The Archaeology of the Arabian Gulf

The world's first great cities, built in the fertile lands of Mesopotamia, grew rich on trade. The great rivers which flowed down into the Gulf were navigable up to Babylon and beyond, into Syria. Ships carried goods from these cities to present-day Pakistan and probably to Egypt, thousands of miles away. But it is only in recent years that the extraordinary archaeological remains in the Gulf region have been revealed. The Archaeology of the Arabian Gulf provides the first comprehensive, accessible and up-to-date review of recent archaeological work in the area, which now comprises Kuwait, eastern Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Emirates and northern Oman. Through a detailed examination of the Gulf's archaeology Michael Rice reveals the extraordinary nature of the region's past. He shows that the Gulf has been a major channel of commerce for millenia, a tradition which continues to the present. No similarly wide-ranging book is currently available which deals with the antiquity of this area. It will be of great interest to the general reader who seeks to read of the past of the last unknown region of the ancient world.