Trade Links with Mesopotamians
The links between the Mesopotamians and Harappans have been identified in early 1924 with the discovery of Indus Valley Civilization by Sir John Marshall.
There were a number of similar finds identified from the sites in Mesopotamia and Susa to those of the objects that were discovered from Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, thereby establishing a link between the two civilization.
Infact, there has been records of ships coming up to Agade(Mesopotamian City).
These contacts between the two civilizations have been further emboldened by the presence of Harappan Pottery, Seals, Ornaments like Ivory Combs, Etched Carnelian Bead, segmented silver beads ,etc from sites in Oman. The most prominent find being of Harappan Pottery with a four-letter Harappan Graffiti.
If Harappan pottery could be found in Oman, and if their rade items and seals could be found at Mesopotamian and Iranian sites, there was of course a strong possibility to find evidence related to a Harappan settlement/colony or a temporary occupation from a site they would’ve visited.
What interested/intrigued me the most to ponder and dig on is —
“Whether the trade relation between Mesopotamians and the Harappan’s a direct one or were their mediators?”
The issuance of Rosetta stone by Ptolemy V (due to the Egyptian-Greek interactions) does give us a scope to think if there were mediators in places like Iran(where civilization existed in the ancient periods southwest of fertile cresent region).
Different historians have different theories/thoughts about this. Some of the prominent ones' being of -
- Jane McIntosh- who believes that it was a direct trade relationship between the Harappan’s and Mesopotamians during the late 3rd millennium as he states that ships from the Indus valley civilization docked in Mesopotamian ports; there were few Meluhians(the Indus civilization people are also identified with ‘Meluhha’ of the cuneiform records of Mesopotamia ) who settled in Sumer and there exists a seal that could’ve belonged to a Mesopotamian whose job would’ve been of an interpreter of the Meluhan language. While on the other hand there’s no evidence suggesting that Mesopotamians reached Indus which clearly means that it was only the Harappans that conducted the trade between the two civilizations. Analyzing the ship’s sailing pattern along the gulf, James concludes that Dilmun(Bahrain) operated as a middle port between Indus and Mesopotamians in some of this trade, and the collapse of UrIII state made its role grow even more. By the time of earlier 2nd millennium BC, both the Meluhan and Mesopotamian ships sailed only to Bahrain, making it the transshipment center for them. Since a bilingual hasn’t been found yet and since the local seals are uninscribed mostly, therefore, its likely that Harappan’s used perishable materials for their records which would’ve applied to their transaction records in Dilmun too.
- Richard Meadow- is someone who thinks that while there is a bit of Meluhan like material in eastern Iran and archaeological evidence of maritime links between Harappa and Arabia, the contact across Iran would’ve been more direct through maritime mean and indirect otherwise.
- Shereen Ratnagar- suggests a very interesting possibility that there could’ve been agreements between Mesopotamians and Indus people that were written in both the languages, so we don't need to derive hopes of a bilingual arising from a middleman.
All this leaves a very strong legacy of -
A.)Harappan Culture/way-of-life that was permeated to these Mesopotamian, Arabic sites in the past by way of trade/commerce.
B.) Meluhan people who would’ve been/turned multi-lingual for trade purposes and possibly settled there and maybe even bred along with Arabic population.
