Meluhha

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Meluhha
𒈨𒈛𒄩𒆠
Louvre Museum.[1][2][3]

Meluḫḫa or Melukhkha (

Indus Valley civilisation.[4]

Etymology

See also: Balochistan § Etymology

substratum (including loanwords) in Dravidian languages.[7]

Vedic "barbarians" in Vedic Sanskrit.[8][9]

Trade with Sumer

Mesopotamian "Meluhha" seal
Louvre Museum, reference AO 22310.[11]
See also: Indus–Mesopotamia relations, Indus Valley civilization trade, Indo-Roman trade relations, Indian maritime history, and Indian Ocean trade

Sumerian texts repeatedly refer to three important centers with which they traded: Magan, Dilmun, and Meluhha.[12][13] The Sumerian location of Magan is now accepted to be the area currently encompassing the United Arab Emirates and Oman.[14] Dilmun was a Persian Gulf civilization which traded with Mesopotamian civilizations, the current scholarly consensus is that Dilmun encompassed Bahrain, Failaka Island and the adjacent coast of Eastern Arabia in the Persian Gulf.[15][16]

Inscriptions

Gudea cylinders inscription A IX:19, Gudea mentions of the devotions to his Temple: "Magan and Meluhha will come down from their mountains to attend".[17] The words Magan (𒈣𒃶) and Meluhha (𒈨𒈛𒄩) appear vertically in the first column on the right.[18]

In an inscription, Sargon of Akkad (2334–2279 BCE) referred to ships coming from Meluhha, Magan and Dilmun.[19] His grandson Naram-Sin (2254–2218 BCE) listing the rebel kings to his rule, mentioned "(..)ibra, man of Melukha".[19] In an inscription, Gudea of Lagash (c. 21st century BCE) referred to the Meluhhans who came to Sumer to sell gold dust, carnelian, etc.[19][13] In the Gudea cylinders, Gudea mentions that:

"I will spread in the world respect for my Temple, under my name the whole universe will gather in it, and Magan and Meluhha will come down from their mountains to attend."

— Inscription of cylinder A, IX:19[20]

In cylinder B, XIV, he mentions his procurement of "blocks of lapis lazuli and bright carnelian from Meluhha".[13][21]

Meluhha is also mentioned in mythological legends such as

Enki and Ninhursag
:

"May the foreign land of Meluhha load precious desirable cornelian, perfect mes wood and beautiful aba wood into large ships for you"

— Enki and Ninhursag[22]

There are no known mentions of Meluhha after 1760 BCE.[19]

"Meluhha dog"

"Meluhha dog"
Marhashi, could be a dhole, also called "Asiatic red dog", a type of red-colored dog native to southern and Eastern Asia. The Ethiopian wolf (also called the red jackal) is another candidate.[23]

In one of his inscriptions, Ibbi-Sin mentions that he received as a booty from Marhasi a Meluhha red dog:[24][25]

"Ibbi-Sîn, the god of his country, the mighty king, king of Ur and king of the four world quarters, his speckled Meluḫḫa 'dog', from

Marḫaši brought by them as tribute, a replica of it he fashioned, and for his life he dedicated it to him (Nanna)."

— Meluhha dog inscription of Inni-Sin.[26]

The qualifier used to describe the dog is 𒁱, which can be read either dar "red" as an adjective,[27] or gun3 "speckled" as an intransitive verb,[28] and interpretations vary based on these two possible meanings.[29]

It is thought that this "red dog" could be a dhole, also called "Asiatic red dog", a type of red-colored dog native to southern and eastern Asia.[23]

Meluhhan trading colony in Sumer

Towards the end of the Sumerian period, there are numerous mentions in inscriptions of a Meluhha settlement in southern Sumer near the city-state of

Ur III period.[30] The location of the settlement has been tentatively identified with the city of Guabba.[30] The references to "large boats" in Guabba suggests that it may have functioned as a trading colony which initially had direct contact with Meluhha.[30]

It seems that direct trade with Meluhha subsided during the

Ur III period, and was replaced by trade with Dilmun, possibly corresponding to the end of urban systems in the Indus Valley around that time.[30]

  • A tablet from the period of Shulgi, mentioning the "Meluhha" village in Sumer. British Museum, BM 17751.[31] "Meluhha" (𒈨𒈛𒄩𒆠) actually appears on the beginning of the other side (column II, 1) in the sentence "The granary of the village of Meluhha".[32][31]
    A tablet from the period of Shulgi, mentioning the "Meluhha" village in Sumer. British Museum, BM 17751.[31] "Meluhha" (𒈨𒈛𒄩𒆠) actually appears on the beginning of the other side (column II, 1) in the sentence "The granary of the village of Meluhha".[32][31]
  • Transcription of tablet BM 17751, with the word "Meluhha" (𒈨𒈛𒄩𒆠).[31] Column II continues Column I on the reverse.
    Transcription of tablet BM 17751, with the word "Meluhha" (𒈨𒈛𒄩𒆠).[31] Column II continues Column I on the reverse.

Artifacts

"Animal figurines"
Gold monkey on a pin, from the tomb of Meskalamdug, Royal Cemetery at Ur, circa 2600 BCE.
Asian monkey statuette in red limestone found in Susa, dated to 2340–2100 BCE, discovered in the Tel of the Acropolis at Susa. Louvre Museum, Sb5884.[33]

Several Indus seals with

Harappan script have been found in Mesopotamia, particularly in Ur, Babylon and Kish.[34][35][36][37][38] Still, the archeological record for the existence of the trade with the Indus civilization in Mesopotamia is meager. According to Andrew Robinson
:

On the other hand, there is not nearly so much incontrovertible evidence for the Indus–Mesopotamia trade as archaeologists might wish. Nissen refers to a ‘meagre archaeological record’. There is only one Indus weight from Ur, for example, out of a total of just fourteen Indus weights found in Mesopotamia, neighbouring Iran (Susa) and the Persian Gulf area. Only some twenty Indus seals have turned up in Mesopotamia since the earliest discoveries, of which nine have been dated to the Akkadian period (2334–2154 BC) and two to the Isin and Larsa dynasties (2000–1800 BC).[39]

Animal figurines

Various figurines of exotic animals in gold or carnelian are thought to have been imported from Meluhha. Many such statuettes have been found in Mesopotamian excavations.[23] The carnelian statuette of an Asian monkey was found in the excavation of the Acropolis of Susa, and dated to circa 2340–2100 BCE. It is thought that it may have been imported from India. It is now in the Louvre Museum, reference Sb5884.[33]

Maritime materials trade

National Museum, New Delhi),[40][41] depicting a boat with a central cabin, possibly carrying land-seeking birds for navigation.[42][43] Flat-bottomed river row-boats appear in two Indus seals, but their seaworthiness is debatable.[44]

Specific items of high volume trade are timber and specialty wood such as ebony, for which large ships were used. Luxury items also appear, such as

better source needed
]

Conflict with the Akkadians and Neo-Sumerians

Louvre Museum AO5476.[47][48][49][50][51]

According to some accounts of the Akkadian king Rimush, he fought against the troops of Meluhha, in the area of Elam:[49]

"Rimuš, the king of the world, in battle over

Parahshum, was victorious. And Zahara[52] and Elam and Gupin and Meluḫḫa within Paraḫšum assembled for battle, but he (Rimush) was victorious and struck down 16,212 men and took 4,216 captives. Further, he captured Ehmahsini, King of Elam, and all the nobles of Elam. Further he captured Sidaga'u the general of Paraḫšum and Sargapi, general of Zahara, in between the cities of Awan and Susa, by the "Middle River". Further a burial mound at the site of the town he heaped up over them. Furthermore, the foundations of Paraḫšum from the country of Elam he tore out, and so Rimuš, king of the world, rules Elam, (as) the god Enlil had shown..."

— Inscription of Rimush[49][50]

Gudea too, in one of his inscriptions, mentioned his victory over the territories of Magan, Meluhha, Elam and Amurru.[19]

Identification with the Indus Valley

Most scholars suggest that Meluhha was the Sumerian name for the

Indus Valley civilisation.[53] Finnish scholars Asko and Simo Parpola identify Meluhha (earlier variant Me-lah-ha) from earlier Sumerian documents with Dravidian mel akam "high abode" or "high country". Many items of trade such as wood, minerals, and gemstones were indeed extracted from the hilly regions near the Indus settlements. They further claim that Meluhha is the origin of the Sanskrit word mleccha, meaning "barbarian, foreigner".[54]

Royal Cemetery of Ur dating to the First Dynasty of Ur (2600-2500 BCE) were probably imported from the Indus Valley.[55]

Early texts, such as the Rimush inscription describing combat against Meluhha troops in the area of

Assurbanipal of Assyria (668–627 BC), long after the Indus Valley civilization had ceased to exist, seem to imply that Meluhha is to be found in Africa, in the area of Egypt.[56]

There is sufficient archaeological evidence for the trade between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley Civilization. Impressions of clay seals from the Indus Valley city of Harappa were evidently used to seal bundles of merchandise, as clay seal impressions with cord or sack marks on the reverse side testify. A number of these Indus seals have been found at Ur and other Mesopotamian sites.[57][58]

The Persian-Gulf style of circular stamped rather than rolled seals, also known from Dilmun, that appear at Lothal, and Failaka Island (Kuwait), as well as in Mesopotamia, are convincing corroboration of the long-distance sea trade network, which G.L. Possehl has called a "Middle Asian Interaction Sphere".[59] What the commerce consisted of is less sure: timber and precious woods, ivory, lapis lazuli, gold, and luxury goods such as carnelian and glazed stone beads, pearls from the Persian Gulf, and shell and bone inlays, were among the goods sent to Mesopotamia in exchange for silver, tin, woolen textiles, perhaps oil and grains and other foods. Copper ingots, certainly, bitumen, which occurred naturally in Mesopotamia, may have been exchanged for cotton textiles and chickens, major products of the Indus region that are not native to Mesopotamia—all these have been instanced.

"Meluhha" as Meroe, in the 7th–2nd centuries BCE

Meroe
.

In the Assyrian and Hellenistic eras, cuneiform texts continued to use (or revive) old place names, giving a perhaps artificial sense of continuity between contemporary events and events of the distant past.

Gutians",[61]
a people who had been prominent around 2000 BC.

Meluhha also appears in these texts, in contexts suggesting that "Meluhha" and "Magan" were kingdoms adjacent to Egypt. In the

Meroe" (capital of Nubia).[64]

Meroe
(column 1 line 52)

In the

Sixth Syrian War, or in reference to the campaigns of Antiochus IV Epiphanes in Egypt ("Antiochus the King marched triumphantly through the cities of Meluhha").[65][66]

These references do not necessarily mean that early references to Meluhha also referred to Egypt. Direct contacts between Sumer and the Indus Valley had ceased even during the

Seleucid military expeditions serving to aggrandize those kings. This kind of re-attribution of archaic geographical terms was a regular occurrence during the 1st millennium BCE.[66]

Rulers

See also

References

  1. ^ "Cylinder Seal of Ibni-Sharrum". Louvre Museum.
  2. ^ "Site officiel du musée du Louvre". cartelfr.louvre.fr.
  3. ISBN 9781614510352
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  4. ^ McIntosh 2008, p. 46.
  5. ^ Asko Parpola (1994), Deciphering the Indus script, Cambridge University Press
  6. ^ Southworth, Franklin (2005). Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia. (See Appendix C.)
  7. ^ McIntosh 2008, p. 354.
  8. ^ Parpola, Asko; Parpola, Simo (1975), "On the relationship of the Sumerian toponym Meluhha and Sanskrit mleccha", Studia Orientalia, 46: 205–238
  9. Witzel, Michael (1999), "Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan (Ṛgvedic, Middle and Late Vedic)" (PDF), Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, p. 25, archived from the original
    (PDF) on 2012-02-06, retrieved 2018-12-11
  10. ISBN 9780190226930
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  11. ^ "Meluhha interpreter seal. Site officiel du musée du Louvre". cartelfr.louvre.fr.
  12. ISBN 978-1-57506-042-2
    .
  13. ^
    ISBN 978-1-57506-042-2
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  14. OCLC 47140175
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  15. ISBN 9788185492025
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  16. ^ "Sa'ad and Sae'ed Area in Failaka Island". UNESCO. Retrieved 21 July 2013.
  17. ^ "I will spread in the world respect for my Temple, under my name the whole universe will gather in it, and Magan and Meluhha will come down from their mountains to attend"
    "J'étendrai sur le monde le respect de mon temple, sous mon nom l'univers depuis l'horizon s'y rassemblera, et [même les pays lointains] Magan et Meluhha, sortant de leurs montagnes, y descendront" (cylinder A, IX:19)" in "Louvre Museum".
  18. ^ "The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature". etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk.
  19. ^ a b c d e "MS 2814 - The Schoyen Collection". www.schoyencollection.com.
  20. ^ "J'étendrai sur le monde le respect de mon temple, sous mon nom l'univers depuis l'horizon s'y rassemblera, et [même les pays lointains] Magan et Meluhha, sortant de leurs montagnes, y descendront" (cylinder A, IX:19)" in "Louvre Museum".
  21. ISBN 978-1-57506-042-2
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  22. ^ Michalowski, Piotr (2011). The correspondance of the Kings of Ur (PDF). p. 257, note 28.
  23. ^ a b c McIntosh 2008, p. 187
  24. JSTOR 23294921
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  26. ^ "CDLI-Archival View". cdli.ucla.edu.
  27. ^ "Sumerian Dictionary "Dar" entry". oracc.iaas.upenn.edu.
  28. ^ "Sumerian Dictionary "Gunu" entry". oracc.iaas.upenn.edu.
  29. ISBN 978-1-4767-2990-9
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  30. ^ a b c d e Vermaak, Fanie (2008). "Guabba, the Meluhhan village in Mesopotamia". Journal for Semitics. 17/2: 454–471.
  31. ^ a b c Simo Parpola, Asko Parpola and Robert H. Brunswig, Jr "The Meluḫḫa Village: Evidence of Acculturation of Harappan Traders in Late Third Millennium Mesopotamia?" in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient Vol. 20, No. 2, 1977, p. 136-137
  32. ^ "Collections Online British Museum". www.britishmuseum.org.
  33. ^ a b "Asian monkey statuette from Susa".
  34. ISBN 9781136155314
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  35. ISBN 9780759101722
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  36. ^ Gadd, G. J. (1958). Seals of Ancient Indian style found at Ur.
  37. ISBN 978-0-19-971829-0
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  38. ISBN 978-1-58839-043-1
    . Square-shaped Indus seals of fired steatite have been found at a few sites in Mesopotamia.
  39. ISBN 9781780235417
  40. ^ McIntosh (2008), p. 158-159.
  41. ISBN 978-0-521-28550-6
    .
  42. ISBN 978-0-19-522243-2
    . The molded terra-cotta tablet shows a flat-bottomed Indus boat with a central cabin. Branches tied to the roof may have been used for protection from bad luck, and travelers took a pet bird along to help them guide them to land.
  43. ^ Mathew (2017), p. 32.
  44. ISBN 9781780235417
    , To what extent such a reed-made river vessel would have been seaworthy is debatable. ... Did the flat-bottomed Indus river boats mutate into the crescent-shaped hull of Heyerdahl's reed boat before taking to the Arabian Sea? Did they reach as far as the coast of East Africa, as the Tigris did? No one knows.
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  49. ^
    ISBN 978-1-134-52062-6
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  52. ISBN 978-0-415-39485-7
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  53. ISBN 978-0-7591-0172-2
  54. ^ Parpola, Asko; Parpola, Simo (1975). "On the relationship of the Sumerian Toponym Meluhha and Sanskrit Mleccha". Studia Orientalia. 46: 205–238.
  55. ^ British Museum notice: "Gold and carnelians beads. The two beads etched with patterns in white were probably imported from the Indus Valley. They were made by a technique developed by the Harappan civilization" Photograph of the necklace in question
  56. S2CID 140709175
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  57. ^ "urseals". hindunet.org. Archived from the original on 2000-12-11.
  58. ISBN 9780871138002
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  59. ^ Possehl, G.L. (2007), “The Middle Asian Interaction Sphere”, Expedition 49/1
  60. ^ Van De Mieroop, Marc (1997). The Ancient Mesopotamian City. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 44.
  61. ^ Sachs & Hunger (1988). Astronomical Diaries & Related Texts from Babylonia, vol.1. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. pp. –330 Obv.18.
  62. ISBN 978-1-4008-8276-2
    .
  63. ^ Original text and translation: lines 51 and 52 of the Rassam cylinder
  64. ^ History of Assurbanipall, Translated from the Cuneiform Inscriptions by George Smith. Williams and Norgate. 1871. pp. 15 and 48.
  65. ^ Sachs & Hunger (1988). Astronomical Diaries & Related Texts from Babylonia, vol.2. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. pp. –168 A Obv.14–15.
  66. ^
    ISBN 978-0-674-72882-0
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Bibliography

External links
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