The region of As-Sabiyah in what is now Kuwait is the home of nearly sixty archaeological sites belonging the Mesopotamian period. Of most interest is a Ubaid period site at As-Sabiyah, known as H3. Excavated in 1998 by a group led by Harriet Crawford under the auspices of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, H3 was found to be a well-stratified, architecturally complex and artifact-rich site belonging to the Arabian Neolithic period.
Most remarkable, the site included the remains of a reed boat, as well as a ceramic model of a boat. The boat is represented by a slab of bitumen tar, with reed impressions on the top and barnacles attached to the bottom. H3 is thus one of the earliest known examples of built sailing vessels, dated between 5300–4900 BC.
Interestingly, one of the myths of the Mesopotamian Sargon the Great of Akkad was that as an infant he floated in a bitumen-coated reed basket down the Euphrates River.
Sources
Connan, Jacques, et al. 2005 A comparative geochemical study of bituminous boat remains from H3, As-Sabiyah (Kuwait), and RJ-2, Ra's al-Jinz (Oman). Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 16(1):21-66.
This glossary entry is part of the Dictionary of Archaeology. Any mistakes are the responsibility of Kris Hirst.
