T
HE pearl fisheries
of the Persian Gulf are the most famous and valuable in the world, and
have been prosecuted for more than two thousand years. A translation by
that eminent Assyriologist, Jules Oppert, of a cuneiform inscription on
a broken obelisk, erected presumably by a king of Nineveh, seems to
indicate a very early origin for these fisheries.1 Professor Oppert's translation is :
In the sea of the changeable winds (i.e., the Persian Gulf),
his merchants fished for pearls ;
In the sea where the North Star culminates,
they fished for yellow amber.
The
earliest writing of Europeans on the East refer to these fisheries. An
account of them was given by the Greek writer Megas-thenes, who
accompanied Seleucus Nicator, the Macedonian general, in his Asiatic
conquests, about 307 b.c. Shortly
afterward they were noted by the Greek historian, Isidorus of Charace,
in his account of the Parthian Empire. Extracts from Nearchus preserved
by Arrian also mention them. Ptolemy speaks of the pearl fisheries
which existed from time immemorial at Tylos, the Roman name for the
present Island of Bahrein. These resources were well known in the days
of Pliny. In his "Historia Naturalis," Book IX, ch. 35, he says: "But
the most perfect and exquisite [pearls] of all others be they that are
gotten about Arabia, within the Persian Gulf." 2 Pliny states also
1 Oppert, " L 'Ambre jaune chez les Assyriens." 2 Holland's edition of 1601, p. 254.
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