Continued from last week
As the excavations proceeded within an area of 3x2m and half meter in depth, 165 bronze arrowheads, four bronze serpents, three bronze fish hooks, four bronze awls, two bronze needles, three miniature bronze daggers, and one bead made of semi-precious stone were found.
As the excavations continued in different directions of the mound, more objects made of different materials were unearthed. The majority of them seemed to be associated with serpent motifs or serpents made of bronze or pottery.
These findings left no doubt that this specific area was a temple dedicated for worshipping serpents nearly three thousand years ago.
The excavations also revealed more antiquities associated with serpents and objects for daily use. Chief among them were two complete small spouted vessels decorated with serpents motives, pottery lids with handles or knobs in the form of serpents, different sorts of stone beads, a pendent in a form of a camel rider, fragments and large pottery sherds belonging to storage jars.
In addition to the above mentioned materials, broken stone vessels decorated with symbol of serpents, small bronze knives, fish hooks, incense burners, iron arrowheads and bronze heads were also found.
In conclusion, within that small area nearly one thousand objects were unearthed. All of them seem to be suitable for displaying at any international museum.
The news of the discoveries spread all over the UAE and the Gulf countries through media. Thereafter visitors of all kinds and blunders used to pay us visits through the day.
Headlines like “The people of the (UAE) used to worship (Snakes) Three Thousand Years Ago” started to appear in local newspapers. Consequently, a number of people who read these reports resented the idea. In other words, they rejected the reality of the discovery.
Luckily after conducting more excavations in different parts of the UAE and the Gulf, more temples and things associated with materials discovered at the temple found at Al qusais were found everywhere in the Gulf. Due to these discoveries people slowly but surely began to accept the reality. In this respect, one might say people worshiped the might of a creature, but not the creature itself to avoid the unpredictably of its might.
After closing the excavations and comprehensive documentations of all the materials found dring these excavations I returned back to Cambridge University for writing my PhD dissertation. The serpent skulls found during the excavations were handed over to the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology for analysis. After their analysis majority of them appeared to be of cobras.
In January, 1981, I submitted my dissertation to the Board of Graduate Students. Few days later I decided to return back to UAE to do more excavations at Jumarah site, which attributed to early Islamic periods.
When I arrived in Dubai, I decided to visit the Mound of Serpents, the two settlements and other sites were we worked. To my great surprise, I found all of those sites turned into buildings, streets and roundabouts...
What a day and what a surprise….
The Peninsula
