Page 75 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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Nippur, and, as Cornwall (1952) describes, these were from a provincial official in
Dilmun to his superiors in Mesopotamia. The names referred to are Akkadian, a
fact that led Cornwall to identify the key administrative relationship of Dilmun
with Mesopotamia. Raiding by apparent nomadic groups, referred to as ahlamu was
evident. These groups had, in fact, carried off dates awaiting shipment to
Mesopotamia. The mood was one of despair. Cornwall went on to infer from the
mention of nomads that Dilmun was located on the mainland as well as the islands
and was composed of an older element of villages reconciled to outside political
control. Ttie ahlamu probably represent part of a widespread movement of
Aramean tribes during the first and second millennia B.C. and indicate a period of
stress for Dilmun. Cuneiform tablets have also been recovered from Kassite period
buildings on Bahrain. These buildings we re destroyed by fire. Radiocarbon dates
obtained from charred date pits dated this destruction to 1180 B.C., which
correlates with a calibrated date of 1340-1370 B.C. (Ralph, Michael and Han 1973)—
roughly contemporay with the Kassite letters from Nippur.
Oppenheim (1954) presented these same letters as evidence to identify
Dilmun as an agricultural center based upon its sole resource—artesian water. He
also saw no evidence for tributary political connections between Dilmun and
Mesopotamia until the reign of Burnaburiash n, when the evidence indicates closer
ties. Obviously the data base is fragmentary and should be viewed in a broader
historical framework, but, there is a strong indication of a late Kassite political
and commercial presence on Bahrain and possibly the Arabian coast.
The Kassite period represents a distinct change from the Barbar II phase.
The texts provide the first tangible evidence that Bahrain was exposed to hostile
relations with nomads from the unsettled hinterlands of Arabia. Whether this
condition existed earlier is conjectural, but at least one historical source (Taylor
1856, cited in Stiffe 1901) claimed that the mythical tribe of Thammud migrated to
Awal (Bahrain) from Yemen during the early second millennium B.C. The second
millennium appears to have been a significant period of shifting power among the
major states of the Middle East. Thus, the Kassite Dynasty was under pressure
from many quarters.

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