A DISPUTED CASE: THE DEPOSITS FROM THE BARBAR TEMPLE II AT BAHRAIN
Other artifacts have regularly entered the debate on the relationship between the Oxus and the Arabian Gulf region.
As is known, the Dilmun culture has mainly been characterized by the emblematic excavations made at Bahrain on the Barbar Temple with its different phases: they have deeply marked the historiography of the regional research on this culture. The diggers have proposed to date this building between ca. 2.100-2050 BC (Temple I), 2050-1900 BC (Temple II), and 1900-1800 BC (Temple III), but radiocarbon dates now rather push these dates several decades earlier (see the Appendix at the end of the volume).4
This architectural complex, discovered and excavated between 1954 and 1961 by the Danish Moesgaard Museum expedition, under the successive direction of P.V. Glob, P. Mortensen, and H.H. Andersen, has been the subject of several stratigraphic re-interpretations and chronological revisions in the last 30 years. The comprehensive and final publication (Andersen and Hojlund 2003a, 2003b) describes several phases of a building organized around a central elevated platform with two neighboring altars equipped with drains, and connected by a processional staircase to a (sacred?) pool built around a freshwater spring to the west. This central structure is connected to the east via an oval-shaped courtyard, probably used as a place for slaughtering sacrificed animals. Both Temples I and II clearly illustrate this tripartite plan, which seems to evolve and become simpler in Temple III, very poorly preserved unfortunately. The various artifacts discussed further have all been found below the floor level of the central platform, some of them grouped together in a structure described as a “pit for offerings.” We will see how their connection with Central Asia proposed by several scholars has changed through time and now seems rather weak.
The copper bull’s head
The Early Dilmun bull’s head from Barbar has now become the most famous and iconic piece of the Dilmun material culture (Figure 22.13). It was found ca. 50 cm below the floor of the central, trapezoidal platform of Temple II, together with a deposit of rectangular copper plates inlayed with several rows of nails (Andersen and Hojlund 2003a: 109, 268). This head, apparently molded in one piece (Andersen and Hojlund 2003a: 265-266, fig. 698; cf. also Aruz and Wallenfels 2003: 311, cat. 206), is about 18.10 x 15 cm (max. height and width of the curved horns).
As early as 1974, M. Tosi (1974:167) had proposed to compare this piece with another bull’s head discovered by V.M. Masson in 1972 in the collective “priestly sepulcher” of excavation 7 at Altyn Depe (Masson 1973: 114; 1976: 16-18 and pl. la; 1988: 64-71 and pl. XXIII; Kohl 1984: 130-131; cf. also Aruz and Wallenfels 2003: 356, cat. 249). In so doing he refuted During Caspers’s first studies (During Caspers 1971: 222) where she had proposed “a Sumerian ED I period prototype” for this representation. However, his proposal has never really convinced us since these two animal heads differ so widely in many of their stylistic elements. In Masson’s final publication on Altyn Depe, he mentions at length the Barbar’s discovery, which he also considers to be the closest analogue to the Altyn Depe head (Masson 1988: 75-76), and also highlights
Figure 22.13 Copper bull’s head from the Barbar Temple (Bahrain) (courtesy of the Bahrain National Museum).
their differences. Indeed, they are significant. If the dimensions of the two artifacts are close, the materials differ: The piece from Altyn Depe is in gold, with silver horns and turquoise inlays for the eyes and on the front while the Barbar head is in copper. The points of stylistic convergence are also not as obvious, as said peremptory by Tosi (1974) or more cautiously suggested by Masson (1988). Moreover, the Barbar copper head presents ver}' peculiar features that in no case appear on that of the piece from Altyn Depe. This concerns notably the shape of the horns, or that of the ears, and the place and way they are incorporated to the head: at Barbar they are molded in one piece with the support while at Altyn Depe they are attached on it. Barbar’s depiction also has a kind of curly fringe on top of the animal head that is absent at Altyn Depe and it does not reproduce the specific eyebrow treatment observed on the Margiana bull’s head either. The only common elements in the two pieces, clearly distinguishing them from Mesopotamian models, is the flatness of the animal’s muzzle in each, the rendering of the nose (“as if it were a pig’s snout,” cf. During Caspers 1971: 222), as well as the specific frontal position of the eyes, most probably also inlaid at Barbar, while they are usually placed in lateral position on the Mesopotamian Early Dynastic examples.
Rather than a direct relationship between Turkmenistan and Bahrain in this particular case, it seems then wiser to consider that both pieces are the result of two local productions both influenced by their pertaining to a common Middle Asian Interaction Sphere network, an opinion already suggested by During Caspers (1976: 32). The pair of gold pendants featuring bulls, found in a probable grave exposed during public works in Quetta (Pakistan) and associated with Mergharh VIII pottery (Jarrige 1988: 124, cat. 153-154), could also belong to the same multicultural network at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. One will recall, finally, an earlier suggestion made by D. Barnett (1969: 101 fmj) who thought that the Barbar bull’s head could have been fixed on the sound box of a musical instrument, like the Ur Royal Cemetery famous lyres; if exact, this would strengthen the existence of connections between the Barbar bull head and Mesopotamia where undoubtedly the best comparisons for the shape of its horns are to be found (Zettler and Horne 1998: 63, cat. 9). Metallographic analyses of this artifact do confirm a rather pure copper with a few other elements present as impurities, notably arsenic and nickel, which indicate a profile close to the Omani copper, generally imported as bun-shaped ingots to Dilmun (Andersen and Hojlund 2003a: 282; 2003b: 19).
