دلمون الأرض الطهور

him for it was not just an important trading center but also place of mystery and legend garden of immortality but where was dilmon men have been looking for dilmon for hundred years ever since his name was unearthed by archaeology century ago one man now thinks he's actually found it an archaeologist called jeffrey bibby and thereby he reckons he has also found paradise the source of the biblical story of the garden of eden he looks like some arab sheikh but actually he's an englishman from westmoreland who happens to work in denmark his quest for dilmon took him to the middle east to an island in the arabian gulf the oil rich island of bahrain where archaeology and legend finally met face to face and started to make sense it all started with the puzzle of the grave mounds for years scholars had believed that bahrain had been used in prehistoric times simply as cemetery vast necropolis for the peoples of mainland arabia jeffrey bibby and his danish colleagues didn't find this theory convincing there was very little evidence to go on all the mounds that were archaeologically examined had been plundered by grave robbers in antiquity so not much was known of the culture of those who had been buried there digging them is apt to be dusty unrewarding business but in the search for evidence it must be done put the first one in there the chances of finding an unrobbed grave must be thousand to one at least yet every excavation every mound they tackle has to be meticulously recorded and surveyed for in archaeology every single detail can be vital okay now we start digging bibi knows before he starts that this is almost sure to be an academic exercise after nearly 20 seasons in bahrain he knows better than to expect spectacular results from the field of grave mounds any more than in the royal graves at ali the mounds at ali are huge compared with the normal grave mounds which are seldom more than the height of man the ali mounds are as big as three-story buildings each one has two huge chambers with carefully plastered walls but these mounds too had been systematically robbed in antiquity faced with these colossal structures with no evidence to go on except some broken pottery and beakers bibi and his colleagues came to the conclusion that they had once housed royalty that this area was bahrain's equivalent of the valley of the kings in egypt they were obviously at least three thousand years old and we believed that they must mean that bahrain had been at some time in the past pretty important place such were the homes of the dead but what of the living the first clue that bahrain had been more than just cemetery came from number of chimneys that stuck out of the sand at remarkable site they formed line that led straight across the added expanse of sand towards walled enclosure and inside sunken garden man-made oasis of growth now parched and desiccated struggling to keep alive against the encroaching sand it was an extraordinary thing to find in the middle of the desert especially since there was not one but several of them the question was what on earth had it really been for well essentially it's the source of an irrigation system it's natural spring which is led through artificial underground channels down few miles to the villages near the coast where it's used for irrigation purposes so what were these chimneys that lead here inspection holes or something like that yes mainly the the channels need clearing out periodically think they were also used in actual actually in digging the channels the fascinating point emerged that the irrigation system had been built in the days before bahrain had become desert the walls had been erected to keep the encroaching sand from smothering and spring it gave some indication at least of how old this sunken garden must have been we knew it was quite considerable age because it had been given up the water table had sunk since it was built and the water no longer no longer reached the the water channels so we reckon that it must be at least 2 000 years old say very roughly the important thing wasn't perhaps how old it was but the fact that it did it did show that there had been there had been people living here that there had been an agricultural community with very well organized water supply at some unspecified remote date in the past and that made quite difference to our to our picture of the island and think was the first evidence we had that the the theory that bahrain was merely desert island that was used as burial place for people from outside just couldn't hold water the sunken garden had proved that people had lived on bahrain mound near the village of barbara to the north indicated where they had worshipped this was the first large site the expedition tackled what had attracted their attention originally was the fact that they'd come across two squared stones protruding from the mound it was the leader of the expedition professor peter globe who's responsible for the day they sank trench right through the middle and almost at once they realized that major archaeological discovery on their hands what they had found was temple huge squared stone walls stone altar and in front of it pit full of votive offerings one of them little figurine of naked man about six inches high his hands classed in prayer another was copper figurine of plump bird but the most significant find was magnificent bull's head in copper because by comparing it with bulls heads found throughout the middle east this find enabled the archaeologist for the first time to estimate the date of this civilization the one it resembled most closely was celebrated bull's head found by selena wooley and liar that heard of the cauldes it showed that the temple of barbara had clear cultural connections with the ancient civilization of sumeria at around 2000 bc with this knowledge came the first realization that they might be looking at the long lost almost legendary world of dilmun when the temple had yielded its secrets the site was covered over again with sand to preserve it for posterity and to discourage stone robbers who would have looted it for construction materials for stone is scarce in bahrain and now having discovered where the people of ancient bahrain had worshipped the next question facing bibi was to find out where they'd actually lived from the mound at barbara they turned to the so-called bahrain fort ruined fortress built by the portuguese in the early 16th century it was professor peter globe who discovered the next lead when he started examining the fort site properly it's surrounded on all sides by raised hillock about 30 feet high perhaps and you can see still the outlines of walls are running along the surface and suppose everybody had previously considered that these walls belong to the time of the portuguese but considering it professor globe decided that actually this could hardly be true the towers of the fort had had gun ports and arrow ports and obviously there could not have been town there at that time that would obstruct the field of fire it was quite obvious that what we had here was tale tell is an artificial mound built up of various layers of cities and civilizations the danes started digging almost at once about three foot down they came across massive stone walls lying at an angle we went down inside the wall it cut down our sun dash to about about half the half the area and there was only room in fact for professor globe and one of his men to to to work inside the limited area and from there they they went down each day when we came along in the evening there were another couple of feet down and it just went down and down we got no idea that we'd find walls of this massiveness this completeness what did you find at the bottom well about 15 feet down we found floor it's been dug away now and in the floor there were two holes where we dug down in those there were two bathtub-shaped coffins sarcophagi of clay with skeletons curled up inside did that tell you anything about well that was the the first indication of date we got no idea of the of the date of these walls then but the coffins we knew they had to be of near babylonian or syrian date somewhere around 700 bc perhaps the trouble was that they were buried as say through holes in the floor so they were presumably not so old as the building in which in in which they served so the building could be any date still but it had to be older how did you eventually get round to dating the whole site well that didn't happen here because here there wasn't room because of the walls to to make deep sun we went over to the edge of the tail and there we dug hole all the way down to bedrock the results certainly proved that it was tell but they proved far more the profile of the saundage showed series of strata with pottery associated with three different civilizations at the top level there was greek pottery then cassite and at the bottom barbara pottery the same previously unknown dark red pottery found at the barbara temple it proved that people who worshipped there had also lived here pottery is in fact the most important thing that the the archaeologist has through his hands it's the most common thing and that's one reason for for its importance it's the odd thing about pottery that while it's while it's intensely fragile once it's broken the shards never deteriorate and while all organic material even metal disappears you you do get tens of thousands of shards and because clay is malleable you do tend to get all sorts of shapes all sorts of colors all sorts of designs and practically speaking they never repeat themselves so that if you get the same shape of pottery in two different sites you can be fairly sure that that those two sites are of the same date and of the of the same culture and so for the first time in 4 000 years barber pot was seen in its original shape long necked pot but fundamentally egg-shaped and rounded were chains of deep ridges formed by the potter pinching the clay with his fingers the most common type of barbar pot was even more elongated unable to stand on its own base and thick rimmed at the neck and finally the sheds of grave mound pot of different shape with the same deep red color so the people who were buried in the grave mounds were the people who had worshipped at barber and lived at the fort site the puzzle of the grave mounds was solved but now anew and even more tantalizing question arose for on seashore on the south of the island they found great heap of oyster shells and amongst them the familiar tell-tale red pottery of barbar so the oyster shells were 4 hundred years old and in them bibi felt an echo of ancient dilmon for dilmon had been famous for its pearls and now the memory of legend went through his mind legend that linked dill moon and samaria for in the sumerian town of uruk three thousand years before christ there had lived king who was part man part god his name was gilgamesh goddess made him strong as savage bull none can withstand his arms no human could stand up to him so for sport gilgamesh would take on bulls and lions the city of uruk stood in awe of him and begged the gods to create someone to match his fearful strength and so the gods created another monster half man and half bull to be his match after some fighting the two became bosom friends and shared lifetime of adventures together but when his companion died gilgamesh went to dilmun to visit zia sudra the sumerian noah the only human being who knew the secret of immortality which the gods had bestowed on him for saving mankind from the flood gilgamesh travelled by boat exactly the same kind of buoyant red boat that the men of bahrain used to this day so gilgamesh came to dilmon to beg from noah the secret of immortality gilgamesh shall reveal secret thing it is mystery of the gods that i'm telling you there is plant that grows under the water it has prickle like thorn like rose it will wound your hands but if you succeed in taking it then your hands will hold that which restores his lost youth to man the flower of immortality was the pearl from time immemorial the perlers of bahrain have dived for oyster shells by tying weights to their feet to pull them down to the seabed and this was precisely the method that noah advised gilgamesh to adopt to pluck the flower of immortality gilgamesh sank to the seabed like pearl diver and took the plant or pearl and brought it to the surface and with the secret in his hand he took his leave of noah but he was not to keep the secret for long for on his journey out of dilmon gilgamesh saw well of cool water and he went down and dazed but deep in the pool there was lying serpent and the serpent sensed the sweetness of the flower it rose out of the water and snatched it away and immediately it shed its skin and returned to the well and so just as in the bible man held the secret of immortality and then lost it to the serpent so so it all tied in with curious find professor globe had made earlier on the floor of the city tell and now archaeology and legend met face to face he was in this hall when professor globe was clearing up the floor that he found about dozen circular holes in the ground less than foot across and clearing those out came across in each one of them bowl they were clearly offerings of some sort at the bottom of practically every one of them was the coiled up skeleton of snake in practically every one of them there was in addition to the snake there was bead several years went by before we realized the significance of these snake burials the pearl in antiquity had always been symbol of rejuvenation cleopatra had crushed pearls in her wine now the pearl and the snake were associated in legend with dill moon and an archaeological reality with bahrain and the common factor was this ruined city which every year became larger and more impressive huge palaces with walls of stone 15 feet high the evidence of great and prosperous ancient civilization could no longer be ignored and this is the main hall of the palace presumably with roofed obviously roofed yes with the these are supports for probably wooden pillars with that that held the roof the stone from here well in this hall we you found the the first sort of intimation of dill moon with the discovery of the the snake pit as it were and and the peril was it sufficient to make you think we've got dilmon now in way it was it was leading us in that direction it meant of course that we got an important place chronologically belonging to the time the time of dilmon and then we got this obvious clear connection with with gilgamesh who whom the snake robbed of immortality in dilmon suppose it would be more accurate to say that here was place which apparently remembered dilmon yes yes exactly it's the period when dilmon still existed in the historical records if this place was stillman it was called dilman at this time but it was here they had preserved memory of the association of the snake and the and the pearl the they'd got the same feeling that the the snake was at the same time symbol of good luck but something to be hated something that robbed man of his heritage that you get in the that's the theme of the of the gilgamesh gilgamesh's association with dillman but this burial ritual was very much later than the writing yes the gilgamesh legend was written down about 2000 bc and was referring then to events that were supposed to have taken place six or seven hundred yards earlier again and this is 700 700 bc about good 2000 yards after gilgamesh is supposed to have lived is lasting all that time and it left it all that time now apart from this mythological association dilmon itself has said in the records to have been great trading center but parallel trading alone wouldn't have been sufficient to have made bahrain as large trading center as as dill moon clearly was from the documentary sources no no and of course dillman was said to be traitor in other things than pearls trailer in in things from many different parts of the world particularly further east what was needed to pinch the association of bahrain with ancient dilmun was some practical evidence of widespread trade and commerce and this evidence came one year during excavations at the city tell at level that was yielding vast quantities of barbara pottery it was discovery of seal round stamped seal made of stair tight the monogram as it were of the trader who had used it 4 500 years ago to set his mark upon his own products it was to be the first of dozens of such seals proving beyond doubt that bahrain like dilmun had been an extremely important trading center in ancient times the variety of patterns used on the seals was immense there were scenes of hunting of domestic animals of flowers their religious motifs and then came rare find piece of pottery with seal impression on it showing how seal had been used to stamp mark on an earthenware container traditionally every seal had to be drawn by hand meticulously by specialist artists to catch the nuances of light and shade that the camera might miss meanwhile their historical importance was becoming clearer the really significant point about these seal finds was that they placed ancient bahrain firmly and inescapably into the commercial context of the middle east at this time about 2500 bc the seal as method of identification of goods was recognized by every civilization of the time from mesopotamia to the indus valley few round seals had been found previously some had heard of the caldees and some at mohenjo-daro in the indus valley but nowhere in such tremendous numbers as they were turning up on bahrain in mesopotamia cylinder-shaped seals were usual at mohenjo-daro it was square seals that were traditional the round seals proved that bahrain had had extensive trading contacts with sumeria and the indus valley bibi was now more and more convinced that in bahrain he was in dilmon but he needed more strictly archaeological evidence he found it when he started to excavate part of the old walls of the city tell we came down to the top of fortification wall in 1964. and as we came down we found that the wall had been rebuilt after destruction with reused stone set very loosely and very irregularly and below with clean break came the regular stonework of the the dilman city wall built by the barbar people around about 4 thousand years ago as we went down the wall ended and below that we found the levels of the people who'd lived here before ever the wall was built the city of the people before the wall had ended in very clear destruction level where we have long and thick layer of ash covering the whole site and below that we have the settlement levels the layers of rubbish and pot shards from the people whose city was later to be destroyed in 1965 we came across the gateway through the the city wall it was the gate that led into the city from the beach outside and on either side lay two buildings which must have been some form of customs offices for in one of them we found almost dozen of the round stereotype stamp seals and in the other series of marble weights the city gate the customs houses and now the marble weights all reinforced the evidence of the trading seals that bahrain in ancient times had been significant trading center like dilmon but it was finding hundreds of grains of imported copper in the earth around the customs houses that really clinched it for copper had been the staple trade of dilmun and from the clearing houses on bahrain copper had gone by sea to neighboring countries all around the transactions were recorded on uniform clay tablets found last century in mesopotamia nine fish eyes seven miners of copper of manamki sins son of woozy two two and two thirds miners five shekels of copper four shekels of copper of the dilma knight twenty-seven and one-third miners six shekels of coppers stones twenty-five stones twenty eyes another merchandise on an expedition to dill moon has borrowed from this satisfy the anime who is there amongst the dilmon traders who has acted against me in this way you have treated my messenger with contempt and further with regard to the silver that you have taken with you from my house businessmen were ever thus these vivid squabbles tell us very clearly of the trade that went on between samaria and dilmon but when the dows went north the sumer they didn't go direct on their way from dilmun they stopped at the little island of philaka which once had been trading outpost of the mighty dilmoon empire it was only in 1958 that the danish team added filika to the dilmun trail when they found the unmistakable red barbar pottery there amid the forgotten ruins of settlement that had lived and died as dill moon trading agency but in terms of the number of seals found bibi and one of his colleagues on the philippa dig were surprised to find bahrain left well behind over 400 more seals were found in philica some showing vividly how closely these civilizations of sumer and the indus valley had been linked through dill moon and this is the one with hubbard the the wind goddess and the of course with the bull at the bottom just like the in the seals and that's from the sumerian legend the goddess of the winds it's that's perfect example of the mixture of the culture yes this is the best of them of course think you had wonderful artist in the in kuwait at some time there's several seals just like this with the very very minute design on and then of course with gilgamesh on the other side again and the man holding the snake yeah it's hard how often you on these seals you get the man fighting the snake suppose the little figurines found in philica show that this small island off kuwait had had very much its own culture at the time some of the faces are those of easter islanders some show sumerian influence and one manages to look astonishingly like jeffrey bibby himself but the bahrain influence was strong as well for here too they found that distinctive barber pottery with the heavy rims deep red color the elongated necks once again it was pottery that gave the lead in the trail especially when bibi began to try to work out just how extensive dilmoon must have been in ancient times the new dig had stretched it from bahrain to philica on the way to sumer the extension didn't surprise baby there were sound trade reasons behind it but baby suspected that dilmoon had been more than just an island center in 1941 grave mounds had been found in saudi arabia which were identical in structure to those of bahrain in 1966 bibi found barbara pot shards at tarot on the coast of the arabian mainland there was no way of telling precisely how far up the coast the dilmun influence had gone but it couldn't have been as far as sumer for in between lay the land of bitter the prey of the ancient kings of assyria brought under my sway bit iachen on the shore of the bitter sea as far as the border of dilmun and king of dilmon whose abode is situated like fish thirty double hours away in the midst of the sea of the rising sun heard of the might of my sovereignty and sent his gifts knew that dilmun's power had been growing because the temple itself had been growing throughout this period and it was barbara temple in fact that gave bibi the first indication of direct connection between bahrain and the biblical story of eden when they cleared the south wall there was something very much more significant flight of stone steps leading downwards to square stone enclosure with tank of water in the bottom it was natural spring and think it's very likely that its presence there was in fact the reason why the temple was built in that spot that was crucial clue freshwater spring it was fresh water that was at the heart of the mystique that shrouded dill moon at bahrain there is an abundance of freshwater springs that bubble up not just on land but even on the seabed now in the sumerian legends they lay beneath the saltwater sea another ocean an abyss freshwater sea that geologists now know corresponds with uncanny accuracy to the way in which the water table of arabia tilts and breaks surface on and around bahrain it was this precious resource of fresh water in parched area that gave bahrain strategic importance and which ultimately clinched for bibi the association with the dill moon of paradisal legend and it was this fresh water from under the sea that we were now attempting to fetch with the help of the local subaqua team armed only with plastic bag let's taste it and there really was fresh water welling up from the seabed off bahrain according to the legend these submarine freshwater springs were the work of sumerian god his name was enki the god of wisdom and the abyss of fresh water underneath the sea he had son called inzak and the name of inzak appears in an inscription found on bahrain in 1879 this was the first clue linking inzak and enki with bahrain palace of rimum servant of the god inzak man of the tribe of aggaram then on the island of philaka seal turned up that named inzak as lord of dilmun the inzak connection led bibi back to enki and the oldest story in the world the sumerian story of paradise when enki god of the freshwater abyss lived in dill moon at the beginning of time long before noah was brought there after the flood only one thing was lacking to make paradise complete for enki and the sister goddess with whom he shared this garden of immortality and that was water so enki gave dilmon water and thus was created the oldest written story in the world older by far than genesis the land of dilmun is holy the land of dilmun is pure the land of dilmun is clean the land of dilmun is holy in dilmon the raven utters no cry the wild hen utters not the cry of the wild hen the lion kills not the wolf snatches not the lamb unknown is the kid devouring wild dog unknown is the grain devouring ball the dove droops not the head the sick eyed says not am sick eyed the sick headed says not am sick headed its old woman says not am an old woman its old man says not am an old man but what made it really paradise was enki's divine gift of running water the sumerian story of paradise was written down some 2000 years before the birth of christ and well before the genesis story of adam and eve was recorded for the first time so it looks as if the genesis writers might have borrowed the story of eden like some other legends from the sumerians perhaps one of the best examples of cultural borrowing is the is the story of the flood where the sumerian story is almost identical with the with that of the bible except that the the hero is in the sumerian versions yusudra instead of noah it occurs of course in lot of other countries in the world too but the the bible and the sumerian story are almost alike and here you have the significant for us detail that when zia sutra is granted immortality by the gods when the flood goes down he at the same time is translated to the land of immortality to dilma well now how does one connect dilmun with the garden of eden quite number of ways there's first of all the question that the fact that dillman was land of plenty of land blessed with water and and with all vegetation land that's ported in the enki as being land of immortality no sickness no death the lion doesn't eat the lamb that sort of thing there's the story of enki eating the seven forbidden plants in dilmon just like the forbidden fruit just like the forbidden fruit and being cured by the creation of seven gods and goddesses of who won one ninsicular it has name that some people translate as lady of the rib and then of course dillman later on in another story was the place where the snake robbed man of immortality where gilgamesh lost the the flower that he'd fished up from the bottom of the sea so did the writers of the biblical account of the garden of eden simply crib the idea of dill moon as land of plenty they don't name dylan they don't name the garden of eden as an island feel rather they were they were abstracting from body of legend of the beginning of things that told that there was garden in the east where man at one time had been had been blessed garden that had all had all the things that they that they but archaeologists cannot live on legends alone however tempting and romantic they may be always jeffrey bibby and his colleagues from denmark and his arab fellow workers have to come back to the hard dusty realities of excavation work of handfuls of rice for lunch liberally mixed with desert grit of heat grime and drudgery compared with paradise earth can be barren and parched yet in this unspectacular groundwork of archaeology so demanding of effort and concentration there is comradeship which archaeologists learn to cherish in the dust of the grave mounds jeffrey bibby from westmoreland and his danish colleagues become as one with their arab helpers and that can help to make up for the discomfort in which man will choose to spend his working life to rest the secret from the past that the centuries have buried for jeffrey bibby trailing in the field of grave mounds disappointment is routine well how are we can we think take it that way if we if we can or yes let's see which way we may have to have you have to have this point here we may have to tip it it's moving behind your fingers you have yeah okay is that okay all they found in fact was some pieces of bone and some tiny shirts of the familiar barbar pottery but no matter everything however insignificant must be documented and recorded jeffrey bibby is content to be part of small team from denmark which has succeeded in putting middle eastern archaeology onto significantly new trails and courses but away from the facts that he's helped to unearth there's always time to speculate on the more romantic aspects of the work that may never reach the textbooks but which have place in man's imagination nonetheless there are so many parallels between the sumerian account of dilman and the biblical story of the garden of eden that there can be no doubt at all that the two have common origin if you like it would be quite possible to make very good case for believing that for the last 15 years or so we have been digging in the garden of eden itself you