trail from the mountains during the ED periods, was about 1300 km. This would have
taken between twenty-two and fifty days only, at the slow rate and assuming only eight
hours of sailing per day. Much later sources record Chinese trading vessels taking just
twenty days to travel the 1 , 200 km from the mouth of the Indus to the city of Hormuz
(Vosmer 2003 : 157 , note 1 ). The return journey to Mesopotamia probably took longer,
as prevailing winds favoured journeys from the northwest to the southeast, but it is
hard to imagine that journey times would have approached those of the river route. It
is moreover probable that the boats taking the sea-trade were larger than those on the
rivers, which were limited by water depth. Although the potential size range was large,
river boats generally averaged between 1 and 11 tonnes burden (Casson 1995 : 29 ). Other
authors judge that, in the second half of the third millennium, Magan-boats destined
for the Gulf trade would have been most likely of 60 or 120 gurcapacity, translating
into a cargo tonnage of 15 or 30 tonnes (Zarins 2008 : 214 , 216 ; Vosmer 2008 : 233 ). The
sea-trade did not entirely replace trade along the inland waterways of Mesopotamia,
southeastern Anatolia and the Zagros, as even a cursory examination of the economic
texts reveals. However, in terms of bulky and massive goods such as copper, high-grade
stone and wood, the sea-trade carried obvious advantages.
The ascendancy of the maritime route to the Oman Peninsula, at the expense of
the northern Uruk colonies, therefore seems all-but inevitable once trading partners
were present in the Gulf region. The reason these advantages had not been previously
exploited (since the Ubaid) lies within the settlement trajectory of the Gulf region
itself. A prolonged phase of extreme aridity ameliorated at around 3200 BC(Preston
2011 : 64 – 65 , 77 ; Orchard and Orchard 2002 : 227 ; Orchard and Stanger 1994 : 85 ,
97 – 98 ; Parker et al. 2006 a: 472 – 473 ), and the onset of wetter conditions was accom-
panied by both the rapid development of a regional oasis-farming and copper-using
complex (the Hafit horizon), and the development of trading contacts with
Mesopotamia. It is sometimes considered that the latter provided a significant stimulus
to the former, with the demands for manpower and fuel required for copper
production provoking the creation of agricultural surplus and specialisation (Cleuziou
and Méry 2002 a: 200 ). As noted above, demographic input from Mesopotamia should
not be ruled out during this formative phase, in a process of exchange and ethnogenesis
with the indigenous Late Neolithic population.
THE BRONZE AGE TRADING SYSTEM
(ED III–ISIN-LARSA PERIOD)Trading relations in the ED III period
From the ED III to the Isin-Larsa period, Mesopotamian relations with the Gulf
revolve around mercantile activities, albeit with sporadic claims of conquest, the most
convincing of which are in the Ur III period (see below). Apart from archaeological
distributions of Mesopotamian material in the Gulf, and vice versa, we have access to
archives relating to three merchants over this long time span: Ur-Enki (ED III, reign
of Lugalanda of Lagash, twenty-fourth century BC), Lu-Enlilla of Ur (Ur III, reign of
Ibbi-Sin) and Ea-Nasir of Ur (Isin-Larsa period, reign of Rim-Sin). These are just three
merchants out of the many hundreds who must have existed during the relevant half-
millennium, from just two cities, and each is separated by a time span of around 200–– Robert Carter ––