PUBLISHED 2021. Please visit the publication's webpage.
Ancient Yathill, known today as Barâqish (16° 01’ 06” N - 44° 48’ 16” E) in the Yemeni Jawf, was the second major city in the Kingdom of Ma‛în after the capital Qarnâw. Yathill’s Golden Age began in the 7th – 6th century BC, but its origins may go back as far as the 12th – 10th century BC. Yathill was situated along the frankincense Caravan route linking ports on the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, the Romans called the best incense on the market minaeum from the name of the Kingdom (Pliny the Elder, NH, XII, 54). Yathill is also mentioned by Strabo among the places conquered by Augustus’s General Aelius Gallus during his expedition in Arabia Felix (26-25 BC). The city walls, originally of an average height of 14 metres, contained 56 towers. Around 280 inscriptions have been found carved on the city walls blocks. After more than a millenium of neglect, Barâqish was reoccupied in the late 12th century by the Zaydi community, led by Imam al-Mansur ibn Hamza, and continuously inhabited until the 18th century. During a series of archaeological campaigns, the Italian Archaeological Mission excavated and restored both a Temple dedicated to Nakrah, the City’s Patron God, and a Temple dedicated to the God ʿAthtar dhu-Qabd, the main divinity of the Minaeans.
Dr. Sabina Antonini de Maigret, archaeologist and historian of South Arabian Art and Director of the Italian Archaelogical Mission in Yemen since 2011, is the lead researcher for this Shelby White and Leon Levy Program project.
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