When it comes to archaeology, AlUla may perhaps be best known for the Nabataean tombs at Hegra – however, these are just the tip of the iceberg.
A recent pair of archaeological excavations have unveiled fascinating new findings dating much further back, indicating the region’s Neolithic inhabitants conducted “complex and sophisticated ritual practices” more than 7,000 years ago.
The findings are centred on 1,600 prehistoric stone structures spread across northern Arabia known as mustatils. These are large, open-air rectangular structures with low stone walls.
Researchers believe Neolithic people may have embarked on pilgrimages to these sites, where they conducted rituals.
The abundance of domestic species found among the animal offerings made at the sites imply the presence of a pastoral nomadic community, who may have created the mustatils as a way of building social cohesion or marking territory.
Excavations since 2018 have indicated that the structures may represent one of the world’s oldest pilgrimage traditions. The two studies – led by Wael Abu-Azizeh, of the Archeorient Laboratory and Lyon 2 University in France, and Melissa Kennedy, of the University of Sydney in Australia, respectively – have both been peer-reviewed.
In 2018, Abu-Azizeh led a University of Oxford excavation of a mustatil to the north-east of AlUla. The site dates back to between 5300 and 5000 BC.
The team found a chamber filled with “an exceptional discovery” of horns and skull fragments, packed densely together in a layer rising 30cm from the floor.
The team describe the site as “a unique and unprecedented assemblage in the context of north Arabian Neolithic” history that represented a “testimony of complex and sophisticated ritual practices”.
Most of the horns and skulls – 95 per cent – were from domestic species including goats, cattle and sheep, alongside others such as gazelles, Nubian ibex and the now-extinct aurochs.
Beneath the bones was a thin bed of twigs, placed ritualistically on the sandstone surface. The team believes pastoral nomads may have left the fragments at the site during a single ceremony, as an offering to a deity.
Known as the "horn chamber", a space spanning 3.25 metres by 0.8 metres sits at the western end of a mustatil, which measures 40 metres by 12 metres. During the ritual, individual nomads may have taken it in turns to enter through a narrow doorway and a small antechamber to leave their gifts, on behalf of their social groups. It is thought these groups could have been part of a wider pastoral tribal community.
“The data of the horn chamber mustatil sheds an entirely new light on the complexity of the ritual practices performed by these early pastoralists. The reconstruction of these ritual practices highlights, the process through which the individual or smaller scale social component interacts with the wider pastoral, tribal group," Abu-Azizeh tells The National.
The second study, led by Kennedy of the University of Sydney in 2019, looked at a mustatil nestled deep within dense sandstone canyons east of AlUla. There, the team discovered a chamber filled with horn and skull fragments dating back to between 5200 and 5000 BC.
Compared to the other horn chamber, this site held fewer specimens, which appear to have been offered in several phases and over the generations, rather than during one ceremony. The majority of the bones were from cattle, while there were others from goats, which the team says is “among the earliest attestation of domestic cattle and goat in northern Arabia”.
Kennedy tells The National: “The ritual deposition of horn and skull elements at the mustatil that our team excavated suggests a profound intersection of belief and economic life-ways in the Late Neolithic of northern Arabia.
“The incorporation of these two facets and the scale of these structures suggests a deeply rooted belief, one shared over a vast geographic area. All of this indicates that northern Arabia was marked by a far more interconnected landscape and culture than previously supposed. As scholars, we are just beginning to understand the scale and breadth of this unique cultural horizon.”
An upright stone standing 0.8 metres tall at the heart of the shrine may have been the focal point of the bone offering ritual. Most horns and skull parts are scattered around this stone.
The team believes the stone is one of the Arabian Peninsula’s earliest known betyls, which they describe as “a mediator between humankind and the divine, acting as a proxy or a manifestation of an unknown Neolithic deity/deities or religious idea, to which the faunal elements were deposited as votive offerings".
Researchers say the site also “represents one of the earliest examples of ‘pilgrimage’ or shrine revisiting currently identified in the Arabian Peninsula”.
At the time when the shrines were in use, the region's climate was growing increasingly arid and tempestuous micro-climate fluctuations made constant mobility and herding crucial.
During the Mid-Holocene Period, the rituals may have been undertaken in hope of assuring constant rain and fertility. Researchers hope to explore whether the sites may have originally been placed close to water sources, such as wadis.
AlUla's rich archaeological history forms a fitting backdrop for the inaugural AlUla World Archaeology Summit, running from Wednesday to Friday. More than 60 speakers from various backgrounds will participate in the event and discuss how to promote archaeology on a global level, paving the way for new finds and innovations in the field.
Rebecca Foote of the Royal Commission of AlUla describes the region of Saudi Arabia as a “critical, understudied area with a deep and complex past”.
“Since the establishment of the Royal Commission for AlUla in 2017, extraordinary attention and resources have been exacted on the study of the archaeological assets and cultural heritage of AlUla County and Khaybar," she says.
“Recent discoveries, such as the excavations at mustatils, demonstrate north-west Arabia’s centrality to understanding the greater region and begin to clarify the extraordinary richness of life in this pivotal zone of the Arabian Peninsula from the Palaeolithic through to the Islamic period.”
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Manchester City 6
(D Silva 26', Sterling 38', 81', 87', De Bruyne 61', Jesus 68')
Watford 0
Man of the match: Bernardo Silva (Manchester City)
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1. Featherweight 66kg: Ben Lucas (AUS) v Ibrahim Kendil (EGY)
2. Lightweight 70kg: Mohammed Kareem Aljnan (SYR) v Alphonse Besala (CMR)
3. Welterweight 77kg:Marcos Costa (BRA) v Abdelhakim Wahid (MAR)
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Sri Lanka squad for tri-nation series
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All you need to know about Formula E in Saudi Arabia
What The Saudia Ad Diriyah E-Prix
When Saturday
Where Diriyah in Saudi Arabia
What time Qualifying takes place from 11.50am UAE time through until the Super Pole session, which is due to end at 12.55pm. The race, which will last for 45 minutes, starts at 4.05pm.
Who is competing There are 22 drivers, from 11 teams, on the grid, with each vehicle run solely on electronic power.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
MATCH INFO
Europa League final
Marseille 0
Atletico Madrid 3
Greizmann (21', 49'), Gabi (89')
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TUESDAY'S ORDER OF PLAY
Centre Court
Starting at 2pm:
Elina Svitolina (UKR) [3] v Jennifer Brady (USA)
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (RUS) v Belinda Bencic (SUI [4]
Not before 7pm:
Sofia Kenin (USA) [5] v Elena Rybakina (KAZ)
Maria Sakkari (GRE) v Aryna Sabalenka (BLR) [7]
Court One
Starting at midday:
Karolina Muchova (CZE) v Katerina Siniakova (CZE)
Kristina Mladenovic (FRA) v Aliaksandra Sasnovich (BLR)
Veronika Kudermetova (RUS) v Dayana Yastermska (UKR)
Petra Martic (CRO) [8] v Su-Wei Hsieh (TPE)
Sorana Cirstea (ROU) v Anett Kontaveit (EST)
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Asia Cup 2018 Qualifier
Sunday's results:
- UAE beat Malaysia by eight wickets
- Nepal beat Singapore by four wickets
- Oman v Hong Kong, no result
Tuesday fixtures:
- Malaysia v Singapore
- UAE v Oman
- Nepal v Hong Kong
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SCORES
Yorkshire Vikings 144-1 in 12.5 overs
(Tom Kohler 72 not out, Harry Broook 42 not out)
bt Hobart Hurricanes 140-7 in 20 overs
(Caleb Jewell 38, Sean Willis 35, Karl Carver 2-29, Josh Shaw 2-39)
Sheikh Zayed's poem
When it is unveiled at Abu Dhabi Art, the Standing Tall exhibition will appear as an interplay of poetry and art. The 100 scarves are 100 fragments surrounding five, figurative, female sculptures, and both sculptures and scarves are hand-embroidered by a group of refugee women artisans, who used the Palestinian cross-stitch embroidery art of tatreez. Fragments of Sheikh Zayed’s poem Your Love is Ruling My Heart, written in Arabic as a love poem to his nation, are embroidered onto both the sculptures and the scarves. Here is the English translation.
Your love is ruling over my heart
Your love is ruling over my heart, even a mountain can’t bear all of it
Woe for my heart of such a love, if it befell it and made it its home
You came on me like a gleaming sun, you are the cure for my soul of its sickness
Be lenient on me, oh tender one, and have mercy on who because of you is in ruins
You are like the Ajeed Al-reem [leader of the gazelle herd] for my country, the source of all of its knowledge
You waddle even when you stand still, with feet white like the blooming of the dates of the palm
Oh, who wishes to deprive me of sleep, the night has ended and I still have not seen you
You are the cure for my sickness and my support, you dried my throat up let me go and damp it
Help me, oh children of mine, for in his love my life will pass me by.
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