

An anthropomorphic stele of the 4th millennium B.C.

shown as part of the ‘Routes of Arabia’ exhibition at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

The revelations to be found in hundreds of artifacts never before seen outside Saudi Arabia are startling.

Forget about Arabia as a land without figural representation. It was already there in the fourth millennium B.C. In a small village near Ha’il, three sandstone steles were dug up within the last four decades. The geometric stylization of one, a standing man with two straps across his chest and a long dagger with split blade, would have appealed to Western avant-garde sculptors of the 20th century. Another stele represents the bust of a man, arms pressed against his chest, reduced to a nearly rectangular volume. By contrast, the head is extraordinarily expressive with its lips bitterly pressed and one eyebrow slightly raised, as if in puzzlement.

The Ha’il sculptures form part of a larger group of steles strewn around the Arabian Peninsula from the southernmost part of present-day Jordan to Yemen, with significant stylistic variations.

This funerary art was cultivated over a period of some 3,000 years. A rectangular headstone of a tomb, one of many from the Tayma’ or Teima oasis in the eastern region, is believed to date from the fifth or fourth century B.C. It displays the same inclination toward the reduction of human appearance to near abstraction paradoxically associated with the same sense of expressiveness. An inscription is carefully engraved in Aramaic, the ancient Semitic language that was widespread across the Near East by the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. The monumental lettering, evidently from a professional scribe’s hand, reads “In memory of Taym son of Zayd.” In formulation as in sound, the funerary memento barely differs from the inscriptions engraved in Arabic more than a thousand years later as Islam began spreading in Arabia and far beyond.

Even more extraordinary than the revelation of this long tradition in human figuration leaning toward abstraction is the discovery that it existed alongside full-fledged figural sculpture in a variety of styles from formalized rendition to realistic observation.

A stone head larger than life size was discovered by a joint German-Saudi archaeological team excavating an ancient temple at Tayma’ built between the fourth and the second centuries B.C. The wide-open eyes are reminiscent of the art of the Neo-Hittite empire in the southern areas of modern Turkey. The Hittite state had vanished by the seventh century B.C., wiped out by the Assyrians, who launched their assault from their power base in present-day Iraq. Hittite influence must therefore have reached the Arabian Peninsula at least three centuries before the Tayma’ monumental head was carved.

This is hardly surprising. Assyrian texts mention the Arabs as early as the eighth century B.C. and monumental bas-reliefs depict the Assyrians on horseback triumphantly attacking their nomadic foes riding camels. If Arab-Assyrian contacts are documented that far back, it makes it likely that Arabs were aware of the Hittites.

The nomadic heartland at the crossroads of international trade running from Yemen and the Gulf to the Levant and East Africa was certainly open to multiple influences.

A colossal sandstone statue discovered by a team from the archaeological department of the King Saud University at Al-‘Ula, ancient Dedan, reveals an art school in which familiarity with Egyptian sculpture is evident. The posture is hieratic but the very naturalistic handling of the musculature points to a time when Hellenism had left its mark on Egyptian art following Alexander’s conquest in 332 B.C. This highly sophisticated sculpture is not a one-off. Abdullah al-Saud, the director of the Riyadh National Museum, remarks in the ground-breaking exhibition book that other statues, large and small, have been excavated in ancient Dedan.

Here too, multiple trends coexisted. A colossal man’s head with a frown and lips open as if to erupt in rage is a masterpiece of expressiveness. In another monumental head, ancient stylization survives. The perfectly arched, joined-up eyebrows ultimately go back to the Sumerian art of the third Ur dynasty in southern Iraq.

That diversity itself is evidence of the remarkable vitality of this ancient Arab school in north Hejaz.

A pivotal role seems to have been played for centuries, by Hegra in the far north of Saudi Arabia which, at some point, became known to Greek and Latin writers such as Pliny. The funerary chambers hewn out of rock on a long hillside resemble those of Nabatean sites in southern Jordan, such as Petra. Some have cornices inspired by those of Egyptian temple gates. Above these, castellations are copied from Assyrian models. Over the entrance door into one of the earlier funerary chambers, a Greco-Roman triangular tympanum illustrates the gradual penetration of Hellenistic motifs. While the majority of inscriptions found at Hegra are in Nabatean, a Semitic language, some are in Greek, which lingered long after Alexander’s conquest of the Middle East. 

The Romans in turn became keen to occupy Hegra as part of their province of Arabia. In 2003, a rare stone tablet inscribed in Latin was excavated by the Saudi archaeologist Daifallah al-Talhi. It records the restoration of a crumbling structure ordered by Marcus Aurelius and can be dated between A.D. 175 and 177, proving that the Roman emperor had reconquered the city. The man supervising operations called Amro Haianis (‘Amru son of Haian) bears a Nabatean name that almost sounds Arabic, ‘Amr ibn Hayyan.

Greek was more common than Latin. A bilingual Greek-Nabatean inscription celebrates the erection of a small temple dedicated to the cult of the Roman emperor around A.D. 160-70 by the confederation of the “Thamudians.” (The Thamud are named in the Koran as a vanished nation.)

But Greco-Roman influence was by no means linked to military occupation. It reached the deep south of Arabia. The site of present-day Qaryat al-Faw on the edge of the Rub’ al-Khali — “the Empty Quarter,” as the worst desert of the world is called — was an important center by the fourth century B.C. It became a melting pot for very diverse groups and around the first century A.D., Nabateans from the far north had found their way to the city.

The exceptional diversity of the finds points to a cosmopolitan center with a corresponding mix of cultures. Alabaster high relief statues of warriors are done in a style unique to the area.

Bronze statuettes in the Hellenistic styles favored in Egypt and the Levant have turned up at Qaryat al-Faw. Some must have been cast locally. There is Hercules, with his lion skin, and Harpocrates, the Hellenistic child-god of Egyptian origin. Were it not for their discovery by archaeologists, we would be hard put to guess their provenance. A large bronze head has a hairdo handled in a manner that establishes its south Arabian make. The highly original figural style cannot be later than the second century A.D.

Mural paintings with a naïve touch vouch for the diversity of artistic aptitudes. For the moment, no coherent pattern emerges from the many disparate styles, but together, they reveal a fascination with figuration across the peninsula.

Isolated finds continue to add to the complexity of its history.

In 1998, a golden funerary mask was found by a Saudi mission from the Dammam Museum while excavating a tomb in the modern village of Thaj. It covered the face of a little girl whose body lay on a wooden funerary couch with lead and bronze revetments in the east Mediterranean style. The bronze bed legs are cast in a sophisticated style derived from Roman models. By contrast, the highly stylized mask sends back an echo to the earlier forms of expressive art known from finds much further north.

A new frontier has been opened in the history of Arabia and its connections with the outside world. The Arabs have traditionally been characterized as latecomers on the Middle Eastern scene. For a people whose beginnings are now known to go back 6,000 years, this is not really the word.

“Routes d’Arabie: Archéologie et histoire du royaume d’Arabie saoudite.” (Routes of Arabia: Archaeology and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.) Musée du Louvre, Paris. Through Sept. 27.


Last Updated on Tuesday, 27 July 2010 11:13

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