The Tigris Expedition

by Heyerdahl, Thor

  The Russians continued to haul us at sailing speed toward Bahrain. The abnormal winter wind did not relax its grip on the gulf. During the day it maintained its southerly direction in varying strength. In the early evening Norman took his radio equipment out from under his mattress. He had a radio appointment to transmit our whereabouts to the BBC with the set they had provided, but was unable to reach any coastal station. He again rigged up his own set and inmiediately had the eager voices of radio amateurs raining down upon him from all directions. Our station call sign, LI2B, was the same as formerly used on KonrTiki and Ra and a sort of collector's item to amateurs able to establish two-way contact. So whenever Norman called blindly his earphones sounded like a disturbed wasps* nest, with the humming of numerous distant voices who wanted contact. But as soon as he had answered one of them, all the others got oflF the air and waited for the next chance to come in. As an enthusiastic radio ham Norman spent all the evening accommodating eagerly calling amateurs from east and west, north and south, with the standard exchange of international codes for identity, locahty, strength and clarity of contact.

  On one occasion Norman was about to answer a call when another station broke in and said: "Don't answer this one, or you will get a lot of trouble 1" The first station then came back, saying: "This is a hobby, not politics 1" Norman was inmiediately on the air again and said that he agreed: radio amateinrs had the right to run their hobby in any country; we were for international friendship irrespective of frontiers; this was a hobby, not poHtics. He then began to contact the first station again, which proved to be in Israel, and this time all the stations on the air held their peace until the exchange of customary phrases had been completed. Norman had won a peaceful victory on the air. Rashad looked at him in silence as they sat down together at the table. Norman was the son of a Jewish family. Rashad was an Arab from Iraq, the nation most hostile to the state of Israel. Perhaps their ancestors had been in boats together before. Arabs and Jews both count their pedigrees back to Shem, the ancestor of Abraham from Ur.

  This was December 5; the sky was clear and the evening stars just began to sparkle in the firmament when I chmbed up on the bridge platform to reheve the steering watch. Rashad and Asbjom were up there and jokingly asked if I had seen how the new moon looked Hke our ship. At that very moment it certainly did. As always

  in southern latitudes, the new moon hinig like a hammock in the sky instead of standing on end as in northern countries, but just then it rested with its bottom on the black waters of the horizon, precisely like a golden, sickle-shaped reed ship. We were really looking at a true god ship saihng parallel to us on the horizon. The similarity to our own ma-gur was stunning. We went on gazing at it until our shiny companion lifted itself free of the waters and began sailing among the sparkhng astral plankton of the black sky.

  The sight had made a deep impression on me. For years I had followed this as a basic motif in prehistoric art. I was back in the days when the great reed-ship builders of Sumer, pre-Inca Peru and lonely Easter Island shared the tradition that the new moon was a god ship, on which the sun god and the primeval ancestor-kings traveled across the night sky. The ancient Sumerians and Peruvians expressed this behef both in words and in art. The Easter Islanders of our own days had forgotten the original symboHsm, but the traditional badge of sovereignty, hanging at the chest of all their divine kings, was a sickle-shaped wooden pectoral which was known by two names: reUmiro, meaning "ship pectoral," and rei-marama, meaning "moon pectoral."

  Later in the night we saw black clouds with distant flashes of Hghtning over Iran. Next day we had rain showers, but the tenacious southeast wind kept blowing and Captain Igor refused to let us loose. Without anchors and with a big hole in the bow we must either have a fair wind or else reach a safe place for repairs. During the day the wind again turned due south and increased in violence until all wave crests broke and sent the spray over us as we hit them with our bow. The only station Norman could reach with his oflBcial set was that of Slavsk at the other end of our towHne, and Captain Igor advised us to keep steering in their windbreak. But Slavsk was too far ahead to give any shelter to our battered bow.

  In the early afternoon of the fourth day we reached Bahrain. That is, we came to the buoy marking the entrance to the navigable channel through the hmestone shallows surrounding the island. The Slavsk received radio orders from Bahrain to stop right there. Captain Igor's request to continue into port was turned down. Someone would come out for Tigris. Slavsk anchored, and we hung on.

  The legendary island was still hidden below the horizon and with our binoculars we could barely see indistinct clusters of tall chimneys of oil installations.

  Before long a modern coast guard vessel came racing into sight, and shortly afterward a hehcopter too. We were filmed from the air, but the oflBcials of the coast guard vessel only waved and continuously circled at a distance, almost like the dhows off Failaka. The hehcopter left, but the coast guard never came closer. Slavsk lowered its lifeboat and Yuri and Carlo came back to Tigris in top spirits with Captain Igor. They had evidently had a grand time. The coast guard fust went on circhng around while we hung on to Slavsk on our rope so as not to drift off into the shallows.

  The afternoon passed and we scouted the horizon, but nobody else came out. The coast guard patiently kept on circhng Slavsk and us. As the sun sank low, Captain Igor finally greeted us for the last time. He returned to his own ship followed by our last shouts of thanks and good wishes. It was hke losing a fine companion, a former stranger who had shown so much courage and unselfish humanity.

  The sun began to set, and we were now prepared to hang on to the anchored Slavsk overnight. Then to our smprise the coast guard vessel came close to our side and asked if we would not accept a tow to Bahrain. We accepted with thanks, but I asked if we were not waiting for someone else. No, we learned. It was they who had come to fetch us. But they had waited for the Russians to let go the rope; we had seemed to them to be held as some sort of captives.

  On the contrary, I explained. They had helped us. They had saved us from the reefs and towed us to Bahrain. This explanation made no difference. No Russian ship was admitted to the Emirate of Bahrain. The friendly coast guard officers immediately grabbed our towrope as soon as we shouted to the Russians to let it go. There was nothing we could do. With heavy heart we waved to Captain Igor, who was not allowed into harbor, and while we were towed toward the lights of a modern city-port that slowly rose into sight, Slavsk weighed anchor and began its return voyage to the other ships that waited patiently at the mouth of the distant Shatt-al-Arab.

  We were heading for a tiny independent nation booming in modern development and with seemingly hmitless wealth. The great wealth of Bahrain hes not so much in its own now rapidly dwindling oil supply as in its geographical location as a convenient

  terminal for pipelines from Saudi Arabia, where tankers from all continents can dock in deep sheltered harbors. The very location of this island has made it a crossroads for travelers and merchants in all epochs. Today its airport has become a junction for airliners from all directions. Even Concorde calls at Bahrain.

  We were bhnded by floodhghts and illuminated modern installations when late at night we were towed past anchored tankers and between concrete breakwaters to an enormous mole not yet oflBcially opened. Popularly known as asry, the Arab Shipbuilding and Repair Yard, it was the largest drydock in the world, just ready to accommodate supertankers of up to 450,000 tons. It so happened that tiny Tigris, with its topmast hardly visible above the lowest platform of the mole, was the first ship to enter and dock, two days before the o£Bcial opening. We hung our reed fenders outside the side bundles to save them from friction against the concrete wall when the tide sent us up or down, and climbed a long iron ladder to a crowd of official and unofficial spectators admitted through the police gates to see the reed ship.

  First to stand out snow-white in the floodlight was the long Arab attire of some cordial and straight
forward dignitary who welcomed us and wanted to know our verdict on the reed boat. His Excellency Tariq Al-Moayyed was the Minister of Information. I could tell him that we were all exceedingly happy with the body of the vessel. It was still strong and sturdy in spite of all that had happened since the day of the crash launching, and floated very high. But we had failed to solve the problems of the sail. We now had come in the hope of finding a sailmaker here in Bahrain, and an Arab or Indian dhow sailor to join us from here on.

  "Khahfa will help you with that," said the minister and introduced us to a young man dressed like himself. "But what would you like to see while you are here?"

  I looked up at the outhnes of colossal structures of steel and concrete that rose like obelisks and pyramids against the night sky. We had hoped to see the remains of the earhest seafarers that had come to Bahrain. By this remark I had rubbed Aladdin's lamp. The minister turned his head to someone who now appeared out of the dark with a broad smile and saluted us by removing the huge curved pipe that hung from his teeth. I recognized the famihar face of the famous archaeologist Geoffrey Bibby. It was this British-bom scientist and his collaborators who had shaken former beliefs about

  the beginning of civilization when they dug up temples and tombs buried in the sand of this island, testifying to merchant activity and maritime trade with remote countries more than five thousand years ago.

  Bibby had flown down from Denmark when he learned that we were heading for Bahrain. He wanted to get a personal impression of a ship built after the earliest type known in the gulf area. He reminded me laughingly that I had followed his advice. Long ago, in a review of my book on the Ra expeditions for the New York Times, he had challenged me to test a Mesopotamian reed ship next. He reminded us of Captain Igor by the cheerful way he stepped onto our deck and enjoyed the unusual craft. Bibby's Interest was deeply rooted in his own work. His discoveries on Bahrain proved that seafaring had been a basic element in human society since the very beginning of civilization. He had done more than anyone else to demonstrate that Bahrain was identical with the distant trading center of Dilmun, recorded in ancient Mesopotamian inscriptions. He repaid his visit to our ma-gur by lecturing to the Tigris crew on the island's prehistory. And during the next couple of weeks he took us to the sites of his main excavations.

  When Geoffrey Bibby in his picturesque turban came to fetch us the following day, and we drove in two cars away from the Manama city area and the asry docks, we plunged with spacecraft velocity back through five thousand years of himian history. The world's biggest ships and airplanes and most expensive luxury hotels were quickly exchanged for a few modest Arab dwelHngs of braided palm leaves and sun-baked bricks, all ready to vanish with the bulldozer's shovel. Then we passed through a similarly doomed plantation of beheaded date palms, resembhng a graveyard of telephone posts. With their majestic crowns removed and their roots dug free, the dying palm trunks seemed to have a message for the hurrying passerby: the oil pumps may draw their sap from the ground for several decades, but for thousands of years, since the days of Dilmun, it had been the roots of the date palms that drew the sap that had fed the nation. With oil and industry a better bargain than agriculture, it seemed as if no one on Bahrain cared to harvest dates or till the land. With the money that poured in from development areas one could buy the dates, fruits and vegetables. The city markets and shop windows excelled in fresh and colorful garden products. Flown in from three continents, however. And as

  modest dwellings and tall palms fell before the mechanical shovel, modem housing area and suburban industry moved across the green fields ever closer to the edge of the barren desert that today dominates the island. We quickly reached this open wasteland.

  "This is Dilmun," said Bibby and pointed with his pipe toward a landscape of giant pimples which stretched hke a choppy sea of fossil wave tops to the horizon and beyond. "You can see why Peter Glob and I were tempted to come here and start digging."

  Prehistoric tombs. Burial moimds. According to the estimates there were supposed to be about one hundred thousand such man-made mounds on Bahrain. This was the largest prehistoric cemetery in the world. On this island there had been more to cope with than Bibby alone could handle, so over eighty archaeologists of half a dozen nationalities, but most of them Danes, and several hundred workmen from almost every Arab land, had worked with him. Their first eflFort had been distressingly fruitless: not one of the numerous tombs opened had been spared by ancient grave robbers. Apparently every one had been dug and plundered, an indication that their stone-Hned burial chambers had contained more than withering human bones. All that had been left for the archaeologists were bones, the shell of an ostrich egg, potsherds, a couple of copper spearheads and fragments of a copper mirror. These tombs had evidently belonged to people who believed in a life after death and therefore left personal treasures and other funerary gifts in the grave for the deceased to use in his afterlife.

  The tombs varied greatly in magnitude. We first came to an area named Ali, where a large cluster of them exceeded the pyramids of Egypt in number and compared favorably in size with a medium-large Mesopotamian pyramid. Arab houses of one, two or even three floors were built between them and were completely dwarfed. The modem residents of Ali had made a regular industry out of quarrying these huge manmade hills, using the limestone they extracted for burning lime. The result was that between the work of the ancient grave robbers and the modem Ume burners the Ali mounds looked like gaping volcanoes that rose above the landscape. By cHmbing them one had a magnificent view over the endless stretches of smaller tombs that lay there like innumerable spawn left in a breeding place behind the giant turtles of Ali. The colossi of Ali were amply spaced and majestically located closer to the sea, whereas the adjacent cemetery of smaller, dome-shaped

  hills continued inland and across the naked landscape, so closely packed that there was barely room to walk between them. I could not help feehng that the colossi, with all the space between them, antedated the closely packed fry. The big ones seemed to have been built while there was still room to spare in this locahty, and the multitude of smaller mausolea was packed close to them in a desire to be their neighbors.

  It is usually taken for granted that things begin small and afterward grow into more impressive proportions. But not always so with civilizations. There may be two reasons. Cultural growth ends in most known cases with stagnation and cultural decadence. The reasons for this might be anything from overaflBuence to war, pestilence or natural catastrophe. But in addition, at the peak of evolution most civilizations tend to possess ships and be involved in some kind of seafaring. At this advanced stage they may suddenly escape invaders or travel in search of a better land. Famihes or entire organized colonies may settle with an advanced cultural level in areas previously uninhabited or occupied by some primitive society. We should not be surprised then to find that most ancient civilizations seem to appear without local background and often to disappear again without a trace. We dig in search of the roots, and expect every civilization to have grown like a tree in the place we find it. But civihzations spread like seeds with the wind and the current once the tree is grown and in bloom. It would therefore be wrong to suspect that only primitive savages could have settled at Bahrain and that the giant tombs of Ali represent the local evolution from the countless small ones, grown large through experience. The pyramids of Egypt did not grow with time: the biggest were built by the first pharaohs; later they got smaller. The same happened in Mesopotamia. And in Peru. Everything in Egypt started big with the first dynasties, as in Mesopotamia and Peru. Subsequent changes do not testify to cultural growth but to imitation or even decadence. In Peru the famous Inca culture never attained the height of its Tiahuanaco or Mochica predecessors, either in art or in magnitude of architecture. And now one was left with a similar impression on visiting the Ah cemetery.

  I had seen groups of burial mounds and prehistoric cemeteries in many parts of the world, but nothing like this. The
re was just nothing hke it. And from now on Bibby did not have to argue to convince me that Bahrain was Dihnun.

  One of his premises had been that Dihnun was to the Sumer-ians a holy land, a land blessed by the gods who gave it to mankind after the flood. Dilmun was the place where man, in the story of Ziusudra, the Hebrew Noah, was given eternal life. The symbolic meaning is probably that Ziusudra's "seeds" were given eternal life while all other men drowned. In the oldest of all known epics, King Gilgamesh of Uruk, the bibhcal Erek, sailed to Dilmmi in an effort to seek the flower of eternal life in the sacred home of his forefathers. A Sumerian poem says:

  The land of Dilmmi is holy, the land of Dilmmi is pure, the land of Dilmun is clean, the land of Dilmim is holy.''

  For ancestor worshipers with this behef it would seem tempting to bring, or even to ship, deceased persons of some importance to Dilmun in a funeral party. In Dilmun the spirit of the dead person would join the ancestral gods. Many, like Bibby, had found it difficult to see why the Httle island of Bahrain should house the world's largest cemetery, datable to Sumerian times, unless the local soil at that period had a very special importance to people even outside the island itself.

  The same Sumerian poem has another useful reference to Dilmun. The seafaring god Enki had asked the supreme god of the heaven to bless Dilmun with fresh water:

  Let Utu [the sun god] stationed in heaven

  bring you sweet water from the earth, from the water-sources of the earth;

  let him bring up the water into your large reservoirs [?];

  let him make your city drink from them the water of abundance;

  let him make Dilmun drink from them the water of abundance;

  let your wells of bitter water become wells of sweet water;

  let your furrowed fields and acres yield you their grain;