Page 147 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition
First of all he assembles references to the ma-gur, which he refers
V to as ‘the sea-going ship’, ‘the god-ship’, ‘the ship with high bow
and stern’. This, he says, was the type depicted in the oldest
ideographs for ‘ship’ before the cuneiform script was invented. It is
also the traditional vessel incised on the earliest Sumerian cylinder
i seals. It was the type of ship used by the demi-gods and divine
ancestors before Ur was settled, originally built from reeds, not
from wood.
!
Salonen specifically refers to the Egyptian reed-ships as built of
papyrus, but he has no comment on the kind of reeds used for the
original sea-going ma-gur of Mesopotamia. He translates the
Babylonian word for reed-ship, elep urbati, into German as Papyrus-
boot, but there is no evidence that papyrus ever grew in
Mesopotamia. For botanical reasons we cannot escape the conclu-
sion that the sea-going Sumerian reed-ships were built from the
same berdi as that which dominates the local marshes today. It was
now up to us to find out whether berdi cut in August might not
float just as well as papyrus.
The national heroes of the Sumerians, the important ancestor-
god Enki and his contemporaries, sailed to Ur from distant Dilmun
in ma-gurs of reeds. But in subsequent Sumerian times ma-gur also
remained the term for the largest of the ships used in the gulf for
merchant adventures, even those that followed the original reed-
ships in form although built from split timber. Timber became,
together with copper, one of the principal cargoes freighted to
Mesopotamia in the largest of local sailing ships.
Salonen shows that the Sumerians had names also for four other
types of wooden ships, two for mere river traffic, one for normal
sailing both on river or sea, and one a simpler freighter or cargo
barge. However, in the functions of the temple priests and other
religious performances, it was the ‘god-ship’, the original ma-gur,
that was invariably represented.
A common measure given for a ma-gur was 120gur. A gur was
unfortunately a measure of varying value, sometimes given as the
equivalent of 80 gallons and sometimes as 121 litres. In either case it
would be ships roughly within the ranges of the modern dhows.
Oppenheim, subsequent to Salonen’s study, came across references
to ships from Ur recorded as 300 gur. He referred to them as
exceedingly large, and they were indeed: they would have made the
two Ras and Tigris seem small.
Salonen quotes excerpts from tablet texts referring to passenger-
ships, ferry-boats, fishing vessels, battle-ships, troop-transport

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