Search Film, Company, People...

LOST TREASURES OF ARABIA: THE ANCIENT CITY OF DADAN

By Dirk VERHEYE, Inti CALFAT

Documentary - Completed 2022

Festivals
& Awards

Red Sea IFF 2022

New Vision

- Year of production
- 2022
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- SAUDI ARABIA, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Duration
- 44 mn
- Director(s)
- Dirk VERHEYE, Inti CALFAT
- Synopsis
- The ancient kingdoms of Dadan and Lihyan, which once stretched from modern Saudi Arabia to Jordan, are mentioned in the Old Testament and ancient Greek texts, but little is known about them. In 2017, the Saudi Arabian authorities put together an international team of archaeologists to unearth and record remains at Al Ula, where Dadan city stood from around 900 BC until 100 BC, at which point it seems suddenly to have lost importance. What remains, under sand or poking up between the local date farms, are hundreds of tombs, temple statues, exquisitely carved lions and metre-thick walls covered with thousands of inscriptions in the Dadanite script, a Semitic off-shoot. For a full season of excavations, the cameras follow the experts as they try to form a picture of life in a city that once ruled the vital trade route for frankincense, the oil of its day. Who were the Dadanites? And where did they go?