[Music]
the journey has been tough all the time
we had to move away rocks to make way
for the truck how are we going to spend
the night all around us this landscape
of dark brown stone and sometimes a Wadi
where sands and small plants are
entangled now the night is falling and
we can’t see our destination yet we are
blocked the engine stalls about 30 times
we uproot bushes and we go again
finally we reach the first well and then
a second one full of sin the night is
cold
this diary fragments of the Belgian
professor Eggman’s quite nicely
demonstrates the challenges the Philby
reg’ment sleeping’s expedition faced
while exploring the Arabian deserts for
lost civilizations back in the 1950s but
today we will tell our story it’s a
story about following into the footsteps
of the great explorers of the Middle
East’s it’s a story about dedication and
creativity of research teams working in
desolate parts of the world and this a
story about testing our own hypothesis
in dazzling landscapes of the Arabian
desert we want to show the world that
history is not only book knowledge but
reconstructing history often depends on
exploring those areas where hardly any
scholar has gone before
the Middle East is the region that has
harbored the most ancient civilizations
in the world so
just Egypt Mesopotamia and Persia and it
is known for its magnificent cultural
heritage certainly most of you have
heard about the pyramids right and maybe
the Ishtar Gate and what about
Persepolis yet nowadays the Middle East
is especially known but because of its
military conflicts that cause a lot of
human suffering and they also endanger
the cultural heritage of this area and
that is why it has a severe impact on
the work of many scholars like ourselves
yet there are still unexpected parts of
the Middle East where it is worth
picking up the challenge and that is
exactly what we are doing right now and
one such place is the Arabian Peninsula
in fact most people know the Arabian
Peninsula as the cradle of Islam and
world’s largest oil reserve at what was
there before Arabia is often indicated
as a blind spot on the historical map of
the ancient world but if you look
closely at the map you can see that
Arabia is located exactly between
Mesopotamia Persia and Egypt so it seems
only logical that Arabia connected these
ancient civilizations somehow a survey
of these regions may result in finding
back it’s a missing link between these
ancient civilizations and contribute to
our future historical knowledge and that
is what we want to share with you today
so you understood that our big idea is
that Arabia could be this missing link
between the ancient civilisations of
Egypt Persia and as a put in Mesopotamia
in fact their evidence that people
travelled in the ancient world and by
doing so estab
connections between cultures for
instance the incense routes along the
coastlines of Arabia are well known
through Roman history and so far
historians mostly focused on those
coastal regions but what about the roads
across the Arabian Peninsula actually
our team has already worked there and
there we found traces of intense trade
along Caravan routes connecting these
ancient civilization through the Arabian
desert so why do we call it the missing
link because nobody got into it yet we
could even say that in terms of
historical research Arabia is a terra
incognita until oil was found this
particular region was no importance of
the for the world there are no pyramids
and the climate is not inviting either
so you can understand why historians are
not too keen for a research there well
isn’t it time to do something about it
then sure
no burning Sun no freezing nights no
scorpions and no barren landscape will
stop us even though our methods or quite
different than those of the early
explorers in the early 20th century
explorers could go on for months
sponsored expeditions insert in search
of lost civilizations today though we
need a precise plan a detailed routes a
timetable a most important evidence for
our working hypothesis so how did we do
that and where their own journey start
our own journey started in the archive
of the University of Leuven which
preserves the old records of the first
scientific expedition to
Saudi Arabia back in the 50s for
explorers were personally invited by
King Abdul Aziz in order to investigate
the pre-islamic heritage of his country
and that was a big adventure the team
consisted of goon zach reichman’s and
his nephew jack who were both professors
at the university of leuven Philippines
a Belgian officer and last but not least
hairy cynjohn Philby who was a British
explorer and a former secret agent who
had previously worked with Lawrence of
Arabia himself well before them scholars
used to think that ancient Arabia was a
society without writing but the Philby
Reitman slip-ons expedition from our
university proved exactly the contrary
they discovered that in antiquity people
in the Arabian desert made extensive use
of writing among mighty sand dunes and
rocky desert these four gentlemen made a
journey of more than 5,400 kilometres
from Jeddah to Riyadh across the desert
the Saudi desert in search of
petroglyphs rock art and inscriptions
and during the three months of research
they recorded over 12,000 pre-islamic
texts written in a variety of ancient
Arabian scripts and languages these
inscriptions they contain mainly proper
names and these guys in the inscriptions
they belong to the various tribes which
used to live in the Arabian Peninsula in
antiquity and each of these tribes has
its own dialect
so after the retirement of professor
Shakir Eggman’s the notes the maps
pictures and correspondence of the team
were donated to the Oriental Institute
of our University and
served in its archives it is this
reg’ment archive that holds a treasure
of indispensable information for
preparing our own journey to the Arabian
desert and it is this archive that will
be our Lonely Planet guides around on
our big adventure our adventure in
search of the missing link physically
connecting Mesopotamia Persia and Egypt
more precisely the ancient strands
Arabian trade routes there are four
arguments why we believe that there were
trans arabian trade routes in addition
to the coastal ida itineraries first the
huge number of inscriptions prove that
there that people used stop by these
desert rocks second there are a lot of
camels depicted on the rock art which
are the perfect animals for long
distance travels third we know that in
antiquity the climate was much milder
than it is nowadays and fourth the fill
beer Eggman’s livens mission recorded a
lot of wells and Springs in the middle
of the desert since the team members of
the 50 Aragon’s livens mission were so
busy documenting all those inscriptions
they did not realize that it that maps
they had room actually contain parts of
things of these ancient trans arabian
trade routes
well we tell a story like so many
scholars do and we want the same thing
that so many scholars want we want to go
there and want to explore we have strong
indication that it will be worth it
haven’t we but I’ll be sure of that
no of course
not that is what science is about
however we need to move forward in the
face of uncertainty
maybe we’ll discover nothing but sand
and rocks but maybe what we will
discover there will shed an entirely new
light on history and hopefully inshallah
you will see the results in the
newspapers thank you
[Applause]
the journey has been tough all the time
we had to move away rocks to make way
for the truck how are we going to spend
the night all around us this landscape
of dark brown stone and sometimes a Wadi
where sands and small plants are
entangled now the night is falling and
we can’t see our destination yet we are
blocked the engine stalls about 30 times
we uproot bushes and we go again
finally we reach the first well and then
a second one full of sin the night is
cold
this diary fragments of the Belgian
professor Eggman’s quite nicely
demonstrates the challenges the Philby
reg’ment sleeping’s expedition faced
while exploring the Arabian deserts for
lost civilizations back in the 1950s but
today we will tell our story it’s a
story about following into the footsteps
of the great explorers of the Middle
East’s it’s a story about dedication and
creativity of research teams working in
desolate parts of the world and this a
story about testing our own hypothesis
in dazzling landscapes of the Arabian
desert we want to show the world that
history is not only book knowledge but
reconstructing history often depends on
exploring those areas where hardly any
scholar has gone before
the Middle East is the region that has
harbored the most ancient civilizations
in the world so
just Egypt Mesopotamia and Persia and it
is known for its magnificent cultural
heritage certainly most of you have
heard about the pyramids right and maybe
the Ishtar Gate and what about
Persepolis yet nowadays the Middle East
is especially known but because of its
military conflicts that cause a lot of
human suffering and they also endanger
the cultural heritage of this area and
that is why it has a severe impact on
the work of many scholars like ourselves
yet there are still unexpected parts of
the Middle East where it is worth
picking up the challenge and that is
exactly what we are doing right now and
one such place is the Arabian Peninsula
in fact most people know the Arabian
Peninsula as the cradle of Islam and
world’s largest oil reserve at what was
there before Arabia is often indicated
as a blind spot on the historical map of
the ancient world but if you look
closely at the map you can see that
Arabia is located exactly between
Mesopotamia Persia and Egypt so it seems
only logical that Arabia connected these
ancient civilizations somehow a survey
of these regions may result in finding
back it’s a missing link between these
ancient civilizations and contribute to
our future historical knowledge and that
is what we want to share with you today
so you understood that our big idea is
that Arabia could be this missing link
between the ancient civilisations of
Egypt Persia and as a put in Mesopotamia
in fact their evidence that people
travelled in the ancient world and by
doing so estab
connections between cultures for
instance the incense routes along the
coastlines of Arabia are well known
through Roman history and so far
historians mostly focused on those
coastal regions but what about the roads
across the Arabian Peninsula actually
our team has already worked there and
there we found traces of intense trade
along Caravan routes connecting these
ancient civilization through the Arabian
desert so why do we call it the missing
link because nobody got into it yet we
could even say that in terms of
historical research Arabia is a terra
incognita until oil was found this
particular region was no importance of
the for the world there are no pyramids
and the climate is not inviting either
so you can understand why historians are
not too keen for a research there well
isn’t it time to do something about it
then sure
no burning Sun no freezing nights no
scorpions and no barren landscape will
stop us even though our methods or quite
different than those of the early
explorers in the early 20th century
explorers could go on for months
sponsored expeditions insert in search
of lost civilizations today though we
need a precise plan a detailed routes a
timetable a most important evidence for
our working hypothesis so how did we do
that and where their own journey start
our own journey started in the archive
of the University of Leuven which
preserves the old records of the first
scientific expedition to
Saudi Arabia back in the 50s for
explorers were personally invited by
King Abdul Aziz in order to investigate
the pre-islamic heritage of his country
and that was a big adventure the team
consisted of goon zach reichman’s and
his nephew jack who were both professors
at the university of leuven Philippines
a Belgian officer and last but not least
hairy cynjohn Philby who was a British
explorer and a former secret agent who
had previously worked with Lawrence of
Arabia himself well before them scholars
used to think that ancient Arabia was a
society without writing but the Philby
Reitman slip-ons expedition from our
university proved exactly the contrary
they discovered that in antiquity people
in the Arabian desert made extensive use
of writing among mighty sand dunes and
rocky desert these four gentlemen made a
journey of more than 5,400 kilometres
from Jeddah to Riyadh across the desert
the Saudi desert in search of
petroglyphs rock art and inscriptions
and during the three months of research
they recorded over 12,000 pre-islamic
texts written in a variety of ancient
Arabian scripts and languages these
inscriptions they contain mainly proper
names and these guys in the inscriptions
they belong to the various tribes which
used to live in the Arabian Peninsula in
antiquity and each of these tribes has
its own dialect
so after the retirement of professor
Shakir Eggman’s the notes the maps
pictures and correspondence of the team
were donated to the Oriental Institute
of our University and
served in its archives it is this
reg’ment archive that holds a treasure
of indispensable information for
preparing our own journey to the Arabian
desert and it is this archive that will
be our Lonely Planet guides around on
our big adventure our adventure in
search of the missing link physically
connecting Mesopotamia Persia and Egypt
more precisely the ancient strands
Arabian trade routes there are four
arguments why we believe that there were
trans arabian trade routes in addition
to the coastal ida itineraries first the
huge number of inscriptions prove that
there that people used stop by these
desert rocks second there are a lot of
camels depicted on the rock art which
are the perfect animals for long
distance travels third we know that in
antiquity the climate was much milder
than it is nowadays and fourth the fill
beer Eggman’s livens mission recorded a
lot of wells and Springs in the middle
of the desert since the team members of
the 50 Aragon’s livens mission were so
busy documenting all those inscriptions
they did not realize that it that maps
they had room actually contain parts of
things of these ancient trans arabian
trade routes
well we tell a story like so many
scholars do and we want the same thing
that so many scholars want we want to go
there and want to explore we have strong
indication that it will be worth it
haven’t we but I’ll be sure of that
no of course
not that is what science is about
however we need to move forward in the
face of uncertainty
maybe we’ll discover nothing but sand
and rocks but maybe what we will
discover there will shed an entirely new
light on history and hopefully inshallah
you will see the results in the
newspapers thank you
[Applause]
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