The Indus Civilization and Dilmun, the Sumerian Paradise Land

[sooda]

Kramer spent his life translating cuneiform tablets from Sumer and wrote History Begins at Sumer.

Here he has connected Mesopotamia with Arabia, Bahrain and the Indus Valley.

The Indus Civilization and Dilmun, the Sumerian Paradise Land, 1964 Samuel Noah Kramer

One of the most significant and impressive archaeological achievements of the twentieth century centers around the discovery of the ancient Indus civilization which probably flourished from about 2500 to 1500 B.C., and extended over a vast territory from the present Pakistan-Iran border to the foot of the Himalayas and to the Gulf of Cambay.

Much of the material culture of this civilization is now known: the well-planned streets and structures of its cities and towns; its tools and implements of stone and metal; its pottery and vases; its beads and bangles; its stone sculptures and terracotta figurines. On the other hand, but little is known of the social, political, religious, and intellectual life of the ancient Indus people, and that little is based on conjecture and surmise. And practically nothing at all is known of its ethnic and linguistic affiliations; indeed the very name of this ancient Indus land is still a mystery.

To be sure, the Indus people did have a well-developed system of writing consisting of some four hundred pictographic signs with conventionalized syllabic values. Moreover, since the reading and writing of this script had to be studied and learned by budding scribes, there is every reason to assume that there were schools scattered throughout the land with a formal system of education.

But the inscriptions recovered to date consist of very brief notations on steatite seals, clay sealings, pottery stamps, and small thin copper plates; usually they contain no more than half a dozen signs, and the longest has less than twenty. There is some likelihood that these inscriptions record the names of the individuals and places, and if so, they could be most revealing for the ethnic origin of the Indus people. but as of today not a single sign of the Indus script has been deciphered and read satisfactorily, and until some bilinguals are discovered, the available Indus inscriptions will probably remain a closed “book.”


There is, however, one possible source of significant information about the Indus civilization which is still untapped: the inscriptions of Sumer, approximately six hundred miles to the west of the mouth of the Indus and separated from the Indus land by the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf.

That there was considerable commercial trade between the two countries is proved beyond reasonable doubt by some thirty Indus seals which have actually been excavated in Sumer—and no doubt hundreds more are still lying buried in the Sumerian ruins—and which must have been brought there in one way or another from their land of origin. There is, therefore, good reason to conclude that the Sumerians had known the name of the Indus land as well as some of its more important features and characteristics, and that some of the innumerable Sumerian texts might turn out to be highly informative in this respect.

With this in mind, I searched the Sumerian literary works for possible clues and came up with the tentative hypothesis that Dilmun, a land mentioned frequently in the Sumerian texts and glorified in Sumerian myth, may turn out to be the Indus land or at least some part of it.

According to a long-known Sumerian “Flood” -story, Dilmun, the land to which Ziusudra, the Sumerian Noah, was transported to live as an immortal among the gods, is “the place where the sun rises,” and was therefore located somewhere to the east of Sumer. In another Sumerian text, Dilmun is described as a blessed, prosperous land dotted with “great dwellings,” to which the countries of the entire civilized world known to the Sumerians, brought their goods and wares.

continued at length

The Indus Civilization and Dilmun, the Sumerian Paradise Land | Expedition Magazine

 

[sooda]

A number of cuneiform economic documents excavated by the late Leonard Woolley at Ur–Biblical Ur of the Chaldees–one of the most important cities of Sumer, speak of ivory, and objects made of ivory, as being imported from Dilmun to Ur.

The only rich, important land east of Sumer which could be the source of ivory, was that of the ancient Indus civilization, hence it seems not unreasonable to infer that the latter must be identical with Dilmun.

But promising and intriguing as it was, the Dilmun-Indus land hypothesis was the product of “arm-chair” scholarship, which needed corroboration from the “field,” that is, from the extant archaeological remains of the Indus civilization.

I therefore journeyed to Pakistan and India, with the help of a grant-in-aid from the American Council of Learned Societies, and in the course of a seven weeks stay there, traveled more than four thousand miles by plane, train, bus, automobile, and a horse-drawn vehicle known as the tonga, in order to visit the excavated Indus cities: Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Kot Diji, Amri, Rupar, and Lothal. I studied the Indus artifacts located at the site museums, as well as the rich collections in the museums of Karachi, Lahore, and New Delhi.

Mesopotamian-like bearded terracotta head excavated at Lothal

I met many of the archaeologists of Pakistan and India, and discussed with them the various aspects of the Indus civilization. As a result of these investigations and discussions, it became apparent that there are two facets of the Indus civilization which are especially significant for its identification with Dilmun: the cult of a water deity and sea-plowing ships.

One of the most striking and impressive features of the Indus cities and towns is the important role which water and cleanliness seem to have played in the life of the people, as is evident from the extraordinary number of wells and baths in both public and private buildings, as well as the carefully planned networks of covered drains built of kiln-baked bricks. It is not unreasonable to assume therefore–as indeed has been assumed by a number of scholars–that the Indus people had developed a water cult of deep religious import centering about a water god and featured by sundry rites concerned with lustration and purification.

All of which seems to fit in rather surprisingly well with the Dilmun-Indus land equation. For the god most intimately related to Dilmun is Enki, the Sumerian Poseidon, the great Sumerian Dilmun-myth which tells the following story: Dilmun, a land described as “pure,” “clean,” and “bright,” a land which knows neither sickness nor death, had been lacking originally in fresh, life-giving water.

The tutelary goddess of Dilmun, Ninsikilla by name, therefore pleaded with Enki, who is both her husband and father, and the latter orders the sun-god Utu to fill Dilmun with sweet water brought up from the earth’s watersources; Dilmun is thus turned into a divine garden green with grain-yielding fields and acres.

In this paradise of the gods eight plants are made to sprout by Ninhursag, the great mother goddess of the Sumerians, perhaps more originally by Mother Earth.

She succeeds in bringing these plants into being by an intricate process involving three generations of goddesses all begotten by Enki and born without pain or travail. But because Enki wanted to taste them, his messenger, the two-faced god Isimud, plucks these plants one by one and gives them to his master who proceeds to eat them each in turn.

Whereupon the angered Ninhursag pronounces the curse of death against Enki and vanishes from among the gods. Enki’s health at once begins to fail and eight of his organs become sick. As Enki sinks fast, the great gods sit in the dust, seemingly unable to cope with the situation. Whereupon the fox comes to the rescue and after being promised a reward, he suceeds by some ruse in having the mother goddess return to the gods and heal the dying water god.

She seats him by her vulva and after inquiring which eight organs of his body ache, she brings into existence eight corresponding deities–one of these is Enshag, the Lord of Dilmun–and Enki is brought back to life and health.

Now the first part of this Dilmun myth reads as follows:

continued

The Indus Civilization and Dilmun, the Sumerian Paradise Land | Expedition Magazine

 

[paarsurrey]

A number of cuneiform economic documents excavated by the late Leonard Woolley at Ur–Biblical Ur of the Chaldees–one of the most important cities of Sumer, speak of ivory, and objects made of ivory, as being imported from Dilmun to Ur.

The only rich, important land east of Sumer which could be the source of ivory, was that of the ancient Indus civilization, hence it seems not unreasonable to infer that the latter must be identical with Dilmun.

But promising and intriguing as it was, the Dilmun-Indus land hypothesis was the product of “arm-chair” scholarship, which needed corroboration from the “field,” that is, from the extant archaeological remains of the Indus civilization.

I therefore journeyed to Pakistan and India, with the help of a grant-in-aid from the American Council of Learned Societies, and in the course of a seven weeks stay there, traveled more than four thousand miles by plane, train, bus, automobile, and a horse-drawn vehicle known as the tonga, in order to visit the excavated Indus cities: Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Kot Diji, Amri, Rupar, and Lothal. I studied the Indus artifacts located at the site museums, as well as the rich collections in the museums of Karachi, Lahore, and New Delhi.

Mesopotamian-like bearded terracotta head excavated at Lothal

I met many of the archaeologists of Pakistan and India, and discussed with them the various aspects of the Indus civilization. As a result of these investigations and discussions, it became apparent that there are two facets of the Indus civilization which are especially significant for its identification with Dilmun: the cult of a water deity and sea-plowing ships.

One of the most striking and impressive features of the Indus cities and towns is the important role which water and cleanliness seem to have played in the life of the people, as is evident from the extraordinary number of wells and baths in both public and private buildings, as well as the carefully planned networks of covered drains built of kiln-baked bricks. It is not unreasonable to assume therefore–as indeed has been assumed by a number of scholars–that the Indus people had developed a water cult of deep religious import centering about a water god and featured by sundry rites concerned with lustration and purification.

All of which seems to fit in rather surprisingly well with the Dilmun-Indus land equation. For the god most intimately related to Dilmun is Enki, the Sumerian Poseidon, the great Sumerian Dilmun-myth which tells the following story: Dilmun, a land described as “pure,” “clean,” and “bright,” a land which knows neither sickness nor death, had been lacking originally in fresh, life-giving water.

The tutelary goddess of Dilmun, Ninsikilla by name, therefore pleaded with Enki, who is both her husband and father, and the latter orders the sun-god Utu to fill Dilmun with sweet water brought up from the earth’s watersources; Dilmun is thus turned into a divine garden green with grain-yielding fields and acres.

In this paradise of the gods eight plants are made to sprout by Ninhursag, the great mother goddess of the Sumerians, perhaps more originally by Mother Earth.

She succeeds in bringing these plants into being by an intricate process involving three generations of goddesses all begotten by Enki and born without pain or travail. But because Enki wanted to taste them, his messenger, the two-faced god Isimud, plucks these plants one by one and gives them to his master who proceeds to eat them each in turn.

Whereupon the angered Ninhursag pronounces the curse of death against Enki and vanishes from among the gods. Enki’s health at once begins to fail and eight of his organs become sick. As Enki sinks fast, the great gods sit in the dust, seemingly unable to cope with the situation. Whereupon the fox comes to the rescue and after being promised a reward, he suceeds by some ruse in having the mother goddess return to the gods and heal the dying water god.

She seats him by her vulva and after inquiring which eight organs of his body ache, she brings into existence eight corresponding deities–one of these is Enshag, the Lord of Dilmun–and Enki is brought back to life and health.

Now the first part of this Dilmun myth reads as follows:

continued

The Indus Civilization and Dilmun, the Sumerian Paradise Land | Expedition Magazine

Good to know it.
Regards

 

[sooda]

Good to know it.
Regards

Dilmun is Bahrain and they traded with the Indus Valley.. Dilmun didn't have elephants.. They did have pearls.