Bronze Age Trade and Writing System of Meluhha (Mleccha) Evidenced by Tin Ingots from the Near vicinity of Haifa

[For Bronze Age Trade Workshop in 5ICAANE, April 2006]

http://www.uam.es/otroscentros/asiriologiayegipto/5icaane/ws5_prog.html

Abstract

The discovery of two pure tin ingots in a ship-wreck near Haifa has produced two "Rosetta" stones to decode the "Indus script". The epigraphs on the tin ingots have been deciphered as related to ranku "antelope", "liquid measure"; read rebus: ranku 'tin'. As J.D. Muhly noted, the emergence of Bronze Age trade and writing system may be two related initiatives which started approximately in the Third Millennium B.C. It is surmised that the maritime-trade links between Ugarit and Meluhha might have extended from Crete to Haifa.Linking archaeology and philology is a challenging task. Whatlanguage could the writings on Haifa tin ingots be? The breakthrough invention of alloying may have orthographic parallels of ligatured signs and ligatured pictorial motifs (such as a bovine body with multiple animal heads, combination of animal heads, combination of lathe and furnace on a standard device, ligaturing on a heifer, damr.a -- unicorn -- with one curved horn, pannier, kammarsala). A ligature of a tiger's face to the upper body of a woman is also presented in the round. The hieroglyphic code has been deciphered as words of Mleccha. Mleccha (Meluhha) was the language in which
Yudhishthira and Vidura converse in the Mahabharata about the non-metallic killer devices of a fortification that was made of shellac. There is a depiction of a Meluhha trader accompanied by a woman carrying a kamandalu. There are, however, substratum words in Sumerian such as tibira "merchant" and sanga "priest" which are cognate with tam(b)ra "copper" (Santali) and sanghvi "priest" (Gujarati).

Excerpts:

Lipshur litanies state: 'Melukkha...is the land of carnelian' (Sumerian NA4.GUG, Akkadian sa_mtu). In the 17th century BCE, the Neo-Assyrian king Esarhaddon called himself, 'king of the kings of Dilmun, Magan, and Melukkha'. The umerian myth Enki and the World Order has Enki exclaiming: 'Let the magilum-boats of Melukkha transport gold and silver for exchange!' Enki and Ninkhursag (lines 1-9, Tr. by B. Alster) has references to the products of Melukkha: 'The land Tukrish shall transport gold from Kharali, lapis lazuli, and bright...to you. The land Melukkha shall bring carnelian, desirable and precious, sissoo-wood from Magan, excellent mangroves, on big-ships! The land Markhashi will (bring) precious stones, dus'ia-stones, (to hand) on the breast, mighty, diorite-stones, u-stones, s'umin-stones to you!'
This monograph presents four `rosetta stones' to decipher the Indus script. 1. First and second are pure tin ingots with Sarasvatihieroglyphs discovered in the Haifa shipwreck; 2. Third is an Akkadian cylinder seal attesting to Meluhha as a language of bronze-age traders (sea-faring merchants); 3. Fourth is a cylinder seal from Ur showing tabaernamonta flower (used as hair-fragrance) which is read in Meluhha as tagaraka, rebus: tagara `tin'. The cryptography of the writing system is mlecchita vikalpa (which is recognized by Vatsyayana as one of 64 arts).

Bronze age trade and cryptography: mlecchita vikalpa

The following picture of these two ingots incised with epigraphs was published by J.D. Muhly [New evidence for sources of and trade in bronze age tin, in: Alan D. Franklin, Jacqueline S. Olin, and Theodore A. Wertime, The Search for Ancient Tin, 1977, Seminar organized by Theodore A. Wertime and held at the Smithsonian Institution and the National Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C., March 14-15, 1977]. Muhly notes:"… copper is likely to be a local product; the tin was almost always an import... There is certainly no tin on Cyprus, so at best the ingots could have been transhipped from that island. How did they then find their way to Haifa? Are we dealing with a ship en route from Cyprus, perhaps to Egypt, which ran into trouble and sank off the coast of Haifa? If so, that certainly rules out Egypt as a source of tin. Ingots of tin are rare before Roman times and, in the eastern Mediterranean, unknown from any period. What the ingots do demonstrate is that metallic tin was in use during the Late Bronze Age...rather extensive use of metallic tin in the ancient eastern Mediterranean, which will probably come as a surprise to many people." (Muhly, J.D., 1976, Copper and Tin, Hamden, Archon Books, p.47). We do not know where the tin ingots were moulded, and where the epigraphs were incised, but it is possible to read the epigraphs using references to cryptography in Mahabharata and mlecchita vikalpa `cryptography' mentioned by Vatsyayana in vidya samuddes'ah (objective of education in 64 arts)...

Appendix A Note on Cypro-Minoan symbols, Hittite hieroglyphs and Cretan hieroglphs on Phaistos Disk

Appendix B Cryptography and reference to mleccha as language in Mahabharata, and to khanaka, the minerMahabharata

Appendix C Ardhasamskr.tam and semantic Clusters from Indic family of languages

Appendix D Some excerpts from Muhly, Forbes, Serge Cleuziou and Thierry Berthoud on sources of tin; tin of Melukkha !