Dam Importanat In Yemen

and miscellaneous insights

Before 2300 BC there were elaborate earth dams and canal networks in what we now call Yemen. These works were carried out by a people of a pre-Saba'a culture.

The ancient town of Marib was once the capital of the kingdom of Saba'a, which may have been the kingdom of the Queen of Sheba. Saba may have been ruled by sixty female rulers before the Sheba of Solomon's time.

People of of Yemen might have been navigators of the sea and merchants before Moses walked in Egypt.

From good (not perfect)source I learn that after about 820 BC the kingdoms of Maan and Sheba arose in Yemen. And, that at the end of the 5th century BC two more arose, Quataban and Hadramaut. By about 250 BC Sheba absorbed Maan.

From another worthy source I 'hear' that Qahtans pre-dated the Saba and were the ones to begin the dam and canals at Marib. Some held the Qahtani to be in competition with the Adan and the Ma'ad.

We know that a source of historic difficulty is different people give differing names to a 'single entity.'

The earliest inhabitants of Yemen and Southern Arabia are often remembered as Qatani and have been identified with the Jokton of the Bible, a fourth generation decedent of Shem. (Sons of Sam?)

Close connections may be found between Nabataean Arabs and Quahtani. After about 70 BC there is evidence of important inland towns in the hands of Nabataean and Iturian Arabs near the Mediterranean end of the Arabian Penisula. (Petra I've written in other posts of the Nabataeans.

By 750 BC the Great Dam of Marib was one of the great engineering wonders of the world, efficient and beautifully clad in worked stone. By 500 BC it had been enlarged and remained a wonder. The Sheba or Qahtani remained the principle culture until about 220 BC. By 280 BC the Himyrarites dominated that Sabaenn cultur.

The present modern dam was completed in 1986 and is a fine piece of engineering.