Page 245 - The Tigris Expedition

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The Tigris Expedition
had so often seen together among pre-Columbian ruins in Mexico.
At the same time, the whole concept was that of a Mesopotamian
ziggurat. As Costa emphasised, nothing like it was known in any
other part of Oman or the entire Arabian peninsula. Huge natural
boulders had been used to wall in a rectangular structure that rose
above the plain in compact, superimposed terraces, four of which
were seen above ground. The four corners pointed in cardinal
directions, and the well-preserved, stone-lined ramp led centrally
up one side in the fashion characteristic of the temple-pyramids
of the sun-worshippers of Mesopotamia and pre-Columbian
America. Whoever might have built it did not follow Moslem
norms, but it struck me that the concept was also the same as that of
the Dilmun temple Geoffrey Bibby had excavated on Bahrain and
described as a mini-ziggurat.
It was impossible to say how much of the structure, if any, was
lost in the ground, but, barely emerging from the hard-packed
terrain, the top of a boulder-wall was visible, enclosing a rectangu­
lar temple court extending from one side of the terraced mound.
Nobody had yet attempted excavation. There were vestiges of
other walls and an elaborate system of aqueducts all around. Even
traces of stone masonry on a nearby hill, directly overlooking the
temple-pyramid. I was amazed that nobody had started digging.
Costa shrugged his shoulders. There had been no time. With his
assistants, two of whom came with us and saw the temple-mound
for the first time, Costa was busy surveying archaeological sites all
over Oman. This discovery was new; the site was stumbled upon
when the Sultan recently permitted a general archaeological and
geological survey of Oman. Four years ago the wadi had been
visited by a group of mining geologists representing Prospection
Oman Limited. They operated with Land Rovers as part of a
mineral exploration programme started by Dr C. C. Huston in
collaboration with His Majesty Sultan Qaboos. The sites dis­
covered had been reported by Prospection Limited to the Oman
Government, but as the report was mainly concerned with mining
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possibilities, the news of the temple mound had barely begun to
leak out. A Harvard expedition, led by J. Humphries, had visited
the temple site and briefly reported the existence in the mining area
of ‘a ziggurat of Mesopotamian type’.1 The survey was mainly of
interest for economic mineralisation. The early Arabs had clearly
i tried to benefit from the presence of some of these prehistoric
mines, but there was still much to be extracted if the long forgotten
mines were reopened.

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