Page 170 - The Tigris Expedition

To Dilmun, the Land of Noah
fetch something like twenty
‘which at present prices would
thousand dollars’.
The correspondence of the copper broker also included a
sent him by a discontented customer: ‘When you came, Y°u sald’
will give good ingots to Gimil-Sin”. That is what you said, but you
have not done so; you offered bad ingots to my messenger, saying,
“Take it or leave it’’. Who am I that you should treat me
so contemptuously? Are we not both gentlemen? . . . Who is
there among the Dilmun traders who has acted against me in this
way?’
Dilmun was indeed a reality to our spiritual forebears. And
Sumerian merchant vessels must certainly have been among those
docking in front of the gate of the now buried harbour city of
Bahrain, because it had the peak of its activity in Sumerian time.
This, perhaps, was Enki’s ‘dock-yard house of the land’ referred to
in the Dilmun poem, unless another port of the same magnitude lies
buried elsewhere on Bahrain. That seemed unlikely. This was a
major trading port for such a small island. Ma-gurs from Ur must
have been amongst those that came here to barter copper for
Mesopotamian wool and garments, as the records and accounts on
the tablets show. It required a considerable trade to keep prosperous
such an island city as this. The vast complex of ruins extended
inland from the sea wall, with streets and palaces.
It was clear at a glance that the city had been rebuilt. It was equally
clear that the best stone masons had lived in the earlier period, that
is, the original Dilmun period, contemporary with the burial
mounds. Superimposed on the older city blocks were younger
walls, some of which were ascribed to Assyrian times. There was a
majestic interior gate known among the archaeologists as the
Assyrian doorway’, built from perfectly fitted quarried blocks
with a single threshold stone bigger than a double bed and with a
round indentation in one corner, to hold a door-post.
The Assyrians are famous for their stone work. But on Bahrain
they had been excelled by their Dilmun predecessors. Could this
mean that the Dilmun people had come from a stone-cutting area
with a higher development or longer tradition in the stone-shaping
art than the Assyrians? There were, indeed, such people in the
ancient world. But they were not terribly many. Archaeologists are
experts on pottery, and can with remarkable accuracy recognise
cultural ties by identifying ceramic ware, even when tound in
sherds. But I doubt if any archaeologist has ever tried to shape a
stone block like those left on Bahrain from the early Dilmun period.

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