Dilmun

Summary

Dilmun is a land across the sea in the stories of Sumer and Babylon. It is where the story of Enki and Ninhursag takes place, and where the gods settled Ziusudra, alive and never to die, after the flood. It is also a land known to history: its capital stood where the fort of Qal'at al-Bahrain stands today, and it was a trading port that ships came to for many centuries.

Enki and Ninhursanga opens by describing Dilmun: it is pure, virginal, pristine. There the raven does not caw, the lion does not kill, the wolf does not carry off lambs; no eye disease says "I am the eye disease", no headache "I am the headache", no old woman "I am an old woman", no old man "I am an old man". Then Ninsikila complains to her father Enki: you have given me a city with no river quay, a city with no fields, glebe or furrow. Enki promises her: when Utu steps up into heaven, fresh water shall run out of the ground for you, from the mouth of the waters running underground. And so it happened: the water rose into her great basins, her city drank its fill, her pools of salt water became fresh, her fields, glebe and furrows produced grain, and Dilmun became an emporium on the quay for the Land.

The rest of the story happens in this land: Enki eats the eight plants Ninhursag had grown, she curses him and he falls ill, then she comes back and gives birth, from each part of him that hurts, to a deity who heals it, among them Ninkasi from his mouth, and Ensag, whose destiny is to "become lord of Dilmun".

In the Sumerian flood story, after the storm has passed and Ziusudra has made his offerings, An and Enlil grant him life like a god and bring down to him eternal life, and because he preserved the animals and the seed of mankind they settle him "in an overseas country, in the land Dilmun, where the sun rises".

The idea the stories of Dilmun turn on is that this is the land where fresh water rules. Before Enki's water it was a city without ploughland or harbour; once water came to it from under the ground it had crops and trade. It is also the land from which whatever makes people die is absent: no beast of prey, no sickness, no old age. That is why it is the place where the survivor of the flood is given a life without end, in the east, across the sea, where the sun comes up.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The Sumerians write it dilmun with d, and the Akkadians write the adjective with t, tilmunnû, "of Telmun", used of Dilmun's date palms, copper and ships. None of the project's essays reads the name, so we read it as a reading proposed on the method. Take off the ending -ūn, with which place-names are formed, as Hebron is formed from ḥ-b-r, and tilm remains. Lisān al-ʿArab defines talam as "the cut of the plough in the ground, in the language of the people of Yemen and al-Ghawr", the furrow, plural atlām, and Hebrew telem is the same furrow in the field. On this reading Dilmun is "the land of furrows", which is what Enki gives it in the poem: it was "a city with no fields, glebe or furrow", and when the water came "her fields, glebe and furrows produced grain".

Linguistic Root

Dilmun and talam

The Sumerians write the first letter d and the Akkadians t, so it was heard between the two; we take the t of the Akkadian writing. The l and m stay as they are, and -ūn stays as an ending like the one in many place-names across the branches, among them Hebrew Hebron, which BDB explains as "association, league" from ḥ-b-r. In the Arabic dictionaries talam is the ploughman's line, or any trench in the ground, and Ibn Manẓūr says it is the word of the people of Yemen and al-Ghawr; Hebrew telem is the furrow in a field, and Hosea speaks of "the furrows of the field".

If the d-form is taken instead, the root is dalim, which Lane gives as intense blackness with smoothness, said of a mountain, a rock and the night; the poem calls Dilmun pure and bright, so this form does not fit it. Sumerian also has another word written the same way, dilmun, which the Sumerian dictionary glosses "made manifest, heavy, important", written syllabically dil-mu-un; the dictionary does not connect it with the land's name. The limit of the talam reading is that the land's name is older than anything written about it and may come from the language of the first people of the Gulf, and that the ending -ūn is assumed.

Historical Context

Qal'at al-Bahrain is a settlement mound twelve metres high whose layers record continuous occupation from about 2300 BCE to the sixteenth century CE. About a quarter has been excavated, showing houses and public, commercial, religious and military buildings; it was a trading port through the centuries, and it is the capital of Dilmun, which before excavation was known only from Sumerian writings.

The Sumerian dictionary records the name from the Early Dynastic period to the Hellenistic. Sargon II of Assyria names it in his annals: Upēri, "king of Dilmun, whose lair is situated at a distance of thirty leagues in the middle of the Eastern Sea, like that of a fish", heard of his might and brought him a gift. In Old Babylonian the adjective "of Telmun" describes kinds of date palm, copper and ships, and an omen says "a Telmun ship will sink".

Names connected with Dilmun

Key Mythic Narratives

Dilmun in Enki and the World Order

In this poem Enki sets out in his boat to decide the destinies of the lands and says: let the lands of Meluhha, Magan and Dilmun look upon me, let the Dilmun boats be loaded with timber, let the Magan boats be loaded sky-high. Then "he cleansed and purified the land of Dilmun and placed Ninsikila in charge of it", bestowed palms on its cultivated land and ate its dates.

What the ships bring to Dilmun

A manuscript of Enki and Ninhursanga from Ur adds to Enki's promise: may the land of Tukriš hand over to you gold and lapis lazuli, may Meluhha load cornelian and mes wood of Magan into large ships for you, may Magan offer you strong copper and dolerite, may Elam hand over its wool, may Ur load sesame and fine cloth for you, "may the wide sea yield you its wealth". Then: Dilmun's dwellings are good dwellings, its grains are little grains, its dates are big dates.

The survivor at "the mouth of the rivers"

The Akkadian epic does not name the land where Utnapishtim was settled. Enlil says: "Utnapishtim shall dwell far away, at the mouth of the rivers", and they take him there. From there he tells Gilgamesh of a plant that makes an old man young; Gilgamesh ties heavy stones to his feet, they drag him down to the Apsû, he pulls up the plant, cuts the stones loose, and the sea casts him up on its shore.

Symbolic Reading

The project's essay rereading the Sumerian myths reads Dilmun as the memory of an ancient green age. Bahrain, it says, was in the fourth millennium BCE a green oasis full of fresh springs and plants, and "a land without sickness" is a healthy environment with pure water. "Enki watered it" is for the essay the discovery of groundwater, Bahrain being known for springs that rise even on the sea floor. The eight plants Enki ate and fell ill from are people's first experience of poisonous plants, Ninhursag's healing with eight deities is the first herbal medicine, and the essay makes Ninti, "lady of the rib and of life", the origin of Eve made from a rib, because the Sumerian word ti means both rib and life.

The poem itself supports the reading through water: the fresh water comes "from the mouth of the waters running underground", and the salt pools become fresh, a description of fresh springs in a land surrounded by salt sea. The Ur manuscript ties this water directly to trade: the city that gained water and ploughland became a harbour to which the Land's ships brought gold, copper and cornelian.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The Sumerian rereading essay titles its chapter on Dilmun "the memory of the lost paradise". In Genesis a river goes out of a garden to water it and then divides into four branches, and the tree of life in it is guarded by the cherubim after humankind is sent out; the story is on the world tree page. The difference is that no one is driven out of Dilmun, and the only human the stories bring into it is the flood survivor, who enters after his rescue and does not leave.

Dilmun's water comes from the water under the earth, which the Sumerians call the Apsû; its stories in other mythologies are on the primordial waters page.

Iran has another land where people are kept from destruction, the Vara of Jamshid, which no sick man or leper may enter and whose people live the happiest life; and in the reign of Yima himself, the Haoma hymn says, there was neither cold nor heat, neither old age nor death.

In the Odyssey Proteus tells Menelaus that he will not die in Argos: the immortals will take him to the Elysian plain at the ends of the earth, where life is easiest, with no snow, no storm and no rain, because he has Helen to wife and is the son-in-law of Zeus. As Ziusudra is settled in Dilmun because he preserved life, Menelaus is carried to a deathless land because of his kinship with Zeus.