Ed-Dur

The ruins barely lift above the coastal scrub of Umm Al Quwain, easy to drive past and impossible to forget once you know what they are: the largest settlement of its age on this whole side of Arabia, a port where Roman glass shaped like grapes and fish changed hands two thousand years ago.

Ed-Dur flourished from the late first century BCE into the early centuries CE as the biggest coastal town between Qatar and Musandam, spread over roughly two square kilometres of temple, fort, houses and a burial ground that holds more than 20,000 graves. Belgian excavators uncovered its singular treasure: a small temple with an Aramaic-inscribed basin naming Shamash, the Semitic sun god, the only temple of its kind found anywhere in the Gulf. More than 2,000 artefacts have come out of the sand, from Roman glass vessels and coins to carved ivory plaques and bronze bells, evidence of trade reaching Rome, India, Iran and Mesopotamia, with the inland caravan city at Mleiha as its likely partner economy. The site has sat on the UAE's UNESCO Tentative List since 2012 but remains raw ground: no ticket office, no cafe and no gate, so carry water and take nothing but photographs.