Archaeologists Uncover 8000-Year-Old Ritual Platform in Saudi Arabia with Ancient Egyptian Artifacts

A team of archaeologists from France, Saudi Arabia and Italy uncovered a grand 35-metre long triangular ritual platform buried underground at the settlement of Dumat al-Jandal in the north of Saudi Arabia. Fascinatingly, tombs were found within the platform that date back from between the sixth millennium BC to around 50 AD, and the researchers discovered a trove of ancient Egyptian artefacts within them.

It was clear that these tombs had been looted, but the ancient Egyptian artefacts that remained included thirteen beads composed of two cylindrical shell beads, three cylindrical stone beads, three flat beads made of white stone and five carnelian beads. The archaeologists also came across seashells, a faience bead with Egyptian glaze and a scarab beetle amulet.

This ritual platform – which also held dead bodies - didn’t just serve funerary and burial purposes; it also hosted a variety of social rituals. Kind of like if people had a picnic at a cemetery, we suppose.

But seriously, how did this stuff get there? Were Egyptian trinkets a hot trading commodity? Did an Egyptian military force encroach the area? Or perhaps they were the remains of some adventurous Ancient Egyptian tourists partying at the Arab peninsula like it's 1999 BC? So far, archaeologists have no clue as to exactly how these artefacts ended up in Saudi Arabia, but they’ve said that it probably had something to do with the site’s proximity to both Sinai and the Southern Levant. Whatever the case may be, they hope to discover more upon further excavation of the surrounding area.