Meluhha
[6][7] Another piece of possible evidence that points to the people of Meluhha as being Proto-Dravidian is the fact that sesame oil believed to be exported to Mesopotamia by the Harappans, was known as ilu in Sumerian and eḷḷu in Akkadian.
[8] However, Michael Witzel, who associates IVC with the ancestors of Munda speakers, suggests an alternative etymology from the para-Munda word for wild sesame: jar-tila.
[clarification needed] Munda is an Austroasiatic language[9] Sumerian texts repeatedly refer to three important centers with which they traded: Magan, Dilmun, and Meluhha.
[19] In an inscription, Gudea of Lagash (c. 21st century BCE) referred to the Meluhhans who came to Sumer to sell gold dust, carnelian, etc.
"The qualifier used to describe the dog is 𒁱, which can be read either dar "red" as an adjective,[27] or gun3 "speckled" as an intransitive verb,[28] and interpretations vary based on these two possible meanings.
[23] Towards the end of the Sumerian period, there are numerous mentions in inscriptions of a Meluhha settlement in southern Sumer near the city-state of Girsu.
Luxury items also appear, such as lapis lazuli mined at a Harappan colony at Shortugai (modern Badakhshan in northern Afghanistan).
And Zahara[52] and Elam and Gupin and Meluḫḫa within Paraḫšum assembled for battle, but he (Rimush) was victorious and struck down 16,212 men and took 4,216 captives.
[49] However, much later texts, such as the Rassam cylinder documenting the military exploits of King Assurbanipal of Assyria (668–627 BC), long after the Indus Valley civilization had ceased to exist, seem to imply that Meluhha is to be found in Africa, in the area of Egypt.
[57][58] The Persian-Gulf style of circular stamped rather than rolled seals, also known from Dilmun, that appear at Lothal in Gujarat, India, and Failaka Island (Kuwait), as well as in Mesopotamia, are convincing corroboration of the long-distance sea trade network, which G.L.
[59] What the commerce consisted of is less sure: timber and precious woods, ivory, lapis lazuli, gold, and luxury goods such as carnelian and glazed stone beads, pearls from the Persian Gulf, and shell and bone inlays, were among the goods sent to Mesopotamia in exchange for silver, tin, woolen textiles, perhaps oil and grains and other foods.
Copper ingots, certainly, bitumen, which occurred naturally in Mesopotamia, may have been exchanged for cotton textiles and chickens, major products of the Indus region that are not native to Mesopotamia—all these have been instanced.
Direct contacts between Sumer and the Indus Valley had ceased even during the Mature Harappan phase when Oman and Bahrain (Magan and Dilmun) became intermediaries.
After the sack of Ur by the Elamites and subsequent invasions in Sumer, its trade and contacts shifted west and Meluhha passed almost into mythological memory.
The resurfacing of the name could simply reflect cultural memory of a rich and distant land, its use in records of Achaemenid and Seleucid military expeditions serving to aggrandize those kings.
