Page 246 - The Tigris Expedition

Wc Search for a Pyramid and Find Mahan
Mines. This rang a bell. A stone’s throw from the
the sun shone on some unusual piles of stone chips or
pretty colours; red, brown, violet, yellow and green. I his was stag.
‘Remember I told you about the prehistoric copper mines, sai
Costa. ‘They arc here!’ .
The parts of a long unsolved puzzle seemed to fit logically
together, and it made me hold my breath a moment as Costa
pointed to a nearby mountain, behind the hill overlooking the
temple-mound. It looked like a huge, rotten, rusty-red tooth,
almost worn through at the middle. This was no eroded crater. Not
the work of nature. What he pointed to was clearly the work of
man.
‘One of the prehistoric quarries,’ said Costa. ‘Everywhere in this
vicinity you will see evidence of early copper mining activity.
I began to sec a meaning in the strange location of a seemingly
Sumerian ziggurat. Fresh in my mind since my researches in Iraq
and our days with Geoffrey Bibby in Bahrain were the texts of
some of the old Sumerian clay tablets. I began to add two and two
together and could hardly keep my suspicions to myself.
Costa told us that an estimated 40,000 tons of slag were scattered
about the foot of that one mountain. Prospection Limited crews had
discovered a total of some forty-six such ancient mine sites in
northern Oman. Costa was itching to take us further inland to
another site where an estimated 100,000 tons of slag were heaped in
piles. A whole mountain had been removed by prehistoric miners
who had turned it into a valley covered by multi-coloured slag to
look like a giant painter’s palette. Here prehistoric copper miners
had been crushing the slag from their many small furnaces.
Bumping through trackless canyons and dried-up river beds we
reached what Costa considered the most impressive site in Oman,
and we were
activiriec v u• founded by the immensity of the prehistoric
eiam , ^ had transformed the whole landscape into a sort of
nothino ^ outd°°r theatre. Of the former mountain
outcron f aS C j ^°PPer miners but a monumental metallic
battlefield rn1 j ^ a tr*umphal arch on the low hill at the side of a
eatewav fllle1drwi* multi-coloured debris. Perhaps this majestic
ooenina t4^aS V l-1'6 °n PurPosc to commemorate the original
the rnrfn rou8h which the miners had first worked their way into
I cnuU m°1Untain tha< they had gradually caused to disappear,
exclaimed 11°^ °n^?r keeP my deductions to myself. ‘Makan,’ I
us the ! °iSta edUS *nto t^le 8reat gateway and turned to show
3 the sPectacular sight. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘this may well be
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