Page 248 - The Tigris Expedition

We Search for a Pyramid and Find Makan
and Ziusudra, the survivor from the Flood, were intimately linked
with the trading post of Dilrnun, there arc no mythological texts
referring to Makan. The gods of the Sumerians never went there.
All references to Makan were commercial and matter-of-fact.
In the days when Bibby’s excavations on Bahrain began to give
strong support to the theory that this island was Dilrnun, many
scholars had already started to postulate theories as to the where­
abouts of Makan too. One school of thought would place Makan in
Africa; thus the noted authority Kramer believed that Makan was
probably Egypt, and others had suggested Sudan or perhaps
Ethiopia. The reason for these assumptions was a hint in late
Assyrian texts. When Assyrian kings around the years 700-650 bc
waged wars against Egypt, they left inscriptions placing both
Makan and Meluhha somewhere to the south of that country, after
having reached Lower Egypt overland from the Mediterranean
side. But the Assyrians were presumably ignorant of how far to the
south of Egypt these two legendary countries lay, for direct trade
between Mesopotamia and Makan had ceased over a thousand
years earlier.
The second school of thought placed Makan closer to the
Sumerian ports. Woolley, for instance, said that ‘diorite was
brought by sea from Magan, some point on the Persian Gulf’. As to
copper he was more specific: ‘copper came from Oman, as is shown
by analysis of the ores, . . .’3Bibby,4 too, supported this latter view,
partly because he felt that Makan had to be within fairly easy sailing
distance from Dilrnun. But also because a large number of copper
objects from Mesopotamia of the period 3000-2000 bc had been
analysed and found to contain a slight trace of nickel. Now nickel is
fairly rare as an impurity in copper, but a similar slight intermixture
had been ascertained in a single specimen of copper ore coming
from the territory of the Sultan of Muscat and Oman, which was
still closed in the rigid days of Qaboos’ father. The sample was
reported to be from ‘ancient workings’ and found in the valley
running inland from the port of Sohar.
I was later to learn, through a letter from Mr G. J. Jeffs of
Prospection Limited in Canada, that it had been the brief reference
to this one copper sample from Oman in Bibby’s book Looking for
Dilrnun that had prompted their company to survey the forgotten
mines of north Oman with the consent of Sultan Qaboos, a recent
survey that led to Mr Jeffs’ discovery of the sites Paolo Costa was
now able to show us.
Not until after our return from the Tigris expedition did I get

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