Where did the copper come from? Geological and archaeo-metallurgical surveys
in Anatolia (especially around Ergani Maden in what is today central Turkey), on
Cyprus, in the Sinai peninsula and parts of southern Jordan, on the central plateau
of Iran (Anarak-Talmessi, Veshnoveh, Arisman), and in the mountains of Oman in
south-eastern Arabia have identified numerous areas of copper mineralization that
were exploited in antiquity. Not all of these areas were equally important, nor does
their existence alone ensure that they actually supplied Mesopotamia with copper
(and even when they did, this did not necessarily occur on a continuous basis). Unfor-
tunately, there is still a surprising lack of analytical data available on Mesopotamian
metallurgy which could help identify the source areas exploited by a particular site
or in a given period. Moreover, the tendency of metalsmiths to recycle old metal,
melting down various fragments or unwanted objects and recasting the molten mixture,
means that source areas which might have distinctive compositional ‘signatures’ can
be masked by admixture of metal from various sources.
One way of trying to better understand which source areas were actively exploited
in which periods of Mesopotamian history is to combine our geological knowledge
of copper mineralization across Western Asia with the evidence of cuneiform sources.
From the late fourth millennium BConwards, a variety of lexical, economic, royal
and literary texts refers to regions which supplied Mesopotamian consumers with
copper, or to copper named after those regions. The most important of these are listed
in Table 8. 1 and although we are not 100 per cent certain of the locations of all of
the regions that were associated with copper, we have a very good idea of where most
of them were situated.
Dilmun appears at the head of the list because it is, chronologically speaking, the
first foreign land associated with metals to appear in the Mesopotamian written record.
The earliest texts yet discovered – the so-called ‘Archaic’ texts from Uruk – include
lexical documents (word lists), one of which is a list of metals (Englund 1983 : 35 ).
‘Dilmun axe’ appears in four examples of this list datable to c. 3000 BC, and although
it is not specifically identified as a copper axe, it is highly probable, particularly given
the later link between Dilmun and copper. A particularly vivid series of texts from
the important site of Ur charts the activities of a copper merchant named Ea-nasir,
one of the alik Tilmunor ‘Dilmun merchants’, around 1850 BC. Yet, it is important
to underscore the fact that Dilmun itself was not a source area but a purveyorof copper.
Centred on the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, and encompassing the mainland
— D. T. Potts —Table 8.1 Sources of Mesopotamian copper through the millennia
Region Location 4th 3rd 2nd 1st millennium BC
Dilmun Bahrain/ ?
NE Arabia
Magan Oman ? ?
Meluhha Indus valley
Kimash Iran?
Nairi NE Anatolia
Jamanu Ionia?