Page 57 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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Thc Bahrain-Dilmun link provides the scholar with both textual and
archeological data from which to gain a fuller understanding of Bahrain as a
subsystem in a still larger interactive system. Clearly, there is sufficient evidence
to support the cases of Rawlinson, Burrows, Cornwall, and Bibby. Bahrain and
coastal Arabia appear to have been ancient Dilmun as has been recently
demonstrated by Gelb (1970), as well as During Caspers and Govindankutty (1977).
The archeological assemblage from the Qala’at al-Bahrain reflects upon
the historic record of maritime trade in the gulf. As stated earlier, Dilmun figured
prominently in Sumerian creation myths, where it was referred to as both a land
and a city filled with sweet water, fields, and farms (Kramer 1945). In addition,
there were references to irrigation canals and ditches, but there is little evidence
to pinpoint these myths in time, other than the Old Babylonian date of KramerTs
texts, which places them in the early second millennium B.C.
The earliest concrete mention of Dilmun in Mesopotamian sources was in
the Early Dynastic HI period, when Ur-Nanshe (ca. 2520 B.C.) proclaimed that "the
ships of Dilmun, from the foreign lands, brought him wood as a tribute” (Kramer
1964). This should not be taken as the beginning of maritime contact, as the
recently discovered 'Ubaid, Uruk, and Early Dynastic sites from eastern Saudi
Arabia indicate still earlier contact with Mesopotamia (Masry 1974, Adams, Parr,
Ibrahim, and al-Mughannum 1977, Oates 1975, Oates et al. 1977, Golding 1974, and
Piesinger 1983). Early Dynastic pottery of Mesopotamian origin has been reported
from as far inland as Abqaiq by C. Piesinger (1983), but there is no similar
evidence from Bahrain. Somewhat later, Sargon of Agade (ca. 2334 B.C.) seemed
to have gained a real economic advantage during his reign when he reported that
"the ships of Meluhha, the ships of Magan, the ships of Tilmun he moored at the
quay in front of Agade" (Gadd 1963:8). Although Sargon claimed these overseas
lands to the south as part of his empire, the more important clue is that initial
maritime trade contacts with the lands of Magan and Meluhha made during the
early dynasties of Ur continued and appeared to increase in frequency in the late
third millennium (Gadd 1963, Parpola and Parpola 1975, Hansman 1973, Gelb 1970,
Sollberger 1970). The presence of land routes to these places is less well attested,