To the Temple of the Moon, and Back (Marib, Yemen)

A Retrospective of Beautiful Places Lost in Conflict, Part II, c. 1998

The Yemeni capital of Sana’a sits comfortably on a high plain, between the coffee-bearing Sarawat mountains which separate country’s interior from the Red Sea, and the Rub Al-Khali. Sana’a is divided between the traditional “Old City” and a sprawling, ever-accreting new one. Over the previous year, I’d lived in a retreat for American academics, located in the newer part of the city.

The Old City has been inhabited for more than 2500 years, but only for the last 400 or so has its skyline been dominated by mud-brick-stone high-rises frosted white, looking like so many ginger-bread men piled in some order, on top of one another.  The panorama is one of the most visually stunning in all of Yemen, up there with Shibam, aka Manhattan of the Desert, and the loud-white residences of the Eastern port of Mukalla, closer to the Sultanate of Oman.

In the 90s UNESCO named Sana’a a human heritage site, which drew in funds to rehabilitate and preserve these structures from erosion and the effects of changing weather patterns that at times brought torrential rain and floods. Of course the civil - proxy wars raging since 2011 have taken an enormous toll on the population, in addition to the fragile cultural infrastructure.

The Old City of Sana’a at dusk.

Only one Westerner was known to live in the Old City in the late 1990s — British Arabist/ Historian Tim Mackintosh Smith, whose 1990s travelogue of Yemen is, in m view, the best contemporary travelogue of Yemen written by a non-Yemeni.

I wanted to experience the place as a resident, even if just for a month. So I rented a single room in the “Old Sana’a Palace Hotel” (aka OSP), run at the time by an elderly Iraqi refugee, who spent his evenings reading Camus by candlelight.

The room had a slanted stone floor and a single light fixture. I brought a thin mattress and pillow to replace the worn bedding that came with the room. At night I lay on my back, listening to the sounds of the city, from eight stories up — the noise made by contact between a metal rod and canister, announcing the arrival of the kerosene man; the calls of the bread-seller; or the high pitched squeaks of little kids playing.

The old city has a distinctly medieval air to it. It’s ringed by a high wall and a moat that catches the runoff from short, intense rainstorms, which are becoming more common.  

The city’s massive, wooden front gate is locked at midnight, sealing in people and packs of heavy-set Yemeni street dogs, which can be seen during daytime looking completely inert, as hey soak up rays atop parked cars.  In the evening they spring to life, however, coagulating to form seamless packs that race around the old city’s narrow pathways and alleys, mowing down anything in their path.  On a couple of occasions I had to jump up and wedge myself between two adjacent building walls to dodge the canine wave, lest I be trampled, or bitten.

I’d spend part of my day working in the OSP’s mafraj -- a communal room, lined with cushions and thin-paned windows, where men or women would gather, their fronts facing into the center of the room, to chew the ubiquitous, mild narcotic. Catha edulis, commonly known as “qat.”  This mafraj had a tremendous view of all of Sana’a and its various mosques, against a mountainous backdrop, occasionally dusted with snow. 

A Window Opens:

In the evening, I’d wend my way down the OSP’s narrow, spiraled white staircase, made up of stones of different sizes. Occasionally, there were some tourists in the sitting area out front.  This evening there were three tall, thin Swedes about in their mid 20s, I guessed, with enormous, towering rucksacks that made them look like humans carried on the back of some synthetic creature that bobbed left, right, and forward as they spoke and laughed.

They spoke in English.  

“What a letdown,” one said. 

“Stones!” said another, to the gurgled agreement of a third, sipping from a water bottle.

I heard one of them say Marib — one of the places I’d wanted to visit for the previous 2-3 years, but could not, because more often than not the government had blocked access to foreigners, due to tribal violence and the occasional kidnapping.

This was the site of the Temple of ‘Awwam, or the sanctuary of Bilquis, a.k.a. The Queen of Sheba.  The temple was dedicated to the god Almaqah, which archaeologists originally thought to be the Sabean Moon God -- but may also have been a Sun deity, as (he) is represented as a bull, and a vine, symbols associated at this time with the Egyptian Sun god Ra (The Sabeans were heavily influenced by the ancient Egyptians, with whom they traded across the sea, and their pantheon of gods).

It is unclear if Sheba ever existed outside the realm of myth. If she did, she ruled over the South Arabian kingdom at Saba (Marib) during the reign of King Solomon of Israel (10^th century BCE).  Her story is deeply tied to both banks of the Red Sea, and their religious and cultural traditions — she’s known as Bilquis in Yemen, and Makeda in Axum, present day Ethiopia.

She is first mentioned in the Old Testament, in which she travels to King Solomon in Jerusalem by camel train, bringing gold, frankincense, and jewels (recent studies date the domestication of the camel to a date after the putative reigns of Solomon and Sheba, suggesting holes in the story). According to the Ethiopian Holy Book, the Kebra Negast, Solomon and Sheba had a child, Menelik, who — while his parents were Jewish — is taken as the mythical figurehead of the Ethiopian Christian dynasty.

The Temple of Almaqha

I first became aware of this place in the late 1980s reading oil prospector, man of mystery Wendell Phillips’ yarn Qataban and Sheba, in which he described his attempts to excavate the site in the 40s. That excursion almost turned to tragedy when he and his team were chased off the site by angry tribesmen, who suspected Phillips was plotting to seize their land or harm them in some way.

The pillars of the Temple of Almaqah, Marib.

The site had been visited many times by Europeans since the late 1700s.  Phillips’ book and a couple 1970s travel catalogues contained black and white pictures of the eight pillars. There was something eerily beautiful about them, and alluring about their remoteness. The site was also interesting for the fact that it was next to the ruins of the great dam of Marib, which is often referred to as the “eighth” wonder of the ancient world.

An astounding piece of ancient engineering, the half mile-long stone dam was built in the 8^thc BC to block a wadi, or river valley, then channel water into sluices that could be directed to given spots The dam burst in the late 6^th century AD, flooding the plain, and possibly scattering the now-Arabic-speaking tribes to the four corners of Arabia. Sura —chapter-lets — from the Qur’an reference the flood, and those who predict its coming, a divine retribution for sin and misrule. Thus the breaking of the Marib dam flood is part of the flood lore of the ancient Near East.

A new dam was built in the 1980s and financed by the Al Nahayan family of the United Arab Emirates, in a nod to their Yemeni origins.

I wondered if these three Swedes would have been more interested had they read up on the place before they went.  But I was excited at what I saw as an opportunity opening.  If they made it without any problems, perhaps I could.

I’d wanted to see these ruins ever since. But the security situation was iffy, and the Director of the institute forbade the American fellows to go there, in line with State Department travel warnings.

This was considered Yemeni badlands, the wild west, in a country marked by tribal feuds.  This was also the location of Yemen’s major energy concessions, long run by Hunt Oil of Texas.  Whenever there was a kidnapping or a shootout involving a foreigner, it was usually in Marib.

The government would occasionally open the Marib Road to foreigners, but those windows had gotten shorter and rarer over the last three years.

The fact that the three Swedes had made it, despite being unimpressed, encouraged me to make my own plans.  I asked the OAP staff if they could find me a driver and guide from the local tribes to take me out one morning early. They were only too happy to oblige, as this was a week’s wages for at least three people

A few days later, they dressed me in the Yemeni ‘uniform’ - a jacket, futa (waist cloth), and a headscarf.

One piece of the national dress was missing from my ensemble — an often stunning, curved ceremonial knife known as a Jambiya. A symbol of virility and power, the older knives, tucked into a curled sheath, had handles made of Rhino horn (now largely banned). Newer versions are, fantastically enough, made in China out of plastics.

With the help of a well-connected Yemeni friend, I’d bought one from one of the metalworkers a few minutes’ walk from the hotel. But I did not bring it with me to Marib. When I left the country, a customs agent told me it was “almost nice” -- meaning if it had been any nicer, he’d have had to confiscate it, for antique jambiya’s were considered an integral part of Yemen’s cultural heritage.

Two days later, I set out in a Toyota Forerunner hidden under a tarp in the flatbed, For the first hour and a half I could sit up and watch as we moved into more mountainous area -- completely devoid of vegetation -- here the contrast between the blue sky and the sand dunes and flats more pronounced. 

I was a bit uneasy about the arrangement and had a hard time sleeping the night before.  I felt ridiculous being dressed as a Yemeni, in part because I was taller than most Yemenis, the clothes were a few sizes too small.  No one would have mistaken me for a local at more than 20 yards.  

But I was soon to leave Yemen, possibly for good, and given the vagaries of the political situation in Yemen, this might be my one chance to see Marib.

Past Visitors  

The path I took was a much-expedited version of that taken by French-Jewish Orientalist and traveler Joseph Halevy (1827-1917), who in 1870 was led to the Sabean ruins by Jewish coppersmith-turned-guide Haim Hibshush, who helped him make papier mâché rubbings of the Sabean script, a precursor to Classical Arabic.

Halevy brought news of his discoveries at Saba back to Paris, to great public excitement -- even though he was not the first European to visit the site.  Halevy never gave Hibshush public credit for his help, until an Austrian archaeologist and suspected spy, Eduard Glaser used Hibshush as a guide, heard Hibshush’s story, and encouraged him to write up his version of the events now 23 years later, in Judeo-Arabic (Arabic written in Hebrew characters). You can find a recent English translation here.

In his diary, Hibshush recounts what he remembered from the trip, and the various ways in which he says Halevy nearly got both into near-death scrapes by attracting attention of the tribes, who feared they were practicing sorcery— partly because they could immediately tell he was Jewish (and Muslim Yemenis at this time considered Jews to have nefarious magical powers). Other accounts of the three men suggest that indeed, Hibshush had done much of Halevy and Glaser’s work for them, leading them to and from Marib, via a series of safehouses, and helping copy and decipher the inscriptions.

Entering Marib:

We hit the first of a few checkpoints an hour into the drive.

I retreated under the tarp, and watched through an eyelet at the fabric’s edge, as a tanned soldier stood and checked the drivers’ permit, the bolus of qat protruding from his left cheek. Some money passed hands. We went for another few miles, to another checkpoint, where another pickup, this one with a machine gun mounted in back, escorted us through the threadbare contemporary town of Marib, with its roundabout and garish signs. Our escort turned back, leaving us to finish the remaining seven kilometers to the site on a chalky, unpaved road.

A tap on the canvas was the signal for me to get out.  I took off my head-covering and saw before me the site of the temple, and greenery in the distance, near the new dam in the distance.  Around us there were strewn huge pieces of rock with exotic inscriptions engraved into them -- reminiscent of Arabic, but indecipherable to me. Surely Halevy or Glaser, or both, or just Hibshush, had made rubbings of exact pieces, which lay on their side, where they’d been deposited by the flood. The scene laid out in front of me reminded me of Shelley’s poem, Ozymandias:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”*

I walked around the temple of Almaqah, which had no visible protection from the elements — or people.   I wondered how much force it would require to tip one of the closely-spaced pillars such that it set off a domino reaction.

Back to Sana’a, then California

Three hours later we were back safely in Sana’a, well before the sun set.  I felt somewhat elated. I’d taken a chance -- not an enormous risk - but a chance, and seen something that had greatly enriched my experience.

When the director heard of my trip — it was impossible to hide it, my colleagues wanted to see the pictures, she was predictably angry. And gave me an earful for what she felt was my recklessness.

***

Back home in California two months later I picked up The New York Times one morning, and was momentarily disoriented.  The Director’s picture was on the front page, over the headline: “Americans kidnapped in Yemen.”  I read on.

She’d been taken hostage in Marib by the Bani Jabr tribe, along with her elderly parents, on the way to see the temple of Almaqah.  A day later she and her parents were released.

I assume she also had been nursing the same desire as I had been, to see Marib. And I wondered what role, if any, my own trip had factored into her decision. After all, I’d been encouraged by the Swedes.   Thankfully, all were released with government intervention a day or so later.   There was, then, still an element of theatre to these kidnappings - the tribes saw kidnapping foreigners mostly as a means to exact concessions from the central government, which would build a well or a sewage plant, in return for safe release. 

That unwritten understanding would change over the following two months, after several abducted Europeans were killed in the crossfire when the government tried to free them from their captors.

I wrote the Director to express my deep regrets for what happened to her and her parents.

*