Unknown Oman

1966

Storage Bliss OR P

Longmans, Green, and Co. Ltd

Oman is a small independent state on the southeastern side of the Arabian Peninsula. After escaping from Yemen in 1952, Wendell Phillips befriended the Sultan of Oman, Said bin Taimur. With the Sultan’s permission Phillips led an expeditionary archaeological dig in the country. Despite Oman’s history of involvement in the ancient incense trade, there were no huge kingdom complexes, similar to those in Yemen, for his team to unearth. Phillips’s subsequent publication on the country expounds on his ‘travels, explorations and excavations’ but also details some aspects of life in Oman – such as religion (Islam), disease (rife) and medicine (basic), treatment of women (not good), and historical aspects of the frankincense trade.