Temple of Awwam

Listen first. The wind moves low across the plain and pushes fine sand against stone. Under your feet the ground is soft and pale. It gives a little with each step. Ahead of you, a row of tall square pillars rises out of the sand. They are plain and heavy, cut from pale limestone, and they stand in a straight line against a wide, hard sky. This is the Temple of Awwam, on the edge of Marib, in the desert of central Yemen.

Local people have another name for this place. They call it Mahram Bilqis, the sanctuary of Bilqis. In Arabian tradition, Bilqis is the name given to the Queen of Sheba, the queen who, in old stories, travelled north to meet King Solomon. Here is the first surprise. Nothing excavated here proves that she ever existed, or that she ever stood on this ground. The name comes from legend and local memory, not from the inscriptions on these walls. Keep both ideas in your mind as you walk. The legend is old and much loved. The archaeology tells a different story.

That story belongs to the Sabaeans. They were the people of the ancient kingdom of Saba, and Marib was their capital. For many centuries in the first millennium before Christ, Saba grew wealthy from the incense trade. Frankincense and myrrh came from southern Arabia. Camel caravans carried them north to the markets and temples of the Mediterranean world. Marib sat on that route. The wealth that passed through this valley paid for the stone you can see around you.

The temple was dedicated to Almaqah, the chief god of the Sabaeans. Scholars still debate what Almaqah represented. Some link him to the moon, others to the sun or to fertility and water. What is clear is his importance. Awwam was the main sanctuary of the whole kingdom. Pilgrims came here from across Saba. They brought offerings, they made vows, and they left inscriptions to record their gratitude to the god.

Those inscriptions are the real treasure of this site. Thousands of lines of text were carved here in the South Arabian script. It is an angular alphabet, with letters that look almost like small geometric shapes. Kings recorded their wars and building projects. Ordinary people thanked Almaqah for a good harvest, for a safe journey, or for the birth of a child. Taken together, these texts form one of the largest written archives of ancient Arabia. Much of what historians know about Saba comes from walls like these.

Now look at the shape of the place. The sanctuary is enclosed by a great wall in the shape of an oval. That is unusual. Most temples in the ancient world use straight lines and right angles. Here the wall curves around a wide open space. Parts of it still stand high above the sand. The stones are carefully fitted, with smooth faces and tight joints. The masons of Saba worked without mortar in many places, and the precision still holds after more than two thousand years.

The pillars in front of you belonged to the entrance area of the temple. They once stood around a courtyard, and they supported a roof that has long since vanished. Each pillar is a single tall block, square in section and almost without decoration. In the low sun, their shadows run long across the sand. This plain, vertical style is typical of Sabaean architecture. It feels very different from the carved columns of Greece or Rome, and that difference is part of what makes it so striking to stand among them.

Here is the second surprise. Much of what you are looking at was buried until quite recently. For centuries, desert sand filled the sanctuary. In the early 1950s, an American expedition led by the explorer Wendell Phillips began to dig here. The work was cut short by political tension, and the team left in a hurry, abandoning equipment behind them. Excavation only resumed decades later, near the end of the twentieth century. Even now, large parts of the temple remain under the sand.

Those excavations brought remarkable objects to light. Archaeologists found bronze statues and fine alabaster figures, many of them offerings left for the god. Some show standing men with their hands raised. Others carry inscriptions naming the donor. These objects show a society with skilled metalworkers and sculptors, and with enough wealth to spend it on devotion. Most of the finds are now kept in museums, so what remains on site is mainly stone.

The temple did not stay in use forever. Over time the incense trade declined, and power in southern Arabia shifted to the Himyarite kingdom. Around the fourth century, the rulers of the region turned towards a single god, and the old temples of Almaqah lost their purpose. Worship here faded. The sand slowly returned. Later, the famous dam of Marib, which had watered this valley for many centuries, finally failed, and the oasis around the city declined.

In 2023, the landmarks of the ancient kingdom of Saba, including this temple, were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. At the same time, they were placed on the list of World Heritage in Danger. Conflict in Yemen has made protection difficult. Sand, weather and instability all threaten these stones. Standing here, you are one of very few outsiders to see the site in recent years. That is worth remembering as you look around.

Take a moment to look beyond the temple itself. The plain stretches out in every direction, flat and dry, with low hills on the horizon. In the time of Saba, this land was green with irrigated fields. Canals carried water from the great dam to farms around the city. Try to picture palm trees, barley and busy caravans where today there is only sand and wind. The contrast tells you how much this valley has changed.

If you walk close to the enclosure wall, look carefully at the stone surfaces. In some places you can still see lines of carved letters, sharp and regular. Each one was cut by hand, by someone who believed the words would last. Many of them have. You do not need to read the script to feel the care that went into it. The neat rows of letters show a people who wanted to be remembered.

Before you leave, turn back towards the pillars. Notice how they catch the light, and how the sand gathers at their base. Listen again to the wind. It is the same wind that buried this temple once, and it keeps moving the sand today. As you walk away, look down at the ground under your feet... somewhere below it, more of Saba is still waiting to be found.