AS PART OF SAUDI-BRITISH COOPERATION OVER ANTIQUITIES: SAUDI SEMINAR FOR ARCHAEOLOGISTS IN LONDON

		February 17, 1999

AS PART OF SAUDI-BRITISH COOPERATION OVER ANTIQUITIES: SAUDI SEMINAR FOR ARCHAEOLOGISTS IN LONDON.

Saudi Arabia's Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Education for Antiquities and Museums Dr Saad Al-Rashid said, on the occasion of the day seminar organised by the British Museum on aspects of ancient history and archaeology in Saudi Arabia, that Saudi Arabia's concern with history and archaeology had increased and in particular after a royal decree had been issued in 1972, on account of which a special department had been set up to deal with museums and archaeology within the Ministry of Education.

Dr Al-Rashid expressed the hope that the department would in the future become a national organisation for museums and antiquities, especially given that there are more than four thousand archaeological sites in the country, hundreds of thousands of manuscripts that have already been discovered, and an ambitious and comprehensive programme to map the country's antiquities and excavations.

Dr Abdul Rahman Al-Ansari, former Professor of Archaeology at the King Saud University in Riyadh and a member of Saudi Arabia's Consultative Council and of the Council's Committee on Education, Culture and Information said that 'Western interest in the antiquities of Saudi Arabia has increased and has begun to grow in a positive way because we have been able to take our antiquities in hand.'

Dr Al-Ansari added that study and research into the subject of antiquities had aroused a great deal of interest within the country and made it a matter of prime importance, whereas in Egypt the reverse was true and Western scholars were still the basic motivating force behind research.

Al-Ansari, who is considered the founder of archaeology in Saudi Arabia, presented a paper on Qariyat Al-Fau (Fau Village) which in classical texts is referred to as 'Gerha', its Greek name.

Al-Ansari said that this ancient city, which is situated at the centre of the Arabian peninsula between Al-Salil and Najran and on the edge of the Empty Quarter on the old trade route, was the political, economic and cultural capital of the Mu'in state between the fourth century B.C. and up to the first century B. C. After that, it became the capital of the Kendah Kingdom, until the fourth century A.D. He pointed out that although the city is described by the word 'qariyah', or village, the original meaning of the word in Arabic is not the same as it is today. The root of the word actually meant a large city, settled and open to the outside world and it was from that original sense of the word that Holy Mecca takes its other name, 'Umm Al-Qura', or Mother of Cities.

Qariyat Al-Fau was designated a city as the excavations that have taken place there have found that the city was not surrounded by walls, was open to the outside world and had established relations with the civilisation that existed between the Tigris and the Euphrates; it had reached a very advanced stage of human development and deserved to be named a city. Dr Al-Ansari showed slides of the excavations of the ruins of the city, which began in 1972, showing silver coins from that period as well as the city's temples, the cemeteries where royalty were buried, and also public cemeteries.

A new museum with eight galleries was opened recently in Riyadh to mark the centenary of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Many Saudi antiquities are housed at the museum which, Dr Al-Ansari said, is home to some 5000 items from antiquity. Some of these are more than a million years old. They come from some 60 major archaeological sites such as Islamic Al-Rabdah, which lies 200 kilometres east of Medina, and also Shuwaihtah, which is situated on the border between Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and contains traces of human life a million years ago.

Dr Michael MacDonald from Oxford University said in his paper, entitled 'Sermons on stone: reading, writing and drawing on stone', that the nomadic Bedouin were independent from the people who lived in the Arabian peninsula during the third millennium B.C. and, of the peoples of that time, were among the most literate. But he added that there was no evidence that could account for the comparatively high level of literacy that existed at the time in the Western region, as compared to literacy levels in the Eastern region. Dr MacDonald added that the nomadic Bedouin used to write in a number of languages in use at that time, such as Aramaic; in their leisure time, they would write letters on rocks and in caves, and these letters were written from any direction, from right to left, and the reverse. The settled residents of cities, on the other hand, used to write in one direction, from right to left, and the Arabic language was based on that.

Other papers were presented at the day seminar. Dr Geoffrey King from the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University gave a paper on the mosque architecture in Saudi Arabia, and Peter Barr of the British Museum gave a paper on trade, agriculture and the nomadic Bedouin in the first millennium B.C.

Dr John Christis, who is responsible for the western Asian antiquities department at the British Museum, considered the study day organised by the British Museum as part of a series of educational programmes about the Arab world to be an excellent way in to developing relations of archaeological cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Britain.