Word: bahrein
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...Persian Gulf, and they do it on the simple theory that their nomadic ancestors once roamed the ground in question. Backward Yemen claims all of the Aden Protectorate, whose border is disputed in turn by Saudi Arabia, which has claims on Muscat and Oman as well. Iran claims Bahrein, and Iraq's rulers have always coveted the desert sheikdom of Kuwait, currently the richest country per acre and per capita in the Middle East. But nobody ever took the claim seriously until General Abdul Karim Kassem, "sole leader" of Iraq, announced during the course of a three-hour tirade...
...When the big order finally came. Powers picked up a sack of sandwiches from his wife and flew southeast with Colonel Shelton to Pakistan, stopping once to refuel along the way. ("I do not remember the name of the airfield. I think it could have been Bahrein.") His briefing from Shelton was short-an hour and a half in which "I barely had time to study my maps." Powers claimed no knowledge of two unmarked survivor maps and the plea in 14 languages ("I need food and shelter; you will be rewarded") that the Russians claimed to have found...
Except for such dim traces, Dilmun vanished centuries ago. But just after World War II, a scholarly young Englishman, Geoffrey Bibby, visited Bahrein on oil business, and was fascinated by 100,000 burial mounds on the island's north end. Under them were T-shaped stone chambers with the remains of a single person in each. Before he could investigate further, Bibby left Bahrein. Later he married a Danish girl, settled in Denmark, and worked his way up to the post of director of oriental antiquities in Aarhus University's prehistoric museum...
...Bibby did not forget Bahrein. In 1953 he persuaded his director, Dr. Peter Glob, to lead an expedition there, with himself as second in command. During the first season they attacked the fascinating mounds. The burial chambers had been robbed, but the Danes still found gold and ivory ornaments. Then they turned to searching for the city where the dead in the graves had lived...
...north end of Bahrein Island is a ruined Portuguese fort and near it a mound 40 ft. high, 2,400 ft. long and 1,200 ft. wide. Dr. Glob (who, says Bibby, has "a fine eye for country") picked it out, hired native laborers to cut a trench into it. Done properly, this is slow work: for years the archaeologists worked on the mound. Piled in layers were vertical walls and stamped clay floors all mixed with bits of pottery and copper...