THE ANCIENT Nabataean site of Mada'in Saleh, in north-western Saudi Arabia, is a place where the dead commune with the living. All along the sides of the valley, overlooking what was once a busy oasis, hundreds of massive carved tombs, hewn from the orange-yellow rock, stand guard. The people who built them came from Babylon, Persia, ancient Greece and Rome. Mada'in Saleh was an important stop on the trading route that brought precious incense from the south of the peninsula to the Nabataean capital, Petra, across the border in what today is Jordan, and to the Roman empire beyond.
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