Kingdoms of Mesopotamia

The city states of Sumer formed one of the first great civilisations in human history (see feature link). This Near Eastern civilisation emerged a little way ahead of that of Africa's ancient Egypt, and up to a millennium before that of the Indus Valley culture.

It developed out of the end of the Pottery Neolithic across the Fertile Crescent, a period which had seen Neolithic Farmer practices spread far and wide across the Near East and beyond. Southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and the western edge of Iran) was subjected to permanent settlement, initially in the form of pastoralists but soon as farmers too.

By the late fourth millennium BC, Sumer was divided into approximately a dozen independent city states which used local canals and boundary stones to mark their borders. Many of the smaller cities emerged in two broad waves, in the mid-third millennium BC and at the start of the second millennium BC.

It was from this time that Sumer began establishing meaningful trading links which lay outside of southern Mesopotamia. Many of these were city states in northern Mesopotamia, southern Anatolia, and Syria, but others lay farther afield. Magan comes under the latter heading, one of a chain of trading centres which stretched all the way to the Indus Valley.

Archaeology on Marawah Island to west of Abu Dhabi has revealed that the Arabian coast around 6000 BC was home to a sophisticated seafaring people. They built stone structures, herded livestock, fished and dived for pearls, crafted jewellery, and developed a talent for sailing which sparked a remarkable process of cultural exchange.

By the Bronze Age, around 2500 BC, the region was prominent enough to have a name in ancient writings: Magan. From the island of Umm an-Nar in modern Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) which - like Marawah Island - was part of Magan, merchants sailed an international trade route which connected Mesopotamia to the Indus Valley.

Magan traded locally-sourced pearls, stone, and copper, one of the most sought-after commodities of the time, for ceramics, fabrics, jewellery, and other precious objects. Its ships were renowned throughout the Arabian Gulf which gave Sumerian city states a level of access to the Omani copper mines.

This supply was crucial to the region's newly-developed bronze technology, and this is usually equated with the ancient people of Magan. Most of their trade in the third millennium BC went through Dilmun (modern Bahrain). Magan was also in close contact with the cities of Elam.

A collaboration in 2021 between Zayed National Museum, Zayed University, and New York University Abu Dhabi resolved the question of how to build a boat which could have plied such long distances. With only a few surviving fragments and images to work from, the groundbreaking project relied on research, hypothesis, and experimentation.

The boat's shape was based on ancient engraved seals, the broad materials were described on an ancient clay tablet, and the tools and techniques were those of traditional Bronze Age craftsmen. The result was the world's largest reconstructed Bronze Age vessel, one which was eighteen metres in length, and was capable of carrying 36.5 metric tonnes.

Near East Kingdoms

Ancient Mesopotamia

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