Meluhha

Meluḫḫa or Melukhkha (Sumerian: 𒈨𒈛𒄩𒆠 Me-luḫ-ḫaKI) is the Sumerian name of a prominent trading partner of Sumer during the Middle Bronze Age. Its identification remains an open question, but most scholars associate it with the Indus Valley civilisation.

Quotes

• There are, however, concrete evidences, in texts of the Akkadian and neo-Sumerian dynasties, of Indian crafts- and business-people first visiting Mesopotamia and later living in it. “[A]n inscription of Sargon refer[s] to Meluhhan [probably Indian] ships docked at his capital, the city of Akkad … a late Sargonic tablet datable to ca. 2200 B.C… . mentions a man with an Akkadian name entitled ‘the holder’ … of a Meluhha ship … an Akkadian cylinder seal bears the inscription … ‘Su-ilisu, Meluhha interpreter.’ Taken together, the presence of Meluhhan ships, a ship-‘holder’, and an interpreter help to establish the physical contact, over sea-routes, of Meluhha with Mesopotamia in Akkadian times.” Inscriptions of Gudea of Lagash similarly note that “‘the Meluhhans came up (or down) from their country’ to supply wood and other raw materials for the construction of the main temple of Gudea’s capital.” In the Ur III or neo-Sumerian dynasty that followed the Akkadian, however, the texts “give us an entirely different view of the Meluhhans.” Now they do not seem to come from afar, as in the Akkadian period, but, “while recognized as a distinct ethnic group, their roles are intimately part of domestic Ur III society.” Though the “Meluhha village” that is referred to repeatedly over a half century “may originally have been founded as a commercial settlement or a mercantile enclave, all references to it unanimously imply that its role in Ur III society was little, if any, different from other Southern Mesopotamian villages of the day.” The records of Meluhhans indicate that by that time “most if not all of them had Sumerian names.” Families from Meluhha, it seems, had settled in the Meluhhan village permanently, rather than on brief mercantile visits. In at least one case it seems that “the man himself was two or more generations removed from immigration into Mesopotamia.” “Three hundred years after the earliest textually documented contact between Meluhha and Mesopotamia, the references to a distinctly foreign commercial people have been replaced by an ethnic component of Ur III society.” In short, “certain Meluhhans had undergone a process of acculturation into Mesopotamian society by Ur III times.” The texts attest to “a Meluhhan garden dedicated to a Sumerian goddess, and the paying of religious taxes to that goddess’ temple …”
  • Thomas C. Mcevilley - The Shape of Ancient Thought_ Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies (2001, Allworth Press) chapter 10 . quoting Simo Parpola, Asko Parpola, and Robert H. Brunswig Jr., “The Meluhha Village: Evidence of Acculturation of Harappan Traders in Late Third Millennium Mesopotamia,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 20 (1977): 129–165.