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History & Heritage

9.7.2022

Saudi Arabia: a Liyhanite statue back in the Louvre museum

The archaeological excavations in Al-Ula, in the northwest of Saudi Arabia, ongoing for several years now, usually produce fascinating discoveries, like this Lihyanite statue, once again exhibited in the Louvre in Paris, one of the most visited museums in the world.

Dadan is located in the AlUla Valley, in the northern foothills of the Hijaz. The ancient city appears as a large oval tell of several hundred square meters, housing ancient quarries, and several hundred rock tombs.

Spotted in 1876, the site was carefully documented in 1909/1910 by the French Dominicans A. Jaussen and R. Savignac, who identified it with the biblical Daedan, mentioned in the Old Testament among the main caravan cities of Arabia. Thanks to hundreds of inscriptions in Dadanite (the local language and script) found on the site and in its surroundings, it is established that the city was the capital of two successive kingdoms: the oasis kingdom of Dadan, in the first half of the 1st millennium B.C., and then the vast tribal kingdom of Liḥyān, in the second half of that millennium.

A legacy on display at the Louvre

Excavated from 2003 to 2019 by the archaeology department of King Saud University, the site has been the subject of a multidisciplinary archaeological program implemented by the CNRS on behalf of the French Agency for the Development of AlUla (AFALULA) and the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) since 2020.

This privileged relationship with France has been the occasion for the Kingdom to exhibit a majestic Lihyanite statue of 2.30 meters. The statue, currently on loan to the Louvre for 5 years, was first unveiled in 2010 at the Louvre for the exhibition “The Roads of Arabia”. Carved from a single block of sandstone, it probably represented a Lihyanite king, if not a priest or an orant, these figures represented in an attitude of prayer.

A choice addition to the Louvre’s already very rich collection of Oriental heritage.

See also

AlUla: a tramway for green mobility in Saudi Arabia

Published on 7 September 2022

#Al'Ula

#Heritage

#Louvre museum