Page 273 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition
recorded as paying tithes to the Ningal temple are specifically
listed as natives of Dilmun, so there were probably Dilmunitc
merchants resident in Mesopotamia and Mesopotamian mer­
chants resident in Dilmun, while ships of both countries would
be engaged in the carrying traffic. Ships of other nationalities,
too, would, in these two first centuries of the second millennium
bc, be beating up the Gulf to Dilmun and be beached upon its
shores, under the walls of its cities. The ships from Makan would
bc heavily loaded with their cargoes of copper, while the ships
from the cities of the Indus Valley civilization would have
cargoes, then as now, of timber (and perhaps, though there is no
evidence, of cotton), in addition to their lighter and more valu­
able stores of ivory, lapiz lazuli, and carnelian.4

;
Bibby even ventured a wild but interesting theory. He pointed
out that the Sanskrit-speaking Aryans who had entered India from
the north and probably overthrown the original Indus Valley
civilisation used the non-Sanskrit loan-word tuleccha to denote
non-Aryans, people who did not worship Aryan gods. He asks:
‘Could it bc that Mleccha was the Indus people’s own name for
themselves and their country?’
The Indus Valley, until recently part of India, was now the heart
and soul of Pakistan. Nobody on board Tigris objected to the idea of
turning back north and taking the alternative route we had rejected
as we came through the Hormuz Strait.
For ten days we sailed north-east with no other company than
patrolling sharks, a faithful escort of dolphins, and brief visits from
playful porpoises and a few curious whales of larger species.
Colourful tropical birds landed on our deck to rest, and, attracted
by the broad shadow beneath our bundles, multi-coloured fish
I swam with us like domesticated animals in quantities the like of
which I had not seen since drifting over the Pacific on Koti-Tiki.

1
37. Mohcnjo-Daro, contemporary with Sumerian civilisation, had
two-storied brick houses, streets with covered sewers, and a perfect
swimming pool, waterproofed with asphalt between the bricks.
38. An Indus Valley reed-ship incised on a Mohcnjo-Daro seal. The
building material must have been the same as in Tigris, as it was
easy for the author and Norman to identify the vast quantities of
reeds growing along the Indus as berdi due to its very characteristic
cross-section.
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