Meluhha
Meluhha refers to one of ancient
Sumer's prominent trading partners, but precisely which one remains an open question. The word can be found in many
Sumerian and
Akkadian texts.
Sumerian texts repeatedly refer to three important centers with which they traded:
Magan,
Dilmun, and Meluhha.
Magan is usually identified with
Oman, but some identify it with
Egypt.
Dilmun was a trade distribution center for goods originating in the region of modern-day
Bahrain. The location of Meluhha, however is hotly debated.
A number of scholars suggest that
"Meluhha" was the Sumerian name for western India or the
Indus valley civilization.
Asko Parpola, a Finnish scholar, derives
Meluhha from earlier Sumerian documents with the alternative value
"Me-lah-ha", which he identifies with the
Dravidian Met-akam "high abode/country". He further claims that
Meluhha is the origin of the
Sanskrit mleccha, "barbarian, foreigner".
Meluhha may have also been derived from the Sanskrit word
Mela, which means gathering place. Hence Meluhha may refer to a port, town or region where trade is conducted; such as the Indus Valley.
Sergei V. Rjabchikov, a Russian scholar, reads an archaic form of
Meluhha as a Proto-Indo-Aryan word ("solar beam"; "to die"), and he compares it, in particular, with the name of the mountain
Meru in the Old Indian mythology.
However, much later texts documenting the exploits of King
Assurbanipal of
Assyria (668-627 BC), long after the Indus Valley civilization had ceased to exist, seemingly imply that
Meluhha is to be found somewhere near Egypt, in Africa.
Earlier texts (c.
2200 BC) seem to indicate that Meluhha is to the east, suggesting either the
Indus valley or India.
Sargon of Akkad was said to have "dismantled the cities, as far as the shore of the sea. At the wharf of
Agade, he docked ships from Meluhha, ships from Magan."
There is plenty of archaeological evidence for the trade between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. 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 Valley seals have turned up at
Ur and other Mesopotamian sites. "Persian Gulf" types of circular stamped rather than rolled seals, also known from Dilmun, that appear at Lothal in
Gujarat, India, and Faylahkah, as well as in Mesopotamia, are convincing corroboration of the long-distance sea trade. 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 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 â€" all these have been instanced.
Mesopotamian trade documents, lists of goods, and official inscriptions mentioning Meluhha supplement Harappan seals and archaeological finds. Literary references to Meluhhan trade date from the Akkadian, the
Third Dynasty of Ur, and
Isin -
Larsa Periods (ca 2350 - 1800 BCE), but the trade probably started in the Early Dynastic Period (c. 2600 BC). Some Meluhhan vessels may have sailed directly to Mesopotamian ports, although by the Isin - Larsa Period, Dilmun, which was located "en route" to Meluhha, monopolized the trade. By the subsequent Old Babylonian period, trade between the two cultures had evidently ceased entirely.
Later texts from the 1st millennium BC suggest that "Meluhha" and "Magan" were kingdoms adjacent to Egypt. Assurbanipal writes about his first march against Egypt, "In my first campaign I marched against Magan, Meluhha,
Tarka, king of Egypt and Ethiopia, whom
Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, the father who begot me, had defeated, and whose land he brought under his way...".
Bernard Sergent (in
Genèse de l'Inde, Payot, Paris,
1997) claims that
Dravidians were a "Melano-African" race from the African
Sahel belt [
1] [
2], positing that these peoples migrated from there, and suggesting that
Meluhha first referred to Ethiopia, and later to the Indus Valley. It is important to note that from the third millennium BC onwards, Ethiopia itself was never referred to as
Meluhha, but as
Kush. Apart from Ashurbanipal's reference, there is no mention of
Meluhha in any Mesopotamian text after about 1700 BC, which corresponds to the time of decline of the
Indus Valley.
*Julian Reade (ed.) The Indian Ocean in Antiquity. London: Kegan Paul Intl. 1996
