Page 77 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

UlgL Ulipuit lUJLU Uiipuw. ............. "...... —'---------------------------------- -------------—
lized whose main means of livelihood was international trade,
and whose prosperity, and even existence, depended on keep­
ing open the seafaring routes that they had done so much to es­
tablish. The first among these sea-trading powers was Dilmun,

the first to appear in history, and the first to fall. We shall later
in this chapter meet the second, Crete. The third, Phoenicia, will

not come seriously into the picture for several hundred years.
The men of Dilmun were first and foremost sailors. Though
their island was well watered and fertile, and already famous for

its dates, and though its seas furnished the pearls that were
traded, under the name of “fishes’ eyes,” to the north, neither the

harvests of the land nor those of the sea could support the large
population that crowded its numerous towns and villages—the

population whose burial mounds lie to this day in tens of thou­
sands on Bahrain Island. Dilmun lived by trade. Lying astride
the most important sea route of the age, it sent out ships to Meso­

potamia and to the Indus cities, and welcomed to its open road­
stead and shelving beaches ships of all the coastwise nations of

the Indian Ocean. Within its walls was one of the greatest mar­
kets of the eastern world, and there were exchanged the staple

commodities and the luxury goods demanded by the great civili­
zations to the north and east. The bulk trade was in textiles from
Mesopotamia and copper from the mines of Makan—probably,

though Makan has not yet been located, on the coast of Muscat.
A very large proportion of the copper worked by the bronze­

smiths of the Sumerian cities undoubtedly came from Makan
by way of the Dilmun markets. But there was a luxury trade, too,

in the products of the Indus valley. When the copper ingots
were stored in the holds, the merchant captains would take on
board a deck cargo of Indian timber, mangrove poles for build­

ing, or perhaps teak. And finally they would fill their chests with
the small heavy ingots of gold, and with ivory combs, figurines

and boxes of ivory, and soft leather bags of carnelian and lapis
azuli from far Afghanistan by the headwaters of the Indus. Even
jade was occasionally offered, and no one knew where that came

om. Often the chests in the cabin below the poop were worth
more than all the rest of the cargo, and they would be sealed se-