Saudi Aramco World

Compilation Issue 2013 -- Roads of Arabia

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

A mileage marker from a road to Makkah is one of 320 treasures in the first comprehensive international exhibition of historical artifacts from Saudi Arabia. Each one is a fragment of a little-known tale of civilizations that interwove arts and trade over thousands of years, with hybrid, yet locally distinctive, results.

Compilation Issue 2013 -- Discovery at al-Magar

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Compilation Issue 2013 -- Art Rocks

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Compilation Issue 2013 -- Desktop Archeology

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Areas of high-resolution satellite imagery, online since 2008 through Google Earth (www.earth.google.com), now help archeologists research hundreds—there may eventually be thousands—of prehistoric sites in Saudi Arabia. Not only are walls and similar structures often far easier to see from overhead than from ground level, but the ability to “fly” above the landscape at any virtual height vastly simplifies large-area surveys.

Compilation Issue 2013 -- Journey of Faith, Roads of Civilization

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Reaching to Makkah from Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo, the three main land routes of the annual pilgrimage to Makkah carried not only faithful Muslims, but also their ideas and their commerce, which they shared among each other and with inhabitants of the towns and cities through which they passed. In journeys that took months, even years, pilgrims intermingled and turned the roads themselves into the arteries of civilization’s first intercontinental culture.