The Road to Ubar

February 2, 1998
For centuries, the city of Ubar was the object of legend, quests and uncertainty. An ancient trading outpost in Arabia, it had, according to the Koran, sunk into the desert sands as a result of God's wrath upon its sinful population. In the 1980s, Clapp, a documentary filmmaker, undertook to find the city. After exhaustive research that took him from ancient texts to satellite photos, he eventually led an expedition that finally located Ubar in what is now Oman. Clapp first learned of the then-chimerical city in the early 1980s, when working on a film about the oryx (a tough and graceful desert antelope). His interest was piqued further as he read of 19th-century British expeditions, which he synopsizes along with other relevant tales. Like Indiana Jones, Clapp is as comfortable in the library as in reconnaissance helicopters or on the sands, and his efforts to separate myth from possible reality make for a gripping intellectual adventure. Clapp's team, including his wife and expedition manager, Kay, and a host affable experts, weren't sure what they'd found in a giant sinkhole until they spent weeks digging and putting pieces of pottery together with knowledge of the ancient trade in frankincense. What they found was not only Ubar but also a fitting resolution to Clapp's engaging story of the excitement of discovery, of a mystery solved and of the spirit of adventure.