Caravan Kingdoms: Yemen and the Ancient Incense Trade

For more than a thousand years, from around 800 BCE to 600 CE, the kingdoms of Qataban, Saba (biblical Sheba), and Himyar, in present-day Yemen, grew fabulously and famously wealthy. They derived their wealth from control over the caravan routes that crossed the southern Arabian Peninsula, and in particular from the international trade in frankincense and myrrh. Excavations at the capitals of these ancient kingdoms have uncovered monumental architecture, distinctive stone funerary sculpture, elaborately carved inscriptions, and sophisticated metalwork.

Admired for its fragrant and abundant foliage and luxuriant pastures, Yemen was central to the ancient “global economy” that once extended from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. It is no wonder that it was known to the Greeks and Romans as “Arabia the Blessed.”

This exhibition tells the story of these caravan kingdoms, whose fortunes rose and declined along with the demand for their resources, and explores the unique and little-known cultural traditions these kingdoms created.

A great desert, the Ramlat as-Sabatayn, occupies Yemen’s interior, and the caravan kingdoms established along this desert’s edges dominated the region during the first millennium BCE. Each of the four major valleys that flow from the tall surrounding mountains to the desert was occupied by a state—from west to east Saba, Qataban, Awsan, and Hadramawt. Their respective territories corresponded to the valley and its tributaries. In the early seventh century BCE, the kingdom of Saba extended its dominance over a wide area of southern Arabia and probably held this territory until the fourth century BCE, when Qataban took it over until the first century CE.

The kingdom of Saba, with its great capital at Marib, was organized around a common language (Sabaean), a shared cult of the god Almaqah and a pantheon of lesser deities, and centralized political institutions. The early Sabaean rulers held the title of mukarrib, “federator,” who made key decisions in consultation with other important figures represented in councils or assemblies.

Saba’s fabled prosperity—epitomized by the legendary Queen of Sheba—derived both from the incense trade and the agricultural resources created through intensive exploitation of the large Marib oasis. Sophisticated irrigation systems enabled the inhabitants of Marib and other desert oases to harness the floods that poured down mountain streambeds following seasonal rains, creating fertile fields for growing grains, food plants, and fruit orchards.

Around the first century BCE, political and economic interest shifted from Yemen’s inland desert to the sea and its nearby mountains. Maritime trade had superseded the old caravan routes. Only a state that controlled access to the ports along the peninsula’s southern coast could challenge the Roman Empire’s growing dominance of maritime trade from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.

From its home in Yemen’s fertile southern highlands, the dynasty of Himyar gradually conquered the kingdoms of Qataban, Saba, and Hadramawt during the first centuries of the common era. During the fifth and early sixth centuries, the Himyarite kings ruled the entire southern Arabian Peninsula from their capital at Zafar and conducted a flourishing trade based primarily at their main port of Mouza (modern Mokka).

The Himyarite kings also contended with the growing presence of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), a Christian kingdom, which periodically gained control of southwestern Yemen. In the late fourth century CE, the Himyarite kings officially adopted a monotheistic religion, probably Judaism. Around 570 CE, the Sasanian dynasty that ruled the Near East and part of Central Asia took control of Yemen, and in 628 the last Sasanian governor of Yemen converted to Islam.

Himyar’s sea trade introduced artistic styles, subjects, and craft traditions from the Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds—along with their cultural meanings—in greater quantities than ever before. Patrons increasingly looked to foreign models. The abandonment of traditional South Arabian religions gradually put an end to the temples and thus also to the production of works of art and dedications they had fostered and housed.

A market for perfumes and incense existed in the Near East and Egypt beginning at least in the first millennium BCE. Frankincense, a gum resin obtained from a small tree (Boswellia sacra), was prized for the fragrant smoke it produces when burned. Myrrh, likewise a gum resin from a small tree (Commiphora myrrha), was also used in incenses, but it was more often a component of medicines and perfumes.

These trees grow primarily in parts of eastern Africa, the southern Arabian Peninsula, and India, and their restricted natural occurrence contributed to their market value. Frankincense and myrrh were the most sought-after forms of incense in the Mediterranean world, hence their inclusion among the gifts offered by the Magi to the newborn Jesus.

Incense was an essential ingredient for temple ceremonies and funerary rites among cultures in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece, as well as in South Arabia itself. The Romans purchased these aromatics in enormous quantities, and the most extensive surviving accounts of the incense trade derive from Roman authors. Demand vastly exceeded supply.

The high prices paid for South Arabian aromatics resulted in part from the length and difficulty of the journey to far-flung markets. Initially, camels transported incense across the Arabian Desert to the eastern Mediterranean coast or the western shores of the Persian Gulf. From the beginning of the common era, maritime routes predominated. Ships ferried their precious cargo from ports along the southwest Arabian Peninsula to Egypt’s Red Sea coast, the Gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean.

Wealth created by the long-distance incense trade stimulated massive building projects such as city walls, palaces, and sanctuaries. Cities had one or more temples inside their walls and at least one that lay outside them. Temples were usually small, rectangular structures built of beautifully finished stone blocks, whose plan took two principal forms: courtyard temples, where the interior was divided in two, producing an enclosed space in the rear and an open courtyard nearest the entrance; and hypostyle temples, consisting of a single room supported by three or more rows of pillars, sometimes approached via a monumental gate.

The geometry and formal abstraction of temple design and decoration, echoed in the statuary of the period, emerge as characteristic elements throughout the first millennium BCE. Temples housed cult furnishings such as altars, which were used in rituals involving the pouring of libations. The burning of aromatics was also an important practice, and the discovery of animal bone remains from outside the Awam temple at Marib suggests either the offering of cooked meats or commemorative banquets.

Yemen’s ancient inhabitants worshiped a pantheon of deities both male and female, some of national and others of local significance. At Marib there were large sanctuaries dedicated to the god Almaqah, the national deity of the Sabaean kingdom, which were important pilgrimage destinations. One of them, the Awam temple, was among the earliest and was by far the largest in the Arabian Peninsula. Several objects in this exhibition were found in the Baran temple near Marib, which was also dedicated to Almaqah.

The large number of inscribed votive objects recovered from temples tells us a great deal about religious concepts and practices as well as politics and society. Men and women made dedications to a deity for a variety of purposes: to acknowledge military success, to ensure good health, to protect an individual’s herd of camels or other livestock. Texts concluded by placing the object of the dedication under the protection of a series of gods, listed in hierarchical order. At the head of these lists is consistently the god Athtar, who was the supreme god and was universally recognized. The names of subsequent deities vary according to the dialect of the inscription, and therefore according to social and political environments.

While many different deities were recognized, little is known about their identities and relationships with each other. Votive objects and their dedications indicate that religious feeling was a personal, intimate concept, focused on the individual’s relationship with the deity and not the separate world of the gods themselves.

Over ten thousand inscriptions survive in South Arabian, a Semitic language related to Arabic and Ethiopian. Scholars recognize four distinct dialects: Sabaean, Qatabanian, Hadramitic, and Minaean. The South Arabian script is based on an alphabet of twenty-nine consonants, in contrast to the twenty-two letters of the Phoenician alphabet from which the Greek alphabet was later derived. Inscriptions cover a period of some 1300 to 1400 years, which saw a gradual evolution of the script. During this long period, three or four stages in the script’s development can be identified.

The oldest known inscriptions consist of personal names incised on the walls of ceramic vessels. Monumental inscriptions, worked in relief, appeared around the seventh century BCE. Typically carved in beautiful, elegant styles of script, inscriptions are found on a remarkably wide range of objects, from buildings and funerary monuments to cult furnishings and votive objects. The major categories of texts are:

Prescriptive: decrees issued by rulers or a temple, for example
Religious: dedications, records of ceremonies or religious acts
Property claims: building houses or irrigation systems, defining values and ownership rights
Commemorative: records of military campaigns or great construction works