Page 22 - The Tigris Expedition

In Search of the Beginnings
texts and illustrations? This was the question that had led me to
move into the Garden of Eden Resthouse. I came back to Sumerian
territory to try to disentangle the theoretical controversy by a
practical test. 1 wanted to see how long a berdi ship would float, and
to attempt to retrace some of the obscure itineraries recorded in the
old tablets with their references to Dilmun, Makan, Mcluhha and
other disguised and long forgotten lands.
I had ended up beside Adam’s tree by mere accident. I had
searched for a safe and suitable place to build a reed-ship in the
marshlands and along the river banks. Down by the gulf, modern
cities and expanding industry had occupied all convenient terrain,
and upstream quagmire, mud flats, date plantations or steep
escarpments made boat building and launching difficult. Then the
representatives of Iraq’s Ministry of Information showed me the
empty garden plot by the side of Adam’s tree, and generously
offered me the Garden of Eden Resthouse as assembly site for the
expedition. The endless reed marshes began a few minutes from the
door, and from the terrace we could sail down the river straight to
the open sea. Even with the help of Aladdin’s Lamp I could not have
been offered a better solution.
I had been amply warned that Iraq was not the easiest country in
which to mount an expedition at that moment. The republic was in
the melting-pot after the overthrow of the monarchy and the
casting-off of British influence. The leaders of the pan-Arab Bath
party had won the most recent revolution and closed the borders to
tourists, though they welcomed constructive projects in science and
industry. The only two available hotels in Baghdad were crowded
with businessmen and engineers from all the industrialised nations
of East and West. All seemed eager to bring the ripe fruits of
modern civilisation back to the scorched soil where the first seeds
had once germinated. The oil pipelines were the veins of modern
Iraq, just as the irrigation trenches had been in earlier days.
The new republic was in a truly explosive development period
where the future was far more important than the past. But a solid
core of scientists at the National Museum in Baghdad were well
aware of the fact that the more we know of the past the better we
can plan the future. Man cannot know where he is going unless he
can see his tracks and know the direction from which he has come.
No situation is entirely new under the sun, and unless we seek to
learn by our own errors we must learn by the mistakes of others.
Dr Fuad Safar called together his colleagues and collaborators at
the National Museum, with its well-stocked library, and together
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