The Lost Civilization of Dilmun

By James Donahue

Submerged megalithic ruins recently discovered near the Straits of Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf, mark the fabled ancient city of Dalamatia which may have been a major port in the kingdom of Dilmun mentioned in the Sumerian text Legend of Gilgamesh.

Ancient legend, and now recent archaeological discoveries support the story. Dilmun, which flourished at least 4,000 to 7.000 years ago and perhaps even farther into the past may have once served as a major center of world trade. Copper, stone beads, precious stones, pearls, dates and vegetables were shipped to Sumer and Babylonia.

Indeed, Dilmun was associated with other ancient ruins found on the islands of Gahrain and along the shores of the Persian Gulf. The place is at least considered a port along the sea trade routes linking Mesopotamia with the Indus Valley Civilization.

Archaeologists have been discovering the ancient ruins of what was once a great civilization that existed not only along the banks of the gulf, but possibly in the bottom of the gulf, at a time before it was flooded. And they may be very old, indeed. German archaeologist Hans-Peter Uerpmann of the University of Tubingen has uncovered the remains of three different settlements in the United Arab Emirates that he dates between 25,000 and 125,000 years old.

An interesting paper by Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist from University of Birmingham, who also has been working in the area, suggests that during the late Pleistocene epoch (150,000 to 12,000 years ago) sea levels were low enough to expose a large land mass in what is now the Persian Gulf. This land, Rose writes, was well watered by four large rivers, the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun and Wadi Batin. Also the region was graced with fresh water springs from subterranean aquifers, thus making it a lush land for human settlement.

One ancient legend refers to Dilmun as "the place where the sun rises" and "the Land of the Living." Dilmun also is described in the epic story of Enki and Nihursag as the place where Creation occurred. Possibly significant in that same story is a story of how the ziggurats of Uruk and Eridu were erected even before Dilmun was in existence.

All of this strongly suggests that Dilmun was a very ancient human community and perhaps the very cradle of civilization.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, among the oldest known writings ever found, was translated from clay tablets found in the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia. They are dated to at least 5,000 years in the past. While it is a story of great heroism and an apparent work of fiction, the book also refers to Dilmun and a great flood, which marks it as a possible record of actual ancient history.

The epic tells how Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk, visits Dilmun, described as a lush island and "the land of immortality."

At one point in the story, Gilgamesh tells his mother about dreams he was having about a great flood that swept the land. He described how the cattle, oxen, elephants and camels "were not about to escape, perished and sank into the depths."

Almost every culture in the world offers a story of a flood and a lost civilization. The range from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Plato’s story of Atlantis, and the continents of Mu and Lemuria said to have been lost in the Pacific. That these stories exist and have persisted for centuries lends credence to the possibility that at some ancient time, a relatively advanced civilization was destroyed by a flood.

There exists a mysterious publication known as The Urantia Book, published by the Urantia Foundation of Chicago in 1955, that attempts to explain the origins of humanity, and mankind’s place in the universe. Some say the manuscript was produced by Dr. William S. Sadler, a Chicago physician who was known to go into deep mental states and communicate with spiritual beings. They say sometime in the 1920s Sadler produced "a voluminous handwritten document" filled with the information he received from these beings. This became The Urantia Book.

Because of our own personal experience in receiving messages from a spiritual being known to us as The Abba Father, who sent messages through my late wife, Doris, we have to give some degree of credence to the Sadler messages. And there is one paper in this book that offers some interesting insight into what may have been going on at Dulmun in that very ancient historical time.

Paper 77 describes early civilizations known as the Nodites who founded Dilmun "as their racial and cultural headquarters." Then some 50,000 years "after the death of Nod," when the population began to overflow the land of Dilmun, the people began reaching out to "intermarry with the Andonite and Sangik tribes adjoining their borders."

And it occurred to the leadership that "something should be done to preserve their racial unity." A council of the tribes was called together where Bablot, a descendant of Nod, offered a plan to build a great tower "of racial glorification at the center of their occupied territory. This temple was to have a tower the like of which the world had never seen. It was to be a monumental memorial to their passing greatness."

According to the writing, something very bad happened during the building of this tower. There was wide discord among the people concerning its location. The tower was started in the heart of a new city that was to be known as Bablot, after the architect and builder. The name later evolved to Babel.

The paper notes that "after four and one-half years of work a great dispute arose about the object and motive for the erection of the tower. The contentions became so bitter that all work stopped." In the meantime, the people gathered at the site to argue about the purpose of building such a tower. The disagreements over religious and philosophical differences soon emerged into full scale warfare and the great tower was never completed.

This story, if it contains a grain of truth, pushes us so far back into the past that it may also explain why the land of Dulmun now lies at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. Did this civilization exist during the great ice age, when world sea levels were an estimated 300 feet lower than they are today? As the ice melted, the water flooded the gulf region. This might account for the great flood stories, the strange accounts in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the reason archaeological researchers have never found remnants of the Tower of Babel.