For most audiences, indigenous to the Arabian Peninsula, a cuboid incense burner probably does not need any explanation, or even a defence, as it has evolved into an iconic symbol of national heritage for most if not all of the Gulf States (Plate 18). However, how we define the cuboid incense burner – where it came from, and where it went, and how it evolved in its cultural identity – has been, of course, full of uncertainties in Western scholarship. In this brief overview, I dissect the history of the biography of the object in two parts. First, I highlight the background of this deep cultural heritage tradition, reviewing Western scholarship and research on the subject of cuboid incense burners. Secondly, I turn to discuss new ways of addressing the problems of interpretation for where and how these objects were once made inside the Arabian Peninsula, including my own ethnographic studies on its modern- day production in Dhofar, the southernmost region of the Sultanate of Oman. By casting a wider spatial and temporal net, I will bring the Arabian Peninsula into focus with southern Mesopotamia and the southern Levant in antiquity, highlighting two distinct trade patterns from the distribution percentages and cultural movement of the Pre-Islamic cuboid incense burner tradition in history. I conclude by summarising my ethnographic evidence from Dhofar to describe the manifold functions for these artefacts, which in turn has helped to clarify the relationship between incense burner users and incense burner makers in the past. In doing so, I hope to raise awareness of this important locally made artefact-type when found in our archaeological investigations and ongoing excavations across the Middle East.

Scholarly Interpretations

For over a century now, Western archaeologists have been intrigued by socalled cuboid incense burners since their discovery in the early 1900s at Tall Nuffar (ancient Nippur) in southern Iraq, when Hermann Hilprecht of the University of Pennsylvania Museum recorded them in the museum notes as diminutive ‘four-legged troughs’ while sitting in the Istanbul Museum of the Ottoman Empire (Figure 15.1). Shortly afterwards, when similarly shaped artefacts were found in the first field seasons at Tall al-Muqayyar (ancient Ur) in 1922, the expedition's excavator, the renowned Sir Leonard Woolley of London, labelled the artefacts ‘stands’ (Field Number, U.238) and ‘caskets’ (U.846), and then, in 1923, ‘stools’ (U.1174) (Woolley 1962: Pl. 36).