Archaeological Excavations History in Saudi Arabia

By Dr. Zahi Hawass

The archaeological survey work in the Saudi Arabia Kingdom began in 1964 – 1965 AD, and was implemented by Saudi teams in cooperation with Danish, English and America missions.

This work resulted in more than 8,000 sites that were registered dating back to the pre-Islamic era, in addition sites from the Islamic era.

The recent discoveries have confirmed the cultural depth of the Kingdom in terms of the successive civilizations that lived on the Arabian Peninsula land, recording the ancient civilizations effects and the manifestations of these civilizations contact with neighboring peoples.

Moreover, many important archaeological artifacts were chosen and displayed in 11 museums in America, Japan and Europe entitled “Antiquities Masterpieces of the Kingdom through Ages''.

On other hand, I believe that international cooperation in surveying archaeological excavations has shown the serious extent of scientific cooperation between heritage experts in the Kingdom and many foreign missions.

This joint cooperation has given experience and knowledge of scientific research techniques by scientists from different universities, and many scientific articles and books have been published on these researches results.

Also, in the Two Holy Mosques Custodian program cultural heritage in the Kingdom, Saudi Arabia spent more than 726 million riyals to protect and record antiquities.

About 224 million riyals, were allocated to conduct archaeological excavations. As a result, we found many missions currently working in more than 45 archaeological sites. This interest indicates the cultural heritage depth in the Kingdom.