The Road to Ubar by Nicholas Clapp Read Free Book Online

and ecstatic carrying-on.
    But what were these two monuments, altar and pillars, doing in Arabia, let alone at Ubar? Dionysus was a Greek god, as was Hercules. And the Pillars of Hercules, I recalled, were said to have marked the Strait of Gibraltar. Delving into classical accounts, I pieced together what I thought was a plausible explanation.
    First, consider Dionysus. According to the historian Diodorus Siculus, the god was born at Nysa, a "happy mountain" in Arabia Felix. It was only natural, then, that the Arabians should venerate Dionysus as one of their own,
especially
at a city known for its wanton ways. I found ancient Arabia's fascination with Dionysus confirmed by the Greek historian Herodotus: "The way they cut their hair—all round in a circle, with the temples shaved—is, they say, in imitation of Dionysus." 4
    Concerning the Pillars of Hercules, it seems that in the lore of the ancient world there were more than one pair. In particular, a chronicle of the conquests of Alexander the Great relates that Alexander found "Gates of Hercules" ninety-five days' march along the Babylon road, about what it would take a traveler to reach the Arabian Pillars of Hercules recorded on the Psalter Map. (Ever on the alert for spoils, Alexander ordered the pillars pierced to see if they were hollow or solid gold.)
    It was late on a work night when I read this. Just for a moment or so, I closed my eyes.
    Digging the great red dune was easier than we thought. Slowly but surely, we uncovered many buildings. Most had fallen to ruin, yet one was remarkably preserved. It was a temple. Two grand free-stand
ing pillars dedicated to the god Hercules flanked its entrance. As described in an account of Alexander the Great's adventures, they were the equivalent of twelve cubits high.
    Our hopes high, we passed between the pillars and entered the temple. It took several minutes for our eyes to adjust to the gloom inside. Quietly, hardly exchanging a word, we picked our way forward and were startled by the sight of a procession of drunken revelers reeling along behind the god Dionysus. They were figures on a frieze decorating a stone altar, figures frozen in time. We were awestruck. This had to be the very spot where, 2,300 years ago, Alexander the Great, the Macedonian king and conqueror, had come upon monuments to Hercules and Dionysus...
    But alas, just when Alexander the Great became part of my theory concerning the Psalter Map, my theory fell apart. I discovered that though the Macedonian hero's conquests had been very real, they had given rise to some of the most outlandish fantasies of all time: the "Alexander books." Allegedly dating to an account written by one of his generals, these tales were popular well into medieval times. There were Armenian and Ethiopian Alexander books, an Indonesian version and an Icelandic one. They were forerunners of
Gulliver's Travels
and superhero comic books. In their pages Alexander encounters amazons, mermaids, and men who live on the smell of spices. He marvels at fleas the size of tortoises and lobsters as big as ships. He soars through the air in a griffin-powered flying machine and dives to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in a goatskin submarine.
    It was likely, then, that whoever created the Psalter Map, probably a monk long on imagination (and short on spelling), had an Alexander book tucked under his straw pillow. And it turns out that the map's
are liberi n colime er culis
were not only fragments of spurious iconography, but they were inked in the wrong place. As the Alexander books have it, they should be in India; instead, they were set down in Arabia. There's a reason for this. In the Psalter Map, India is bisected by a wall built by Alexander to keep the rapacious hordes of the giants Gog and Magog from overrunning the world. The iconography of this takes up so much space that depictions of other Alexandrian events, like his pillar and altar encounter, had to be expeditiously shifted