Page 177 - The Tigris Expedition

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The Tigris Expedition
vases was of a shape used in Mesopotamia in the final centuries of
the third millennium bc.
It was fascinating to visit this temple-mound with Bibby and
hear how he linked it to long-range Sumerian sailing and Dilmun
trade. This had indeed not been an isolated island civilisation. And
much more was to be found under the ground. In fact, stairs led
down the south wall of the sun-oriented structure to a deep
excavation at its foot. Down there, below ground level, was a basin
enclosed by a cellar-like wall, and we were only halfway down into
it when I caught myself exclaiming: ‘The fingerprint!’
There it was again, and in an even finer version, the masonry I
had been looking for. Stone blocks of uneven size squared as if cut
with a laser beam. Some intentionally shouldered, all dressed and
polished almost to a shine and fitted together without cement so
exactly that hardly a knife blade could bc inserted between them.
Again the temple walls of Vinapu on Easter Island stood clearly
before me, and the whole series from the pre-Inca walls in Vinaque
and Tiahuanaco to Lixus and the Hittite walls of Bogazkoy. This
was deep below the ground, built as a catchment basin to hold what
had probably served as sacred water for ceremonial functions
conducted on the structure above. Since the temple architects could
hardly have found this spring merely by digging at the feet of the
temple stairs, it must be assumed that the temple had been placed
there because of the presence of the spring. This would again mean
that the splendidly fitted wall of the basin dated from the first
building phase of the temple. This observation was supported by
the fact that the temple itself showed evidence of more than one
building phase, and, as in the buried port city, some of the finest
carved stones in the rebuilt structure appeared to be reused from an
earlier period. But more was to be deduced from these dressed
stones. The people who quarried them must have been sailors. The
masons had benefited from the choice of the most suitable kind of
stone and the knowledge of where to find it.
A really fine limestone they used,’ I remarked to Bibby.
Right,’ he said, ‘and there is no such stone on Bahrain. They
probably went to Jidda to fetch it.’
Jidda?’ I sensed evidence of marine activity.
Jidda is a small island some five kilometres from the north-west
point of this island.’
|Have you looked for quarries there?’ I asked.
No. There are supposed to be traces of that sort, but no one can
go there as Jidda is the prison colony of the Emirate.’
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