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HE OCCUPAIONAL‫ ﺶ‬ENIGMA OE
BAHRAIN BEWEEN HE 13th
AN HE 8th CENURY B.C.

y‫ﺕ‬

Monique Kervran, 'eder Mortensen
and redri Hiebert'

٨BSRAC

With no historical record of ilmun (Bahrain) between c. 1240 and 709
B.C., and until recently no archaeological renainsfron Bahrain which
could safely.be dated between the 13th and the8th century B.C., a brief
review is offered of the archaeological and textual evidence of the periods
preceding and succeeding this apparent gap (I). An important 'intermedi­
ate' sequence, discovered at Oal'at al-Bahrain by the French Archaeologic­
al Mission between 1979 and 1982 is then descirbed (I). his is followed by
a suggestion of a hypothetical frame for the understanding of the
occupational enigma of Bahrain between the 13th and the 8th century
B.C. (I).

I. he Occupation of Bahrain and the Relfection of ilmun in the Mesopotamian
Sources from the Late Kassite to the Neo-Assyrian Period.

he primary source of our nowledge about the chronological sequence in
Bahrain from the 3rd millennium B.C, to the 16th century A.. is the excavations
carried out since 1954 by anish and French expeditions at the large tell at Oal'at
al-Bahrain. he archaeological material rfom this mound was ifrst divided into six
main periods by Geoffrey Bibby who later named the periods City [-٧I:, City
IIIP, the Kassite period, has since been subdivided into two phases, A and B, and
its chronology seems now fairly well established 3, Also the chronology of "City
IV" and its subphases !has recently been the subject of several studies '. But at the
same time, as our nowledge of "cities' III and IV increases, it becomes more and
more obvious that there is a period of time between the 13th and the 8th century
B.C., often referred to in rather vague terms of speech, of which there is very little
archaeological evidence in Bahrain. It is remarable in this context that the sparse
archaeological remains relating to these centuries coincide with a tell-tale silence
regarding the mention of ilmun in the Mesopotamiam sources (cf. the table fig.
1). he purpose of this essay, then, is to publish after a brief review of the
archaeological and textual evidence of the periods preceding and succeeding this
apparent gap ' an intermediate sequence revealed by the French Archaeological
Mission at Oal'at a-Bahrain, and finally to suggest a tentative frame-wor for the

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