Meluḫḫa
Meluḫḫa (also Meluhha, Meluha, Melucha or Meluchcha ) is the name of the Gujarat peninsula , taking into account the neighboring regions of northwest India including Pakistan (mountainous regions of Karachi ). As nickname Meluhha was called "Land of the Cornelian ". The people named "Meluḫḫites" , named in Sumerian after their origin, had settled in Babylonia , among others, because of their trade relations . Evidence of direct contacts between Meluḫḫa and Mesopotamian regions has been missing since the Ur-III period (around this time the Indus culture went under).
Even in Sumerian times, Meluhha seems to have been a legendary country with which ideas of wealth and peace were associated. In addition to tin , lapis lazuli , carnelian and gold, Meluḫḫa also supplied other luxury items to the Mesopotamian regions. In a creation myth, after the creation of the world, the god Enki embarked on a boat trip to bring the lands of Sumer and Ur a favorable fate “ just like the foreign land of Meluhha ”. According to Sumerian tradition, Enki was apparently also the god of the land of Meluhha.
Sargon of Akkad described the Meluḫḫites as "strangers and unknown birds who came to Akkad with monkeys, buffalo and elephants" . Naram-Sin reports that "Meluḫḫites, the people of the black country, brought the goods of the foreign lands / the foreign goods". In his building hymn, Gudea describes the origin of building materials for a temple that he had built for the god Ningirsu . Among other things, he reports there “ Magan and Melucha collected timber from their mountains”.
literature
- Gregory Possehl: The Indus Civilization. A Contemporary Perspective . Lanham 2002, pp. 217ff.
- Wolfgang Heimpel : Meluḫḫa . In: Dietz-Otto Edzard u. a .: Real Lexicon of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archeology , Vol. 8 . de Gruyter, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-1101-4809-9 , pp. 53-55.
- Allison K. Thomason: Luxury and Legitimation: Royal Collecting in Ancient Mesopotamia . Aldershot 2005, pp. 75ff.