A Lihyanite Temple in Arabia
Was Lehi the "father" of the Lihyanites in Arabia?
Lihyan (Arabic: لحيان) is an ancient Ancient North Arabian kingdom. It was located in northwestern Arabia, and is known for its Ancient North Arabian inscriptions dating to ca. the 6th to 4th centuries BC. Dedanite is used for the older phase of the history of this kingdom since their capital name was Dedan (see Biblical Dedan), which is now called Al-`Ula oasis located in northwestern Arabia, some 110 km southwest of Teima.
Their cities included Higra, Al-`Ula, Al-Khuraibah, Teima, Oman.
Lozachmeur, H (ed.) 1995. Présence arabe dans le croissant fertile avant l'Hégire. (Actes de la table ronde internationale Paris, 13 Novembre 1993). Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations. pp. 148. ISBN 2-86538-254-0. [1]
Werner Caskel, Lihyan und Lihyanisch (1954)
F.V. Winnett "A Study of the Lihyanite and Thamudic Inscriptions", University of Toronto Press, Oriental Series No. 3. [2]
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Strong winds and vertical sandstone cliffs couldn’t prevent a group of amateur Book of Mormon explorers from ascending a 600-foot rock face. Resting atop the mountains summit is a vast Lihyanite temple complex. The team included Jim Anderson, David Alexander, and myself.
What makes this find interesting to the LDS community is that the Lihyanites might have been a community of converts who were taught the gospel by Lehi and Nephi. Lynn and Hope Hilton originally brought to our attention that the name “Lihyanite” meant the “people of Lihy”, and that the Lihyanites appear to have had temple practices that were consistent to those in Jerusalem. The Hiltons based their theory largely upon the discovery of a font (cistern) at the Lihyanite temple in ruins of the Biblical town of Dedan (see LDS Bible Maps showing northwest Arabia). The cistern has nearly the same dimensions as the Brazen Sea of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem and has stone stairs inside it leading to its floor which has been buried below ground level (see Discovering Lehi, Hiltons).
Who were the Lihyanites? Until recently, archaeologists had no clue as to where they came from or how they conquered the Dedanites, the people who ruled the valley since the era of Abraham. Jewish historians believe that they were Hebrew descendants of Abraham[i] through the Dedanites (see Genesis 25:1-3). However, it is only recently that Professor Michael Macdonald at Oxford University’s Oriental Institute showed that the Dedanite and Lihyanite languages were the same[ii], meaning that the Lihyanites, who came to power in northwest Arabia around 550 BC, were not a new people, but were the Dedanites themselves who simply changed their name to “the people of Lihy”.
However the Hiltons didn't realize that the ancient trail down Arabia passed through the Ula valley, which became the capital of the Lihyanites.
All the same, the Hiltons studied the Lihyanite ruins in the wadi al-Ula, including the remains of the Lihyanite temple. The Lihyanites ruled the area between the coast of the Red Sea at the west and Domat al Jandal in the east for over five hundred years. Their rule ended with the emergence of the Nabataeans in the first century .C.
In other words, the Lihyanties ruled northwest Arabia starting just after Lehi
passed through the valley of Ula.
In Nephi’s time, he would have been restricted to teaching the gospel to only Hebrews – yet here in Dedan, along the trail Lehi took through Arabia (see Lehi in the Wilderness by Potter and Wellington), were a community of Hebrews, the Dedanites. Secondly, the Dedanites changed their name to the people of Lihy. The question begs to be asked, “Why would they have changed their name after being called after the man Dedan for a millennium?” Whoever Lihy was, he must have meant a great deal to the Dedanites for they renamed themselves after him and did so shortly after the passage of Lehi through their town. The renaming of a tribe after a new leader is an ancient tradition in Arabia that persists to this day. That is, an entire tribe will rename itself (change their last names) in honor of a new leader, if that leader was truly exceptional.
Could the Lihyanites have been converts? The
Qur'an states that they were descendants of the people of Thamud, a righteous people who believed in the one true God. The Hiltons pointed out that the Lihyanites built a temple at Dedan, which had a font that was nearly the same in dimensions as the one at Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. The cistern (font) at the Lihyanite temple has stairs going into it, and if one stands in it, the lower half of their body would be below the surrounding surface of the earth.
The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Antiquities does not know the purpose of the font, however it notes the Lihyanite Temple. The modern name for Dedan is Ula, which means "to exalt". In antiquity Dedan and its surrounding villages were called Qura Arabiyyah. Allegedly, there are inscriptions on a large stone near Medina which indicates that Jeremiah sent two people to visit the people Qura Arabiyyah
Were these two messengers Lehi and Nephi?
First, to our great surprise, we found that the Saudi Arabian Department of Antiquities has begun excavating the Lihyanite Temple! All that we knew
about the temple site prior to now was that a temple had once set upon a half mile long site, and that all that remains of the entire site is rumble--small pieces of rock. The one exception is the cistern that the Hiltons compare to the Brazen Sea baptismal font at Solomon's Temple. According to the Saudi Department of Antiquities, "near the foundations of a large temple is still found a well preserved large cistern."
Second, I discovered that the steep mountain that rises above the temples site, Mount Um-Daraj, has a very impressive feature - a stone stairs that had been carved up the entire 700 foot ascent to the mountain's summit, and that atop the summit is a second temple site. It appears that the Lihyanites carved a stone stair case from the temple with the font the entire way up a steep mountain to the temple with an altar.
Third, as we were preparing to leave the valley, I met a French explorer who told me about a hidden Lihyanite sacred area--their sanctuary. He told me he discovered the holy site in a maze of narrow wadis three miles west of the main wadi Ula. According to the Frenchmen, the site included an altar with two carvings, one a circled bowl and the other a rectangle. One was for the blood of the sacrificed animal and the other for water for the washings. I will make it the quest of my next visit to the oasis of al-Ula.
But were the Lihyanites practicing a faith consistent with that of Nephi? The Lihyanites referred to their God as 'Dhu-Ghaibit'. Dhu means
"the one with or one possessed with." Ghaibat literally means "absent, unknown, faint, swoon." Ghaiba( singular) means "one absent," but Ghibat
(plural) means "a lot of Absents." According to the Almonjed (Arabic to Arabic dictionary), Ghibat means "valleys, digs, caves, woods", or any thing that could make things or people absent or hidden. They say, "Ghaib this person" which means to kill him, or make him absent. The Koran
say "God has the knowledge of the Ghaib," which means God knows the unknown, which can also mean future things to happen. The sorcerer or enchanter claims he knows the Ghaib (mainly future). The Koran states "Al-Ghaib Knowledge is only for God." The Lihyanite God's name then means, "He who possess knowledge of the future". This compares well with Nephi's teaching that the Lord knoweth all things ...
The Lihyanites placed great importance on offerings and sacrifices, paid an annual offering (talal) at the temple
During an earlier visit to Dedan, I learned from a French author and explorer that Lihyanite statutes and columns could be found on the top of a mountain on the opposite side of the valley from where the Lihyanite temple and cistern were found. In April 2005 my companions and I returned to the ruins of Dedan to search for the Lihyanite artifacts.
However, what we found was truly amazing. On the summit of the mountain, we found a large sanctuary covering approximately 10-14 acres. This lost temple is completely surrounded by vertical cliffs, and today it can only be reached with the aid of ropes.
In antiquity the sanctuary had steps carved in the sandstone that led from the base of the mountain to the summit. Unfortunately the steps have completely eroded away except at the bases of the mountain. Like an Arabian version of Machu Picchu the second Lihyanite temple is perched upon a mountain top with magnificent vistas. But unlike the Peruvian lost city, the lost temple of the Lihyanites is much more difficult to reach and appears to have been of much greater significances. Indeed, we found dozens of altar stones for animal sacrifices, statutes, columns, incense burners and cisterns.
There are literally hundreds of artifacts spread over the sanctuary including two large assembly areas where seats had been carved into the walls of natural amphitheaters
Overlooking the Dedan ruins in the valley below are two large carved cisterns which would have been filled with water and could have been used for bathing or similar purposes. There, we found a serpent stone the engraving of the snake symbolically protecting the sacred site.
In yet another location on the mountaintop we found two large reservoirs that were carved into the floor of the summit. With small circular openings, the subsurface reservoirs were roughly 10 feet deep and 7 feet wide and would have held thousands of gallons of water which all would have been brought to the summit from the valley floor in goat skin bags. The Frenchman believed that the reservoirs held water for the washing of animal sacrifices for within a few feet of the reservoirs was what appears to be the remains of an altar of unhewn stones and two bowls carved in the floor which the Frenchman believed was used for collecting the blood of the sacrificed animals.
It will take decades of excavations and restorations to understand fully the functions and the significance of this lost Lihyanite temple. However, it was clear that the mountain top sanctuary certainly eclipsed in importance the Lihyanite temple in the floor of the valley, and leads me to believe that the Lihyanite capital at Dedan was a major religious center in the centuries preceding the birth of Christ.
I am currently producing a film on the people of Lihy which is scheduled to be released in the Winter 2006.
http://www.ancientamerica.org/library/media/HTML/liz439og/Lihyanite%20temple.htm
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More pictures here.............
http://s1.zetaboards.com/anthroscape/topic/4700678/1/
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The Linguistic Footprints of Lehi
http://www.nephiproject.com/linguistic_footprints_of_lehi.htm
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