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'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.

Contents

Meluhha, Dilmun and Magan

Indus Valley hypothesis

African hypothesis

References

Further reading

Meluhha, Dilmun and Magan

Sumerian texts repeatedly refer to three important centers with which they traded: Magan, Dilmun, and Meluhha. ''Magan'' is usually identified with Oman, though 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 and Simo Parpola, both Finnish scholars, derive ''Meluhha'' from earlier Sumerian documents with the alternative value "''Me-lah-ha''", which they identify with the Dravidian ''Met-akam'' "high abode/country". They further claim that ''Meluhha'' is the origin of the Sanskrit ''mleccha'' meaning "barbarian, foreigner"^[1].
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 ^[2].
Though this could simply be the continuation of past traditions as Rome is still called Rome centuries after the cessation of the Roman Empire.

Indus Valley hypothesis

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 (Failaka Island in Kuwait), 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 — 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.

African hypothesis

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.

References

1. On the relationship of the Sumerian toponym Meluhha and Sanskrit mleccha, , , , Studia Orientalia, 1975
2. A "Periplus" of Magan and Meluhha, , , , Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1973

Further reading

★ Julian Reade (ed.) The Indian Ocean in Antiquity. London: Kegan Paul Intl. 1996