The ancient history of Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean is widely recognised, but that of the Arabian peninsula is much less so, yet it played an important role in the life of those civilisations. Dilmun, situated in what is now Bahrain, Kuwait and parts of Saudi Arabia, used its position on the Persian Gulf to control and profit from the important trade route between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley civilisation, and grew rich on the proceeds. It emerged around 3200 BCE, and would last until the early first millennium BCE, but by 1700 BCE it had started to decline. Magan was to be found where today we find Oman and the UAE, so again was in a good position to benefit from the trade routes along the Persian Gulf. It was famed for its maritime expertise, and also for its metalworking. Aratta appears in several places in Sumerian literature, but most now believe that it was mythical, although some have attempted to locate it in various places such as modern Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Jiroft is real, and still exists as a county in southern Iran, but the ancient civilisation was only discovered in the modern era.
As usual, the Linear-A box tells us what each figure in this set is supposed to be, so we will start by identifying the figures you see above. The first row are described as being from Aratta/Jiroft, with the last man also described as a priest or leader. The second row shows the figures from Dilmun, and the last holds those labelled as from Magan.
These civilisations all had a written language, but sadly no histories have come down to us, so almost nothing is known of their story during the period covered by this set. Equally, images of the people are extremely rare, so it is not possible to know how they appeared, nor how they might have waged war. Consequently, this set is entirely speculative, but we can make some guesses. In general, such peoples wore a simple wardrobe to help stay cool, though naturally clothing also denoted social status and authority, just as it does today. Everyday dress would have been either a long robe, or a kilt, probably covering much of the legs. What images do exist of these people show them with long kilts, but when hard physical exercise was required, such as engaging in a battle, a shorter kilt makes more sense, and most of these figures are dressed in this way. All are barefoot, and most are also bareheaded, although there are some headdresses here. The priest figure has a long robe and some sort of hat, which seems perfectly plausible for a religious official, but the rest look to be soldiers, and so are dressed accordingly. The archer has some sort of animal skin partly draped over one shoulder, which looks odd, and the swordsman has a strange kind of harness on his bare chest which seems to serve no purpose (but is the kind of thing film costume designers like to create), so there are elements here which are hard to understand, but with no way of knowing if any of this is accurate, all we can say is nothing here can be proved to be incorrect.
Apart from the priest, all the men are armed, and so are either soldiers or peasants raised for a fight. The three fighters in the top row, and all three in the bottom row, look to be in battle poses, holding a variety of weapons and, in some cases, a shield too. All are nice and lively, and we really liked all of them, noting as usual the benefit obtained by these being 3D printed, so no assembly required, yet very natural postures. The three in the middle row are much more sedate, so while all are armed, they do not seem to be in combat at the moment. This of course is also perfectly acceptable, and again the poses are fine and well done.
As can be seen, these printed figures look great, and we thought both the musculature of the bodies and the simple clothing was perfectly done. Probably due to the production process, a couple of areas are rather thick, specifically the bowstring, and also the sling, which is very wide and holds a really massive stone for a slingshot. The shield in the bottom row has been textured to resemble wicker, but the others look to be wooden. These have been given a bar handle with an indentation to allow the hand to grip, but there is no boss or thickening on the face of the shield, which would mean this was a weak point, so we were not convinced this would be done. Also, we noticed some areas of ‘fraying’ on some figures – areas where extra bits of plastic are coming off of the surface – some are clearly visible in our images, such as the hem of the kilt of the middle man in the second row. Why this would happen we do not know, and it would be fairly easy to trim off, but otherwise, with no flash or hidden areas, these are great sculpts. For some reason there is a considerable variance in the height of these figures, with the tallest being 26 mm tall, which at 1.87 metres is hugely unlikely for such peoples of the time.
It is always great to see new subjects being modelled, although when an ancient subject is chosen, there is often a lack of evidence on which to base the design. The early history of the Arabian peninsula is particularly poorly documented, so while no one can prove these figures are correct, they cannot prove they are wrong either, so we have not made any estimation of accuracy. That apart, the sculpting is lovely, and the poses both natural and interesting, so in those important departments this set scores perfectly. The lack of knowledge of what conflicts these people may have fought will limit the appeal of this set for some, but as models these are attractive and interesting pieces, though Linear-A need to take more care with the scale of their figures, particularly for the ancient periods.