In his Foreword to this
607-page volume, Julian
Raby, Director of the Arthur
M. Sackler Gallery and
the Freer Gallery of Art,
Smithsonian Institution,
writes:
"Islam…emerged in an
effulgent blaze, and what
preceded it seems cast
in deep shadow. Over the
last forty years, however,
archaeologists working in
Saudi Arabia have been
uncovering sites across
the peninsula, revealing
an ancient past for which
there is scant literary
testimony and hitherto
no tangible evidence.
This exhibition, Roads of
Arabia...offers, then, a
window on the peninsula's
pre-Islamic past and on the
axis of the entire Muslim
community, the Holy Shrine
of the Ka'ba in Mecca.
Mysterious stone steles,
monumental statues of
Statue of a man 4th-3rd century BCE
HYLAND
