From July to September the Louvre Museum in Paris will be staging a unique exhibition called “Les Routes de l’Arabie”, the product of more than four decades of research and excavations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Ranging from the end of the third millennium BC to modern times, the exhibition will be showing about 300 exhibits. It is a cooperative venture between the Supreme Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA) and the curators of the Louvre. The Total Foundation in France and Al-Rubaiyat in Saudi Arabia are sponsoring the project.
“This is the first time for a major exhibition of archaeological treasures not seen outside Saudi Arabia,” said Abdullah Binzagr of Rubaiyat. He added that some were finds from digs done only recently. “Rubaiyat has long been involved in bringing Italian and French culture to Saudi Arabia, it is only appropriate that we are supporting this exhibition,” he said.
Madame Gaele Abecassis, the director of development and promotion of art at the Louvre, visited Jeddah recently to share details of the exhibition.
“The current director Henri Loyette is very keen on developing international relationships with historically important countries for the museum and its collection,” she told Arab News. “Saudi Arabia has become closer to us by being involved in building new galleries for our Islamic collection.”
She pointed out that there was a major exhibition in Riyadh in 2006 of pieces from the Louvre.
“This was a first step in strengthening relationships between the two countries and this coming exhibition is the second,” she added.
The exhibition has taken about four years to organize.
She said that the third step in the relationship would be in about 2011 when the new gallery of Islamic art opens at the Louvre.
The unique feature of the 2010 exhibition is that almost none of the artifacts in the exhibition have ever left the Kingdom although many have been on display inside the Kingdom.
Archaeology in the Kingdom only took root seriously in the early 1970’s, very quickly yielding unsuspected treasures. The works to be displayed in the first section of the exhibition testify to the variety, ingenuity and power of a civilization that once thrived in the peninsula and the cultures that arose, prospered and died out in ancient times.
Numerous partial remains of temples, frescoes, palaces, jewels, scultures and silver items from ancient tombs have been unearthed.
The ancient cultures of the Arabian Peninsula capitalized on the area’s geographical position at the crossroads of trade routes linking the lands along the coast of the Indian Ocean and Africa with Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean world. In the first millennium BC trade routes from the orient to the Mediterranean meandered through the peninsula through oases that still exist today. The artifacts from the period detail both the short and long term influence of neighboring empires.
A highlight of the exhibition will be a display of the results of quite recent archaeological excavations Tayma, the ten-year seat of King Nabonidus.
The second section of the exhibition profiles the role of Saudi Arabia as the birthplace of Islam. The roads, that provide the theme of the display, became populated with both pilgrims and traders. The exhibits recall the pilgrim trails and Al-Rabadha, one of the principal stopping-places. Journeying this road to Makkah, a selection of funerary stelae illustrate the evolution of writing and ornamentation between the 10th and 16th centuries and provide invaluable information on Makkan society at the time. Muslim rulers competed with each other in their generosity toward holy places, with buildings and, a centerpiece in the display, a highly embellished monumental door, a gift from an Ottoman Sultan, from the Kaaba. The exhibits were chosen to reflect the many civilizations that crossed or temporarily settled in what is now Saudi Arabia.
Accompanying the exhibition is a book in three separate language editions — French, Arabic and English.
“This will be a landmark in the studies in archaeology in Saudi Arabia and the first time researchers will publish about the history from the 2nd millennium until today,” said Abecassis.
The exhibition will run from July 16 – Sept. 27 at the Louvre.
Source: Arab News