Uqair - Geoffrey Bibby and Uqair

Geoffrey Bibby and Uqair

Geoffrey Bibby, a Danish archeologist who excavated on the island of Bahrain from 1954 to 1969 and claimed it to be Dilmun, included Uqair, across the straits, in his investigations, visiting it on three separate journeys, in 1963 by air only, and in1965 and in 1968 by land. Bibby wrote:

"Tylos we knew was Bahrain...Attene, was fifty miles inland, was normally believed to be the Hofuf oasis. On the coast, in the direct line between Hofuf and Bahrain, lay the village of Uqair, and beside it the ruins of a large walled town. It had seemed obvious to many modern theorists that Uqair must be Gerrha and the identification seemed clinched by the fact that in the local dialect of the Arabic, the letter 'q' was pronounced as a 'g.' Uqair is pronounced Ogair, which is close enough to the Greek name to be convincing." (Bibby, p. 318).

In Bibby's quest for the city of Dilmun he managed three sondages (digs) at the city of Uqair. Of his investigation, he detailed his search for pre-Islamic clues: "the ruined city of Uqair stretches more vastly on the ground than it appeared from the air. I followed ... the northern wall across the subkha toward the shore, the ruined tower - certainly a modern addition - marked the southwestern corner ... ahead of me the wall ended at a coastal tower, but like the wall, only a course or so high ... and beyond the strait lay the mud brick houses and yellow fort of the present villages." (Bibby, p. 323).

Bibby details the construction of the wall and deduces that "the wall was built of a coral like conglomerate called farush," which to Bibby "felt wrong because of the fluctuating level of sea water." He stated; "If anywhere there was a subkha today there should have been water even as recently as 2000 years ago. If that were true then this wall (at Uqair) could not be as old as the wall at Thaj." (Bibby, p. 324). (The walls of Thaj, another ruined city near Qatif, were built during the same period as Gerrha - the Greek period.) But as Bibby concludes ... "in the cities of the Greek period on Bahrain and the temple of towns of the Seleucid on Failaka (an island off the coast of Kuwait once thought to be a Hellenistic foundry of coins) farush was never used. The walls there were made of quarried limestone." (Bibby, p. 324.)

Northwest of Uqair, referred to as the salt mine site, or Gerrha, are the extensive remains of irrigation works and fields visible on aerial photographs of the area, some of which may be dated to the Hellenistic period. (Potts, p. 56-57). Bibby went to these irrigation channels to dig and search for artifacts in 1968. He excavated what he labeled the "subkha fort and produced several shards comparable to types known from Thaj and Hellenistic Bahrain. Identical results were obtained in a sounding carried out in a different structure. This was the so called inland fort. It measured 150 ft. (49 m) by 156 ft. (52 m) and was constructed by large stone ashlars. The contention has sometimes been made that this was the site of ancient Gerrha, but there is no evidence to support this. (Potts, p. 56-57). The site of the fort is not the same as the irrigation channels.