Page 141 - The Tigris Expedition

CHAPTER 5

To Dilmun, the Land of Noah

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Adam and Noah have one thing in common: they are the only two
men we all descend from, according to the beliefs brought by the
Hebrew patriarchs from Ur. From the Garden of Eden we had
come on Tigris to the waters where the story of Noah’s Ark began.
A thousand years before Abraham heard it in Ur, the Sumerians had
told it to their children in the same city-port. In these waters, they
said, a big ship had once been built by the progenitor of all peoples
as he complied with the orders of a merciful god who wanted to
save mankind from complete obliteration in a terrible flood.
While fields and homes were submerged the big ship resisted the
fury of the raging elements by floating upon the waves. In the
Hebrew version the builder of the ship afterwards thanked his God
who set the rainbow in the sky as sign of his covenant with the
survivors. In the Sumerian version he prostrated himself to the
reappearing sun in gratitude.
The sea was moderately rough as the same Sumerian sun rose
above the former Sumerian waters and filtered the first rays of the
day through the cracks of the woven cane wall upon my closed
eyes. With mixed feelings I awoke and gazed through the open
doorway at the flowing disc that slowly rose with majestic dignity
from its bath in the sea. Beautiful. Magnificent. Clean, virgin light
was being lit for a new day. I welcomed the beautiful sight
whole-heartedly, for I felt as if the sun had lit another hope in my
sombre spirit. After all, we were safe and free, free to start all over
again with a ship that was still in good shape.
It had been a restless, unpleasant night, with violent jerks from
the tow-rope. When the snatches at the bow had been too brutal I
had suffered in my sleep, as if it was I who was pulled by the hair and
not Tigris. I had been out on deck to check that the bow was still
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