Page 117 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition
flat bottom, compact bundles and modest draught we could ven­
ture where others ought not to try.
Norman searched for some information on that area in the Persian
Gulf Pilot, published in London a year previously, and read aloud:
\ . . this coast is rarely visited by Europeans. There are large tracts
without villages or any settled inhabitants, and it is probably unsafe
to wander away from the towns on the mainland without an armed
escort.’
The wind blew stronger. Our speed increased. The day passed
and the sun sank in the choppy sea ahead of us. It sank in the
direction of Failaka Island and its shallows.
We had not intended to sail so far west as this. We wanted to aim
for the island of Bahrain but here we found ourselves heading for
Failaka Island. It seemed like a trick of fate, for Failaka was a
competitor with Bahrain among students of Sumerian traditions
about the legendary Dilmun, and I had no objection to getting at
least a passing glimpse of the island before we left the gulf. We were
now sailing in real Sumerian waters and no other island lay closer to
former Sumerian ports. In the meeting at the Baghdad Museum the
Iraqi scientists had mentioned Failaka several times. The great
scholar Fuad Safar was inclined to believe that Failaka was the
important place referred to as Dilmun on the Sumerian clay tablets.
In his opinion Bahrain was too far away.
But as Tigris raced towards Failaka in the evening of our very first
day, we asked ourselves: was not Failaka too close? Most scholars
identified the legendary Dilmun with Bahrain, and that was a major
reason why I wanted to go there.
One thing was certain. I could inform my men that in the
darkness ahead of us lay a barren speck of land with a remarkable
story to tell about man’s activities at sea since the earliest days of
navigation. Somewhere ahead was a low sandstone island seven
miles long and three miles wide, full of vestiges left by prehistoric
sailors.
Alexander the Great had personally named this island Ikaros
when the Greek sailing vessels, built in the distant Indus Valley,
came this way about 325 bc. The now barren island was still
wooded then, and was conveniently placed for the Greeks when
they conquered the gulf area. Although the mainland of the great
country they named Mesopotamia lay nearby, they built a fort and a
temple to their goddess Artemis on the tiny island. In a manner
typical of Europeans even eighteen or twenty centuries later, the
early Greeks considered themselves discoverers of any land they
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