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A ‘Persian Gulf’ Seal from Lothal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

S. R. Rao
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Extract

Lothal is an important harbour-town of the Indus Civilization at the head of the Gulf of Cambay on the west coast of India (FIG. 1). During the recent excavations there, a circular steatite seal has been found which is neither wholly Indian nor Sumerian in workmanship (PL. IX). On the other hand, it closely resembles the seals from the Persian Gulf islands found by the Danish expedition led by Professor Glob and Dr Bibby. Sir Mortimer Wheeler has named them 'Persian Gulf' seals which, according to him, 'appear to have been made at the various entrepôts (such as Bahrain itself) of a cosmopolitan Persian Gulf trade of the kind which has been analyzed by A. L. Oppenheim from Larsa tablets' (note I). Commenting on these seals, the late Col. D. H. Gordon wrote: 'The problem of Bahrain is a very interesting and important one, and it is possible that these seals may help to solve it. Some day such seals may come to light in India, but so far they have not; Bahrain may have been Dilmun and it was almost certainly an entrepôt on the trade route to India, and so it is possible that seals of this kind were carried on to the Indus or to ports in Kathiawad and will some day be found in those localities, though this will not necessarily make them Indian or even of Indian style' (note 2). The hope expressed by Gordon has now been fulfilled by the discovery of a 'Persian Gulf' seal at Lothal, thus providing the first real evidence of trade contacts between India and the Persian Gulf.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 37 , Issue 146 , June 1963 , pp. 96 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1963

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References

(1) G. Bibby, D. H. Gordon and Mortimer Wheeler in ANTIQUITY, 1958, 243-246.

(2) D. H. Gordon in ANTIQUITY, ibid.

(3) P. V. Glob and G. Bibby, ‘A forgotten civilization of the Persian Gulf’ in Scientific American, Oct., 1960, vol. 203, no. 4.

(4) Mortimer Wheeler, The Indus Civilization (2nd ed., Cambridge, 1960), 84, with references.

(5) M. E. L. Mallowan in Iraq, IX (1947).

(6) M. S. Vats, Excavations at Harappa, II, pl. XCV, no. 386.

(7) British Museum Collection in the Dept. of Western Asiatic Antiquities, seal no. 128668.

(8) Alisar, XXXVII, Abb. 186.

(9) Girshman, Fouilles de Sialk, I, LXXXVII, S. 17.

(10) Conteneau, Fouilles de Giyan, 38, 13.

(11) M. S. Vats, op. cit., pl. xcv, no. 395.

(12) R. Shyama Sastry, Kautilya’s Arthasastra (Mysore, 1924), Ch. 23, 50.

(13) Wheeler, op. cit., 91.

(14) According to Dr H. D. Sankalia, Ahar is a settlement of copper-workers, and the nearest source of copper is said to be 10 miles from Ahar. But it is yet to be ascertained whether these sources were worked as early as the beginning of the second millennium B.C. by the Ahar folk.

(15) J. H. Mackay, Further Excavations at Mohenjo-daro, II pl. CXXXII, nos. 37 and 38.

(16) I am indebted to Dr André Parrot, Director of the Louvre, for permitting me to take photographs.