Lying 8km southwest of town is the extraordinary Great Ma’rib Dam, justly Yemen’s most famous monument. The dam is believed to date to at least the 8th century BC. It was periodically repaired; the last recorded time that major works were carried out was in the 6th century AD, after which it probably fell into disuse. Sadly, much of the remaining walls have been used to build the new town. Only two sluice gates (look out for the Sabaean inscriptions) remain. The vast stones, used for the dam’s foundations, were covered in a kind of ‘waterproofing’ consisting of clay and plastered with stones and gravel on the sides. At the tip of the dam, two gaps in the wall channelled the water into the irrigation canals.
