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Yemen Archaeological News - General


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12/21/2012

 

Fortress in the Sky

 

Buried Christian Empire Casts New Light on Early Islam

 

By Matthias Schulz

 

Archeologists are studying the ruins of a buried Christian empire in the highlands of Yemen. The sites have sparked a number of questions about the early history of Islam. Was there once a church in Mecca?

 

"The commandment "Make yourself no graven image" has long been strictly followed in the Arab world. There are very few statues of the caliphs and ancient kings of the region. The pagan gods in the desert were usually worshipped in an "aniconic" way, that is, as beings without form.

 

Muhammad had a beard, but there are no portraits of him.

But now a narcissistic work of human self-portrayal has turned up in Yemen. It is a figure, chiseled in stone, which apparently stems from the era of the Prophet.

 

Paul Yule, an archeologist from the southwestern German city of Heidelberg, has studied the relief, which is 1.70 meters (5'7") tall, in Zafar, some 930 kilometers (581 miles) south of Mecca. It depicts a man with chains of jewelry, curls and spherical eyes. Yule dates the image to the time around 530 AD."

 

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  • 1 year later...

06052014, Cover Stories, Daily News

Archaeological Finds of Ancient Arabia to be Shown

Fri, Aug 22, 2014
 
"Beginning October 11, 2014 and showing through June 7, 2015, The Smithsonian Institution will be exhibiting a selection of artifacts, film and photography from one of the largest archaeological expeditions to two ancient sites in present-day Yemen.
 
From 1949 to 1951, paleontologist and geologist Wendell Phillips led an expedition of scholars, scientists and technicians to what was then remote South Arabia on a quest to uncover two legendary cities—Timna, the capital of the Qataban kingdom, and Ma'rib, thought by some scholars to be the home of the Queen of Sheba."
 
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