The Road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands [Hardcover]

Nicholas Clapp (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 10, 1998

The most fabled city in ancient Arabia was Ubar, described in the Koran as "the many-columned city whose like has not been built in the entire land." But like Sodom and Gomorrah, Ubar was destroyed by God for the sins of its people. Buried in the desert without a trace, it became known as "the Atlantis of the Sands." Over the centuries, many searched for it unsuccessfully, including Lawrence of Arabia, and skepticism grew that there had ever been a real place called Ubar. Then in the 1980s Nicholas Clapp stumbled on the legend. Poring over ancient manuscripts, he discovered that a slip of the pen in a.d. 1460 had misled generations of explorers. In satellite images he found evidence of ancient caravan routes that were invisible from the ground. Finally he organized two expeditions to Arabia with a team of archaeologists, geologists, space scientists, and adventurers. After many false starts, dead ends, and weeks of digging, they uncovered a remarkable walled city with eight towers, thi

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What is it about the inhospitable corners of the world that so attracts the imagination? Scott in the Antarctic, Hillary on top of Everest, and a multitude of wanderers--from Wilfred Thesiger and T. E. Lawrence to Gertrude Bell--wandering through the vast, empty sands of "the empty quarter" in what is now Saudi Arabia; each of these explorers has been drawn to places most of us would never think of going and found there an unexpected window onto their own souls. In The Road to Ubar, filmmaker Nicholas Clapp follows in the footsteps of earlier visitors to the Arabian peninsula as he seeks the legendary city of Ubar. Going back at least two millennia, stories about a vast city filled with gold that disappeared almost in an instant haunt the literature and lore of Arabia. And for almost as long as the stories have been around, so have the rogues and dreamers who have tried to find it. His interest sparked by the accounts of earlier travelers in the region such as Thesiger and Bertram Thomas, Clapp decided to put together his own team in hopes of finding and filming the lost city.

Using both modern tools (photographs taken from space, courtesy of NASA) as well as old ones (maps, descriptions, and written accounts), Clapp and his team slowly pieced together the clues until they arrived, at last, at the site where they would spend the next four years digging. How they got to the end of The Road to Ubar and what they found there is at the heart of this unusual travel memoir.

From Publishers Weekly

For centuries, the city of Ubar was the object of legend, quests and uncertainty. An ancient trading outpost in Arabia, it had, according to the Koran, sunk into the desert sands as a result of God's wrath upon its sinful population. In the 1980s, Clapp, a documentary filmmaker, undertook to find the city. After exhaustive research that took him from ancient texts to satellite photos, he eventually led an expedition that finally located Ubar in what is now Oman. Clapp first learned of the then-chimerical city in the early 1980s, when working on a film about the oryx (a tough and graceful desert antelope). His interest was piqued further as he read of 19th-century British expeditions, which he synopsizes along with other relevant tales. Like Indiana Jones, Clapp is as comfortable in the library as in reconnaissance helicopters or on the sands, and his efforts to separate myth from possible reality make for a gripping intellectual adventure. Clapp's team, including his wife and expedition manager, Kay, and a host affable experts, weren't sure what they'd found in a giant sinkhole until they spent weeks digging and putting pieces of pottery together with knowledge of the ancient trade in frankincense. What they found was not only Ubar but also a fitting resolution to Clapp's engaging story of the excitement of discovery, of a mystery solved and of the spirit of adventure.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1ST edition (February 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039587596X
• ISBN-13: 978-0395875964
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #752,860 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #16 in Books > History > Middle East > Oman

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An absorbing tale., March 14, 2000

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Kurt A. Johnson (North-Central Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands (Hardcover)

Arab legends, and the Koran itself, speak of an ancient city of great wealth and great wickedness. This city was Ubar, the "many-columned city." In punishment for its idolatry and wickedness, Allah destroyed Ubar. Legends further tell that a number of people, lost in the great Arabian desert, have seen the ruins of the great city and told of the wealth that it still contains. In the 1980s, Nicholas Clapp, a noted filmmaker, became absorbed with the legend of Ubar. Searching ancient manuscripts, and using ultramodern techniques, Clapp set out to uncover this "Atlantis of the Sands." This is the story of that search.

I found myself really enjoying this book, much more than I had ever expected. It is well-written, dramatic, and succeeds in keeping you in suspense. When I first picked the book up, I was interested in the subject, but the author succeeded in making me very interested indeed.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Reading!, September 12, 2000

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This review is from: The Road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands (Paperback)

...this is a must read book. The author's handling of how the ancient city was found and the subsequent discoveries should give anyone with interest in history reason to spend a few hours with this book. As someone who has spend considerable time in North Africa and the Middle East (since 1982) I was astonished by his understanding of the peoples of the Arabian pennisula. For once, somebody actually portrayed these mischaracterized peoples for who they are and not what the stateside pundits think they should be. Well done and congratulations.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fascinating blend of travelogue, history, and detection, December 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands (Hardcover)

Fascinating story, alternating between the ancient past and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, using satellite photos to find the route to an ancient, lost trade center in the Empty Quarter of Arabia. I've read this book several times; it is still interesting.