Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), who regarded Ubar as the "Atlantis of the Sands". He found no trace of a lost city in the sands, but Thomas later related the story to T. It was Thomas' ambition to be the first European to cross the great sands but, as he began his camel journey, he was told by his Bedouin escorts of a lost city whose wicked people had attracted the wrath of God and had been destroyed. In 1930, the explorer Bertram Thomas had been approaching the southern edge of the Rub' al Khali ("The Empty Quarter"). However, scholars are divided over whether this really is the site of a legendary lost city of the sands. Ī contemporary notice at the entrance to an archaeological site at Shisr in the province of Dhofar, Oman, proclaims: "Welcome to Ubar, the Lost City of Bedouin Legend". Sir Ranulph Fiennes, another member of the expedition, declared that this was Omanum Emporium of Ptolemy's famous map of Arabia Felix.
The conclusion they reached, based on site excavations and an inspection of satellite photographs, was that this was the site of Ubar, or Iram of the Pillars, a name found in the Quran which may be a lost city, a tribe or an area. The discovery was the result of the work of a team of archaeologists led by Nicholas Clapp, which had visited and excavated the site of a Bedouin well at Shisr (18° 15' 47 N"ĕ3° 39' 28" E) in Dhofar province, Oman. In February 1992, The New York Times announced a major archaeological discovery in the following terms: "Guided by ancient maps and sharp-eyed surveys from space, archaeologists and explorers have discovered a lost city deep in the sands of Arabia, and they are virtually sure it is Ubar, the fabled entrepôt of the rich frankincense trade thousands of years ago." When news of this discovery spread quickly around the newspapers of the world, there seemed few people willing or able to challenge the dramatic findings, apart from the Saudi Arabian press. On a smaller scale, Arabia has its own legend of a lost city, the so-called "Atlantis of the Sands", which has been the source of debate among historians, archaeologists and explorers, and a degree of controversy that continues to this day. In modern times, the mystery of the lost city of Atlantis has generated a number of books, films, articles, web pages, and two Disney features.
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