Page 175 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition

a major subject. They worshipped their ancestors and their minds
were focused on the events and heroes of the past. Royal lines back
through the ages were sacred lessons impressed on growing genera­
tions by the priesthood and the learned men. Noah is a legend to us,
but Ziusudra was history to them. Dilmun may seem a castle in the
air to us, but to them it was a trading centre thirty double-hours
away.

I was brought back from Dilmun to Bahrain by the shrill sound of a
claxon from one of the waiting cars on the plains below. Time to
return. Scrambling down the steep rubble hill that concealed the
fine stone walls, I drank in the view of the exclusive group of
majestic man-made hills around me. This island contained the
tombs of the Sumerian forebears. In a wider sense, the tombs of our
own spiritual forebears. Would this bring us a step closer to our
own lost beginnings?
It was almost with a feeling of awe that I descended to the ground
and walked back to the cars across a terrain that must have seen
strange processions. Here mighty leaders had been carried to rest.
This plain had probably witnessed the funeral ceremony of some
mighty seafaring hierarch whose maritime adventures, in ever
more embellished versions, were to survive the ages and be retold
even in my own childhood classroom. The vessel that became the
‘Ark’ had probably been a ma-gur beached on this coast. The
fabulous procession of disembarking animals had probably been a
few cows, a bull and a little flock of sheep. Lowing and bleating
after days on board, they must have waded across the shallows from
the broad and sturdy reed-ship, searching for the nearest waterhole.
Man and beast survived here because the god of the venerated
priest-king had let sweet cold water from the distant mainland
mountains well out of the ground.
I looked with horror at the limestone burners digging away at
some of the biggest of the giant mounds. While all the Arabs on this
island emirate enter their mosques to pray, while they read about
their progenitor Noah in their holy Koran, these Moslems were
burning lime by assaulting with pick and shovel a notoriously
ancient mausoleum that in fact might once have been venerated by
Ham, Shem and Japhet as their father’s tomb.
The early Bahrainians had been a religious people. From the
nameless seaport Bibby brought us westwards along the coast to a
locality known as Barbar. Here his team had made their first major
discovery: a temple. And it was a very special temple. They had

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