A South-Arabian sanctuary far from home: the Minaean ‘high place’ of Jabal al-Khuraybah (north-west Arabia)
Résumé
Located on the eastern flank of the al-ʿUlā valley, in north-west Saudi Arabia, Jabal al-Khuraybah overlooks the ancient city of Dadan, which was settled from the 3rd millennium BCE to the early 1st millennium CE. In 2020, a systematic survey of this mountain was undertaken as part of the Dadan Archaeological Project (CNRS/AFALULA/RCU). During the first two seasons, a large religious complex was identified at its southern edge. It consists of a very long path, half carved, half built, which links four peaks and leads to the top of the highest one. The path is lined with nearly 400 Ancient South-Arabian inscriptions, suggesting that it was a processional path associated with the community of Minaean merchants settled at Dadan in the second half of the first millennium BCE. This paper will discuss the organisation, frequentation and chronology of this sanctuary in relation with the epigraphic finds and in the light of other mountaintop sanctuaries from North-west Arabia, the Southern Levant and South-Arabia.