Page 120 - The Tigris Expedition

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ship with mast and with crosswise hatching along its curved body
to illustrate rope lashings of a reed-boat just like ours.
Enthralled, I stood scrutinising the prehistoric seal in my hand.
Abdo, a blue-eyed Palestinian with thirty years of local research
behind him, looked at me in surprise. Did I not realise that Failaka
had been a very early shipping centre? There was proof of very early
contact not only with nearby Mesopotamia, Bahrain and the distant
Indus Valley, but also with ancient Egypt.
He dug out of his archaeological treasure-chest a chunk of stone.
Just an ordinary piece of rock, but clearly the fragment of some­
thing that had been worked, for one side was brightly polished.
‘Egyptian granite,’ Abdo said triumphantly. ‘An American
expedition fromjohns Hopkins University dug it up on Failaka five
years ago.’
We admired the piece together as an art object more precious than
gold. Gold could have come to Failaka from anywhere. This
particular kind of granite only from the remote Nile Valley. The
Greeks did not quarry stones in Egypt to bring to Failaka.
I had hardly finished gazing at the lump of Egyptian granite when
Mr Abdo began unwrapping fragments of worked alabaster.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Cream-coloured alabaster. As in Egypt. Not white
as in Anatolia.’
Next he opened with great caution a little box with a thumb­
sized sculpture of a beetle. A scarab! An unmistakable Egyptian
scarab. The strange symbols incised on it were of local character,
but whoever had carved it had somehow been under Egyptian
influence.
A tall, slim jar of Egyptian style had also been excavated on
Failaka. It bore a slight resemblance to those containing the Dead
Sea scrolls, but was of a type not known in Mesopotamia.
Although all this was important evidence of long-range naviga­
tion, I had to return to the seals again. By the time we had gone
through the whole collection Abdo and I had picked out a total of
five Failaka seals that clearly depicted ships. All were sickle-shaped
reed-ships with masts. One had a figure seated astern, hoisting or
holding the halyard to a big, matted sail. His rope ran through the
mast top. Another showed two figures standing, one on either side
of the mast, each grasping the lower edge of a reefed sail above their
heads. All five ships were engraved on stamp seals from about 2500
bc.
The Tigris crew listened to my story from the Kuwait Museum as
we ourselves raced towards Failaka on a reed-ship. The night was
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