Anuliina Savolainen
UNESCO

There are so many possible beginnings to AlUla's story. They lie buried under silent sands and carved into the red sandstone and basalt walls of this oasis situated in Medina Province in the north-west of Saudi Arabia. As the experts traverse the scorching sand, they scan every inch. "This is a fragment of ancient pottery," they might observe, "and this feels like bronze." Among these professionals is cultural heritage conservation manager Rut Ballesteros, who carefully examines the walls. Her main mission: a condition assessment of the Nabataean tombs in Hegra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in AlUla, Saudi Arabia.

The 111 tombs are carved directly into the rocks that emerge from the desert floor. From their facades, archaeologists can read the passing of distinct cultural periods: the Humbaba figure points to Mesopotamia, while Egyptian gods appear alongside Greco-Roman Medusa representations. Many of the tombs bear ancient texts, indicating their mighty owner, or casting protective spells against those who might approach with malicious intentions.

Hegra started building its wealth some 2,000 years ago on caravans that stopped to fill up their supplies in water, dates, and other vital goods from the fertile oasis. The AlUla valley had become a strategic stop on the Incense trade route connecting the Arabian Peninsula to the great civilizations of the East and West. In the 1^st century CE this settlement developed into the southernmost capital of the Nabataean people – the same civilization whose legacy makes Petra, in Jordan, a major tourist destination. But unlike Petra, Hegra, which has only truly been accessible for a few years, has remained largely untouched.

In 2016, the Saudi government announced an ambitious vision to diversify the economy and create a vibrant environment for investors. In the region, the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) was established to protect, safeguard and highlight its heritage. National and international experts – including archaeologists, conservation experts, architects, and cultural historians – have since been invited in vast numbers to accompany AlUla’s transformation into a cultural oasis.  

The vision of a thriving business and development oasis has already become reality on the huge roadside billboards that hide construction sites alongside the streets of AlUla. In view of hosting one million tourists per year by 2030, eight big hotels and a variety of small accommodations have been built or are under construction since 2018, and another terminal is planned for the AlUla airport. 

Meanwhile, the great digging continues. Rut Ballesteros, who arrived in AlUla in 2019, recounts spending the first months driving in awe across the desert region centered on a lush oasis – where tens of thousands of archaeological features have now been identified. 

In Hegra, the conservation specialist observes the rocks. “See those white marks? That is salt,” she explains, pointing at a line on a spindle of rock supporting a funerary chamber. “The main erosion problem here comes from the bottom. As humidity rises, the salt resolves and moves around and then crystallizes again. So, the stone breaks.” She explains that consolidating the bottom is essential not to lose the whole facade.

Different techniques can help prevent the structures from collapsing. But in May, operations are on hold because it’s simply too hot to operate.

At the RCU's office labs in AlUla city centre, hundreds of boxes containing discoveries from various missions are awaiting to be processed.

Care and conservation manager Giulia Edmond opens a little box with gentle hands. Inside lies a 2,000-year-old piece of silk from a Hegra tomb. “This one is of particular interest: it’s the only silk fragment in our collection,” she says. Its origins are still under study – India, China perhaps? Meanwhile, in another room, a team of forensic anthropologists is meticulously identifying and cataloging over a hundred human bones from Hegra.

“I have never seen such a concentration of archaeological missions and heritage projects in one place,” says Wissam Khalil, senior manager of archaeological excavation at the RCU. Since 2017, dozens of missions have been conducted by specialists from over 20 countries, most of them co-directed by leading Saudi heritage professionals.

Until now, the region’s human history has been traced back to the Lower-Middle Paleolithic period. In 2023, researchers discovered here the largest stone axe ever found in the world, with an estimated age of 200,000 years. Archaeologists have also managed to uncover the interiors of some of the mustatils – big rectangular stone structures built for ritual purposes, some of them dating back about 7,000 years. These and other discoveries hint that the region could have been as lush and agriculturally developed as the Fertile Crescent in Mesopotamia, during the same historical period – a finding that could reshape perspectives on ancient Middle East history.

One of the most remarkable features in the region is the concentration of inscriptions, from prehistoric rock art to petroglyphs to letters engraved on the mountain walls.  “You can see a wall with inscriptions spanning five millennia of history,” Wissam Khalil says. “Sometimes they mark the passing of kings or other personalities, sometimes laws, but then sometimes you just have a thought, or a feeling, from 2,000 years ago.”

The Jabal Ikmah site, listed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World International Register in 2023, is situated north of the AlUla city center. Until recently little known by anyone except local people for whom it was a popular picnic spot, it is like an open-air library. The walls of this rocky canyon hold approximately 300 engravings, mostly from the second half of the first millennium BCE.

To an untrained eye, the inscriptions offer a tapestry of mysterious, variably shaped scripts. But professor Solaiman Abdulrahman al-Theeb, a historian specializing in ancient languages, can decrypt most of them. Some are written in Aramaic, Safaitic, Minaic, and Nabataean – all of which influenced the development of Arabic. But in Jabal Ikmah, the majority are in Dadanitic, the language of the long-forgotten kingdoms of Dadan and Lihyan that flourished in the area somewhere between 800 and 100 BCE. Deciphering these inscriptions helps to uncover the secrets of these powerful local civilizations that flourished here, both before and – according to recent discoveries – concurrently with the Nabataeans.

Al-Theeb teaches Dadanitic and Lihyanite in AlUla’s Language Institute, inaugurated in 2021. The professor emphasizes that while English, Chinese or Spanish will be useful to guide the tourists of tomorrow, learning ancient languages is one of the keys to understanding and learning lessons from history. “Local people are used to seeing such inscriptions everywhere. Now they want to understand what they mean.”

The inscriptions tell a story of remarkable cultural exchange. “They show that the Aramaic, a language then unique to Syria, was used in Dadan. We even have them in Greek, Latin, Egyptian, Assyrian, and Hebrew.” Al-Theeb describes Dadan as an astoundingly stable, multicultural, and open society with a thriving economy along the incense trade routes. “Here you could worship any god, as long as you respected the others.”

The importance given to the afterlife is also striking on the archaeological site of Dadan, where lion-guarded square holes on the mountain face served as tombs, with the removed stone ingeniously repurposed for the nearby city settlement. This site is currently hosting important archaeological excavations.

“In the name of God, I Zuhair wrote the date of death of Omar the year four and twenty.” The oldest dated Islamic Arabic inscription, from 644 CE, offers a glimpse to another chapter of AlUla’s story: the advent of Islam. The location became a stop along a newly formed pilgrimage route from Damascus to Mecca. By the 12^th Century CE, a new city was thriving in the valley: the Old Town of AlUla.

Today electric buses instead of camels take visitors to the recently restored pedestrian street with cafés and handicraft stores above the mud brick maze of the Old Town. Just like in the past, services, and refreshments, including the famous AlUla dates, are offered to those traveling from afar.

In this new beginning of the AlUla saga, preserving its remarkable heritage while balancing ambitions of growth and increased visitors with sustainable resource management is key. Since the launch of the country's tourism sector in 2019, the numbers of visitors have been on a steady rise, with 286,000 arrivals in AlUla in 2024. International exhibitions, such as the one on “AlUla, Wonder of Arabia” held in Paris (2019) and Beijing (2024) have also led to peaks in visitor numbers.

“Before, we were just a small community in a small city.” exclaims Laila Albalawi, a former teacher of Islamic history who today works as the operational planning lead at the RCU. “I believe everybody in AlUla will benefit from the change.”

A strong heritage impact assessment process – the first one in Saudi Arabia – has been implemented in AlUla to mitigate any negative effects of rapid development on the excavated and yet-to-be-unearthed sites. Via a five-year agreement signed in July 2021, UNESCO also has a role to play in safeguarding living heritage and strengthening cross-cultural skills across the heritage sites.

“Guaranteeing heritage conservation has to happen from a perspective of responsibility toward local communities' economic and social future,” says José Ignacio Gallego Revilla, advisor for UNESCO and cultural and scientific diplomacy programs at the RCU. “We should never lose the perspective of what really matters: the heritage values, the human values that lay behind, as well as interculturalism and knowledge sharing. They are the ones that make the difference.”