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The Road To Ubar
The quest for a mythical city in the sands of the Rub’ al-Khali of Oman
One of my great frustrations is the realization that there are limits on how much we can know about the history of early civilizations. I found a kindred spirit when I opened the wonderful book by Nicholas Clapp entitled The Road to Ubar.
Clapp is a documentary filmmaker based in Los Angeles, with a keen interest in antiquities particularly those of the Middle East. As his book’s title suggest, Ubar is a place in the Middle East, specifically in Oman. However, at the start of this wonderfully readable book, the existence of this once thriving city is merely speculation based on references in the Arabian Nights and the diaries of the English explorers who ventured into the sands of the Rub’ al-Khali in search of it.
Others seeking the lost city include Lawrence of Arabia and Bertham Thomas in the 1930s and the countless nomadic treasure seekers hoping to find the rich store of wealth the city contained. The legend of Ubar held that this once powerful city was literally swallowed up by the desert.
Through 10 chapters of entertaining and informative reading, Clapp weaves a travel adventure that spans 12 years of investigation. The chronicle includes trips to the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif. for help locating the city using LandSat imagery. It also includes many hours scouring the ancient texts and maps contained in the Huntington Library. I acquired a greater appreciation for early map makers, not only in their ability to depict geographic regions, but the remarkable accuracy they were able to achieve without benefit of today’s high tech measurement devices.
Clapp is a modern day Indiana Jones but without the seemingly endless capital to bankroll his venture that his fictional counterpart seems to have always at his disposal. Clapp relies on the kindness and curiosity of others to fund his venture, not to mention the boundless drive of Clapp and his wife Kay as they venture down numerous blind alleys before reaching their goal.
The Road To Ubar is the distillation of a decade’s labor looking for a place that had been up until Clapp and company unearth it a myth. But like so much of ancient mythology, the Ubar was real and once held sway over one of the richest trading routes in the Middle East.
The adventure contains a wealth of background on others attempting to find the lost city. In fact, the success of this most recent venture owes much to the blind alleys other explorers identified. It also contains a profile of the people who once populated this ancient city. As with most ancient civilizations, the ancestors of Ubar still roam the deserts of Oman and Saudia Arabia.
The book is well annotated as well with an appendix that is almost as big as the main text. The annotations provide insight into the many sources Clapp used in uncovering his lost city.
If you love reading a good adventure this book will keep you enthralled for hours.
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