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Bronze-age writing in ancient Near East: Two Samarra bowls and Warka vase

Abstract Elaborating on Denise Schmandt-Besserats observation that art became narrative and went beyond accounting to become a comprehensive medium of communication, three art ifacts discussed point to the use of hieroglyphs to communicate substantive information on the life-activities of artisans of the bronze age. The literate communication occurred using the rebus renderings of select substrate Meluhha glosses from Indian sprachbund, for select glyphs deployed in Indus writing which can be attributed to artisans of Meluhha settlements in ancient Near East. Two bowls discovered by Ernst Herzfeld in the 1911-1914 campaign at Samarra and Warka vase of ancient Sumer (one of a pair) stolen in April 2003 and recovered in June 2003 for the Iraqi museum provide the evidence for identifying hieroglyphs read rebus. Cuneiform texts attest to the presence of Meluhha settlements in Sumer. While cuneiform was deployed to denote names or benedictions to superiors, glyphs of Indus writing continued to be used on hundreds of cylinder seals and other artifacts such as Samarra bowls or Warka vase. The continued use of hieroglyphs of Indus writing together with cuneiform texts is a characteristic feature of the evolution of writing in ancient Near East as it progressed from the use of tokens and bullae to the use of glyphs to denote many metallurgical categories. A method of rebus readings evidenced for Narmer palette in Egypt applied to the Indus writing glyphs reveals Meluhha (mleccha) substrate lexemes from Indian

sprachbund. Bronze-age necessitated an advance beyond the system of tokens and bullae used for
counting. Categories of products which were 12 around 7500 BCE grew beyond 350. This large number could not be efficiently categorized by varieties in shapes of tokens or even seal impressions on bullae envelopes. Indus writing adopted a solution of rebus method of representation of hieroglyphs on tablets to abstract the goods represented in an accounting system for categories of minerals, metals and alloys and stages of metallurgical processing from furnace to forge to create varieties of metalware such as alloys using zinc and tin, knives, sickles, arrow-heads, axes, plowshares (or ploughshares). The hieoglyphic method also enabled representation of seal-holders' professions such as merchant, smith, scribe. The accountant was the scribe. The rebus method used words which are substrate in Indian sprachbund. Thus, 1. ibha 'elephant' read rebus ib 'iron'; ibbho 'merchant'; 2. kola 'tiger' read rebus kol 'working in iron'; 3. ayo 'fish' represented ayas 'metal'; 4. sangada 'lathe' read rebus jangad 'article delivered on entrustment'; 5. tagara 'antelope' read rebus tamkaru 'merchant'; tagara 'tin'; 6. heraka 'spy' read rebus eraka 'copper'; 7. muh 'face' red rebus muhe 'ingot'; 8. kanka 'rim-of-jar' read rebus ganika

'accountant'; kanakku 'account'; 9. satthiya 'svastika glyph' read rebus satthiya 'zinc'; and so on. The problem of bronze-age accounting and bill-of-lading for shipments was thus resolved through Indus writing. Syllabic writing of kharo (cognate with harosheth hagoyim 'smithy of nations') and brhm was a further advance to represent names, titles, for example on early punch-marked coins which were the direct result from bronze-age mints to facilitate trade exchanges using monetary media.

Ancient Near East and Meluhha interaction area


[quote]1 MAGAN and MELUHHA Geographical terms for regions in the distant south and southeast of Mesopotamia. Both names first appear in royal inscriptions of the Akkad period; ships from Magan and Meluhha were said to have brought goods to the quays of Akkad and other cities. It has been proposed that Magan referred to the coast of Oman along the Persian Gulf, rich in copper and dates, and Meluhha in the Indus valley. In Neo-Assyrian texts of the first millennium B.C., Magan and Meluhha probably designated the African coast of the Red Sea (Upper Egypt and Sudan). [unquote] The major contribution made by Meluhhans in Sumer was tin and zinc as alloying minerals to create tin-, zinc-bronzes (to complement naturally-occurring copper + arsenic ores for arsenic bronzes). Meluhhan artisans in Sumer used Indus writing to create metal-ware catalogs. Meluhhan settlements in ancient Near East have been discussed.2 Rebus readings are based on substrate lexemes of Indian sprachbund, a contact region.with pronounced bronze-age contributions of creating alloys with tin and zinc.

Hieroglyphs of two Samarra bowls and Warka vase


Image 1. Eight fish, four peacocks holding four fish, slanting strokes surround

Image 2. Six women, curl in hair, six scorpions

Image 3. Warka vase3. Antelope, ingot tiger, ingot, face of bull, procession of bovidae, tabernae Montana stalks

Rebus readings of hieroglyphs which also recur on Indus writing corpora 4:

dh a slope; inclination of a plane (G.); dhako large metal ingot (G.) ayo fish; rebus: ayas metal mora peacock; mor peafowl (Hindi); rebus: morakkhaka loha, a kind of copper, grouped with
piscaloha (Pali). moraka "a kind of steel" (Sanskrit)

gaa set of four (Santali); rebus: ka fire-altar, furnace (Santali) [mh] A twist or tangle arising in thread or cord, a curl or snarl (Marathi). S. mh f., ho
m. braid in a woman's hair , L. meh f.; G. ml, mi m. braid of hair on a girl's forehead (CDIAL 10312). Rebus: me iron (Mu.) meha M. mehi F.twisted, crumpled, as a horn; meha deren a crumpled horn (Santali) [ mh ] A crook or curved end (of a stick, horn &c.) and attrib. such a stick, horn, bullock. [ mh ] A twist or tangle arising in thread or cord, a curl or snarl.

The entire composition of glyphic elements on a Harappa tablet, h180: 4304 Other glyphic elements of the tablet: Two tigers rearing on their hindlegs standing face to face.

Glyph: tiger: kola tiger. Rebus: kol working in iron Glyph: dula pair. Rebus: dul casting (metal). A person carrying a sickle-shaped weapon and a wheel on his bands faces a woman with disheveled hair and upraised arm. kuhru armourer (Skt.) The glyptic composition is decoded as kuhru

sal armourer workshop. eaka 'upraised arm' (Ta.). Rrebus: eraka = copper (Ka.) Thus, the entire composition of these
glyphic elements relate to an armourers copper workshop. The hairstyle of the woman is comparable to the wavy hair shown on the Samarra bowl (Image 2. Six women, curl in hair, six scorpions) The glyphic elements shown on the tablet are: copulation, vagina, crocodile. h180 tablet. Gyphic: copulation: kama, khama 'copulation' (Santali) Rebus: kammai a coiner (Ka.); kampaam coinage, coin, mint (Ta.) kammaa = mint, gold furnace (Te.) Vikalpa: kaa stone (ore). Glyph: vagina: kuhi vagina; rebus: kuhi smelting furnace. The descriptive glyphics indicates that the smelting furnace is for stone (ore). This is distinquished from sand ore. Glyph: crocodile: kar crocodile. Rebus: khar blacksmith. kru a wild crocodile or alligator (Te.) mosale wild crocodile or alligator. S. ghaylu m. long snouted porpoise ; N. ghaiyl crocodile (Telugu); A. B. ghiyl alligator , Or. Ghaia, H. ghayl, gharir m. (CDIAL 4422) n. < . Cf. grha. Alligator; . . .( .) karm ( . . 8, 9, 9). ( . karavu, kar, n.

prob. Grha. 1. A species of alligator; . 2, 3, 9). 2. Male alligator;

Thus, the message of the glyphic composition is: kammaa kaa kuhi khar mint (coiner) stone (ore) smelting furnace, blacksmith. A comparable glyphic composition is a naked woman seated with her legs spread out flanked by two scorpions. Cylinder-seal impression from Ur showing a squatting female. L. Legrain, 1936, Ur excavations, Vol. 3, Archaic Seal Impressions. This glyphic composition depicts a smelting furnace for stone ore as distinguished from a smelting furnace for sand ore. meed-bica = iron stone ore, in contrast to bali-bica, iron sand ore (Mu.lex.) .bicha, bich scorpion (Assamese) Rebus: bica stone ore (Mu.) sambr.o bica = gold ore (Mundarica) meed-bica = iron stone ore, in contrast to bali-bica, iron sand ore (Mu.lex.)

bhaa six ; rebus: bhaa furnace. satthiya svastika glyph; rebus: satthiya zinc, jasta zinc (Kashmiri), satva, zinc (Pkt.); kola woman; rebus: kol iron. kola blacksmith (Ka.); koll blacksmith (Ko) muha -- n. mouth, face (Pkt.) m h face; rebus: m h ingot (Mu.) kul tiger (Santali); klu id. (Te.) klupuli = Bengal tiger (Te.) working in iron, blacksmith; kolla blacksmith (Tamil). agara = tabernae montana (Skt.) agara antelope; rebus: agara tin. Cf. cognate: tamkru, damgar merchant(Sumerian). gar horned cattle (K.) rebus: gar blacksmith (H.) damgar merchant, trader(Sumerian).
Sources for the images: Image 1. The Samarra bowl (ca. 4000 BC) at on exhibit at the Pergamon museum, Berlin. The bowl was excavated as Samarra by Ernst Herzfeld in the 1911-1914 campaign, and described in a 1930 publication. The design consists of a rim, a circle of eight fish, and four fish swimming towards the center being caught by four birds. At the center is a swastika symbol. (Ernst Herzfeld, Die vorgeschichtlichen [ klh ] [klh] A jackal

(Marathi) rebus: kol furnace, forge (Kuwi) kol alloy of five metals, pacaloha (Tamil) kol

Tpfereien von Samarra, Die Ausgrabungen von Samarra 5, Berlin 1930.)


Image 2. Women with flowing hair and scorpions, Samarra, Iraq. After Ernst Herzfeld, Die Ausgrabungen

von Samarra V: Die vorgeschichtischenTopfereien, Univ. of Texas Press, pl. 30. Courtesy Dietrich
Reimer. This image is discussed in Denise Schmandt-Besserat, When writing met art, p.19. The design features six humans in he center of the bowl and six scorpions around the inner rim. The six identical

anthropomorphic figures, shown frontally, are generally interpreted as females because of their wide hips, large thighs, and long, flowing hairSix identical scorpions, one following after the other in a single line, circle menacingly around the women. Image 3. The Warka Vase or the Uruk Vase is a carved alabaster stone vessel found in the temple complex of the Sumerian goddess Inanna in the ruins of the ancient city of Uruk, located in the modern Al Muthanna Governorate, in southern Iraq. Like the Narmer Palette from Egypt, it is one of the earliest surviving works of narrative relief sculpture, dated to c. 3,2003000 BC. The vase was discovered as a collection of fragments by German Assyriologists in their sixth excavation season at Uruk in 1933/1934. It is named after the modern village of Warka - known as Uruk to the ancient Sumerians.
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Some examples of use of comparable hieroglyphs frp, Indus writing corpora may be cited: Chanhu-daro Seal obverse and reverse. The oval sign of this Jhukar culture seal is comparable to other inscriptions. Fig. 1 and 1a of Plate L. After Mackay, 1943. The hieroglyphs of the seal relate representations of bun ingots to two orthographic representations of antelopes: one is shown walking, the other is shown with head turned backwards. A flower is shown, perhaps, a representation of

tabernae Montana.
Stamp seal from Susa , at Louvre Museum. Susa is one of the oldest known settlements of the world, possibly founded about 4200 BC, although the first traces of an inhabited village have been dated to ca. 7000 BCE. The seal depicts two goat-antelopes head to tail, outside an oval.6 Tin bun ingot. Late Bronze Age, 10th-9th century B.C.E. Salcombe shipwreck, 300 yards off the South Devon coast, England, 2009. 7

Cylinder seal: lion and sphinx over an antelope 8


The depiction of a bulls head together with an antelope is significant and recalls the association of bulls head with oxhide ingots. The antelope looking backwards is flanked by a lion (with three dots at the back of the head) and a winged animal (tiger?)

Bhirrana4 Allograph: Kur. xol tail. Malt. qoli id. (DEDR 2135). [The short-tail is a hieroglyph which is ligatured to an antelope as a hieroglyph read rebus. Such a ligatured-tail evolved into a sign of the Indus script which appears on inscribed copper -tablets.] Rebus: kol working in iron (metal), blacksmith (in this case, tin-smith). baa six (hence six short strokes)(G.); rebus: bhaa furnace, smelter (Santali). The stalk in front of the antelope is explained rebus: kolmo rice-plant(Santali); rebus: kolami smithy/forge (Te.) The antelope orthography shows a ram: tagara ram; if the plant is tabernae montana, tagaraka tabernae

montana; rebus: tagara tin. The seal shows an artisan-merchant who has a smelter to produce tin
ingots.Antelope: meh goat (Br.) Rebus: meha, mehi merchants clerk; (G.) meho one who helps a merchant vi.138 vaiksahyah (dei. Hemachandra). Cf. meluhha-m h > mleccha-mukha copper (ingot). The earliest (Indus) inscriptions date back to 3500 BC.9 h1522A sherd. Slide 124. Inscribed Ravi sherd. The origins of Indus writing can now be traced to the Ravi Phase (c. 3300-2800 BCE) at Harappa. Some inscriptions were made on the bottom of the pottery before firing. Other inscriptions such as this one were made after firing. This inscription (c. 3300 BCE) appears to be three plant symbols arranged to appear almost anthropomorphic. The trident looking projections on these symbols seem to set the foundation for later symbols The glyph is tabernae montana, mountain tulip. A soft-stone flask, 6 cm. tall, from Bactria (northern Afghanistan) showing a winged female deity (?) flanked by two flowers similar to those shown on the comb from Tell Abraq.10 Ivory comb with Mountain Tulip motif and dotted circles. TA 1649 Tell Abraq.11 Susa pot, from Meluhha, with metal artifacts. The pot has an inscription, painted with fish hieroglyph.12

Meluhha and contributions to tin and zinc alloys


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[quote]13 ...the earliest brass in the world was in the Harappan site of Lothal and then in the early PGW site of Atranjikhera. The primacy of zinc metallurgy in India is established by three kinds of evidences: (a) second millennium BCE radiocarbon dating of zinc ore mine in Southern Rajasthan, (b) fourth century BCE brass vase in Taxila assaying 34% zinc, and (c) second century AD literature of Nagarjuna describing distillation of zinc(paper) detailslarge scale zinc manufacture in medieval Zawar and the unique phenomenon of a technology transfer from India to the western worldThe earliest method of making brass was possibly the cementation process in which finely divided copper fragments were intimately mixed with roasted zinc ore (oxide) and reducing agent, such as charcoal, and heated to 1000 degrees C in a sealed crucible. Zinc vapour formed dissolved into the copper fragments yielding a poor quality brazz, zinc percentage of which could not be easily controlled. Fusion of zinc with copper increases the strength, hardness and toughness of the latter. When the alloy is composed of 10-18% zinc, it has a pleasing golden yellow colour. It can also take very high polish and literally glitter like gold. For this property, brass has been widely used for casting statuary, covering temple roofs, fabricating vessels, etcLothal (2200-1500 BCE) showed one highly oxidized antiquity (No. 4189), which assayed 70.7# copper, 6.04# zinc, 0.9% Fe and 6.04% acid-soluble component (probably carbonate, a product of atmospheric corrosion)Most of the brass samples in ancient India contained variable proportions of Zn, Sn and PbDuring the Harappan era, copper used to be alloyed with tin and arsenic; since these were scarce commodities, alternative alloying elements had to be looked for. Artisans in the Rajasthan-Gujarat region might have stumbled on to zinc ore deposit as a new source of alloying element(Taxila vase BM 215-284)dated to the 4th century BCE. This brass sample contains 34.34% zinc, 4.25% Sn, 3.0% Pb, 1.77% and 0.4% nickel. This is very strong evidence for the availability of metallic sinc in the 4 th century BCE. Possibly India was the first to make this metal zinc (rasaka) by the distillation process, as practiced for other metal mercury (rasa)...The pseudo-Aristotelian work, On marvelous things heard mentioned: They also say that amongst the Indians the bronze is so bright, clean and free from corrosion that i t is indistinguishable from gold, but that amongst the cups of Darius there is a considerable number that could not be distinguished from gold or bronze except by color....The Indian emphasis was on the goldlike brass and not on the zinc metalThe discovery of three important hoards of metallic art objects at Mahudi of north Gujarat, Lilvadeva (north-east) and Akota of central Gujarat, dated between 6th and 11th centuries AD, proved that the artisans there had developed four varieties of alloys: (a) bronze, (b) zincbronze, (c) lead brass, and (d) conventional brassThe technical term raka for brass persisted through centuries and we find this mentioned in the 4th century AD Jaina text Angavijja (as hraka) and also in Amarakoa (450 AD)Pliny mentioned the Latin term aurichalcum (golden copper), made in India from cadmia, identified as calamine or the zinc ore. Samuel Beal suggested that the name cadmia came from Calamina, a port at the mouth of the Indus, which negotiated the export of the ore or the alloy of zinc. Ball, however, suggested that the port was Calliana or Kalyan near Bombay. The sixth century AD traveler Sopater had mentioned Calliana exporting brassThe earliest reference to zinc as a metl is

found in Nagarjunas Rasa-Ratnkara. In one passage (RR 3) it was mentioned: What wonder is that

rasaka (zinc or zinc ore) roasted with three parts of ulva (copper) converts the latter into gold. Actually,
this was gold-coloured 25% zinc-brass, also known as pta-tla (pitala) or yellow alloy.jast (derived from Sanskrit jaada or zinc)On brass and zinc metallurgy, the primacy of India in the ancient and medieval world is now beyond any dispute. [unquote] [quote]14 "The first smelting of iron [ore] may have taken place as early as 5000 BC" at Samarra, Mesopotamia,15 but more commonly early iron was recovered from fallen meteors (yielding iron with a characteristic 4+% nickel content). By the middle of the fourth millennium BC, "both texts and objects reveal the presence of iron" in Mesopotamia,16 from where the Jaredites departed. Just possibly they brought with them to the New World technical knowledge of that metallurgy. Sporadically throughout the Bronze Age (about 3500 BC1000 BC) in the Near East, wrought (nonmeteoric) iron objects were being produced,17 along with continued use of the meteoric type. 18 Yet details of the history at that time are poorly known. The find of an iron artifact from Slovakia dated to the 17th century BC leads one researcher to lament "how little we actually know about the use of iron during the second millennium BCE."19 Steel is "iron that has been combined with carbon atoms through a controlled treatment of heating and cooling."20 Yet "the ancients possessed in the natural (meteoric) nickel-iron alloy a type of steel that was not manufactured by mankind before 1890."21 (It has been estimated that 50,000 tons of meteoritic material falls on the earth each day, although only a fraction of that is recoverable.) 22 By 1400 BC, smiths in Armenia had discovered how to carburize iron by prolonged heating in contact with carbon (derived from the charcoal in their forges). This produced martensite, which forms a thin layer of steel on the exterior of the object (commonly a sword) being manufactured. 23 Iron/steel jewelry, weapons, and tools (including tempered steel) were definitely made as early as 1300 BC (and perhaps earlier), as attested by excavations in present-day Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Israel, and Jordan.24 "Smiths were carburizing [i.e., making steel] intentionally on a fairly large scale by at least 1000 BC in the Eastern Mediterranean area."25 [unquote] Tokens of Susa evolve into hieroglyphic Indus writing in ancient Near East

Shape of a token representing one ingot of metal, Susa, Iran, ca. 3300 BCE. Denise Schmandt-Besserat, 2009, Tokens and writing: the cognitive development, Scripta, Vol. 1 (September 2009): 145-154 The development of the power of abstraction as illustrated by the evolution of counting in the ancient Near East. Tokens indicates that counting was first done concretely in one-to-one correspondence. The claytokens, that appeared in the Near East about 7500 BC, abstracted the goods they represented. For example a cone abstracted a measure of grain. About 3300 BC, when tokens were kept in envelopes, markings on envelopes abstracted the tokens held inside. Abstract numbers are the culmination of the process, following the invention of writing. Excerpts: For example, the number of token shapes which was limited to about 12 around 7500 BC, increased to some 350 around 3500 BC, when urban workshops started contributing to the redistribution economy. Some of the new tokensstood for raw materials such as wool and metal while others represented finished products, among them textiles, garments, jewelry, bread, beer and honey (Fig. 2). (p.148, ibid.) Bronze-age advance in accounting for metalware and metallurgical processing categories using Indus writing The corpora of inscriptions with Indus writing has now grown to over 5,000 and the evidence, together

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with the lexemes of Indian sprachbund provide a method for validating the rebus readings of hundreds of hieroglyphs to categorise and account for work-in-process transactions from furnace or smelter to the forge (on workers' platforms) and for compiling metalware catalogs of minerals used, metals and alloys smelted or forged. Hundreds of hieroglyphs are read rebus using the substrate lexemes of Indian sprachbund to decipher the inscriptions in Indus writing.26

On this seal, ayo 'fish' read rebus ayas 'metal'; angar 'bull' read rebus angar 'blacksmith'; ko 'horn; red rebus: kho 'alloy'; kho 'young bull-calf' read rebus khu '(metal) turner'.

The ayo 'fish' hieroglyph thus adequately categorizes the metalware contents of a pot discovered in Susa.

m1429B. Glyphs: crocodile + fish ayakra

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blacksmith (Pali)kru a wild crocodile or alligator (Te.) aya 'fish' (Mu.) The method of ligaturing enables creation of compound messages through Indus writing inscriptions.

Conclusions

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The continued use of hieroglyphs of Indus writing together with cuneiform texts is a characteristic feature of the evolution of writing in ancient Near East as it progressed from the use of tokens and bullae to the use of glyphs to denote many metallurgical categories. A method of rebus readings evidenced for Narmer palette28 in Egypt applied to the Indus writing glyphs reveals Meluhha (mleccha) substrate lexemes29 from Indian sprachbund.

1 2

Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia


The Melua Village: Evidence of Acculturation of Harappan Traders in Late ThirdMillennium

Mesopotamia, Simo Parpola, Asko Parpola, Robert H. Brunswig, Jr.Source:Journal of the Economic and

Social History of the Orient, Vol. 20, No. 2 (May, 1977),pp. 129-165.
3 4

http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2003/vase.html S. Kalyanaraman, 2013, Indus writing in ancient Near East: Corpora and a dictionary , Sarasvati

Research Center

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http://arthistorypart1.blogspot.in/2011/01/sumerian-art-warka-vase.html cf. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3566.pdf (Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, 2008, Symmetries in Jim Tyson, South West Maritime Archaeological Group http://www.archaeology.org/1005/etc/artifact.html Period: Late Cypriot II Date: ca. 14th century B.C.E. Geography: Cyprus Culture: Cypriot Medium:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warka_Vase
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images on ancient seals.)


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Black-grey steatite Dimensions: 0.83 in. (2.11 cm) Classification: Stone-Cylinder Seal Credit Line: The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874-76 Accession Number: 74.51.4313 This artwork is currently on display in Gallery 173 Said to be from Amathus, Cyprus. 18651872, found in Cyprus by General Luigi Palma di Cesnola; acquired by the Museum in 1874, purchased from General Luigi Palma di Cesnola http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/30000008
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/330000/audio/_334517_meadow.ram After Pottier, M.H., 1984, Materiel funeraire e la Bactriane meridionale de l'Age du Bronze, Paris, D.T. Potts, South and Central Asian elements at Tell Abraq (Emirate of Umm al-Qaiwain, United Arab

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Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations: plate 20.150.


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Emirates), c. 2200 BCAD 400, in Asko Parpola and Petteri Koskikallio, South Asian Archaeology 1993: , pp. 615-666.
12

Images courtesy: Maurizio Tosi in an international conference in New Delhi, November 2010 organised

by Draupati Trust.
13

Indian Journal of History of Science, 28(4), 1993. Arun Kumar Biswas, The primacy of India in ancient

brass and zinc metallurgy http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/rawdataupload/upload/insa/INSA_1/20005b5c_309.pdf


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http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=15&num=2&id=423 Out of the Dust: Steel in

Early Metallurgy John L. Sorenson Journal of Book of Mormon Studies: Volume - 15, Issue - 2, Pages: 1089, 127 Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute, 2006
15

Nikolass J. van der Merwe and Donald H. Avery, "Pathways to Steel," American Scientist 70 (1982):

146.
16

Peter Roger Stuart Moorey, "Early Metallurgy in Mesopotamia," in The Beginning of the Use of Metals

and Alloys: Papers from the Second International Conference on the Beginning of the Use of Metals and Alloys, Zhengzhou, China, 2126 October 1986, ed. Robert Maddin (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), 31.
17

See Van der Merwe and Avery, "Pathways to Steel," 146.

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18

See Jane C. Waldbaum, "The First Archaeological Appearance of Iron and the Transition to the Iron

Age," inThe Coming of the Age of Iron, ed. Theodore A. Wertime and James D. Muhly (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 7273.
19

James D. Muhly, "Mining and Metalwork in Ancient Western Asia," in Civilizations of the Ancient Near Lenore O. Keene Congdon, "Steel in Antiquity: A Problem in Terminology," in Studies Presented to

East, ed. J. M. Sasson et al. (New York: Scribner, 1995), 3:1517.


20

George M. A. Hanfmann, ed. David Gordon Mitten et al. (Cambridge: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard
University, 1971), 1819.
21

Robert James Forbes, Metallurgy in Antiquity: A Notebook for Archaeologists and See Harvey Harlow Nininger, Find a Falling Star (New York: Paul S. Erikson, 1972), 238. See Congdon, "Steel in Antiquity," 2425; D. Davis et al., "A Steel Pick from Mount Adir in See Patrick E. McGovern, "The Innovation of Steel in Transjordan," Journal of Metals 40/7 (1988): 50;

Technologists (Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1950), 402.


22 23

Palestine," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 44/1 (1985): 42; and Muhly, "Mining and Metalwork," 3:1515.
24

Jane C. Waldbaum, From Bronze to Iron: The Transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age in the

Eastern Mediterranean (Gteborg, Sweden: Paul strm, 1978), 54; and Robert Maddin et al., "How the
Iron Age Began,"Scientific American 237 (1977): 122.
25

Tamara S. Wheeler and Robert Maddin, "Metallurgy and Ancient Man," in Coming of the Age of Iron, S. Kalyanaraman, 2013, Indus writing in ancient Near East: Corpora and a dictionary , Sarasvati

ed. Wertime and Muhly, 116.


26

Research Center 27 http://www.bibleorigins.net/dilmunmapseriduurseashorepersiangulf.html (Map) 28 http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/narmer/ 29 http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/sarasvati/html/alphaseq1.htm

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