Inscription Mesopotamia and harappan
Answers
Jane McIntosh
The trade relationship during the later 3rd millennium was a direct one: ships from Meluhha (the Indus) docked in Mesopotamian ports; some Meluhhans settled in Sumer; and there is a seal belonging to a Mesopotamian whose job it was to act as an interpreter of the Meluhhan language. On the other hand, there is nothing to suggest that people from Mesopotamia reached the Indus, so it is clear that the Harappans conducted the trade between the two civilizations. Mesopotamian ships sailed the length of the Gulf, as far as the western coast of Magan (Oman peninsula), trading directly with Magan and with Dilmun (Bahrain); ships from Magan and Dilmun also docked in Mesopotamian ports. Trade also took place across the Gulf, between Elam and the city-states on the Iranian plateau in the east and Mesopotamia, Dilmun and Magan in the north and west.
Dilmun operated as a middleman between Mesopotamia and the Indus in some of this trade, and after the Ur III state collapsed its role in this grew: in the early 2nd millennium BC both Harappan and Mesopotamian ships sailed only to Bahrain, which acted as an entrepot between them. This would be the place one might expect to find a bilingual, but it hasn't happened yet: there are local seals with Harappan inscriptions, but the local seals are otherwise uninscribed. It seems probable that the Harappans used perishable materials for their records, and presumably this would have applied to records of their transactions in Dilmun too. A cuneiform tablet with a Harappan bilingual text might turn up here but I think it unlikely.
Richard Meadow
There is archaeological evidence for maritime relations between the Harappans and Arabia and some textual and iconographic evidence that Mesopotamians knew about the Harappan world (Meluhha) and for at least a few Indus people in Mesopotamia – including what has been identified as an Indus translator. There is a bit of Indus-like material in eastern Iran and southern Central Asia, but contact across Iran may have been more indirect while that through maritime means more direct, although the evidence for such a scenario is not particularly rich.
Asko Parpola
In the beginning of the Mature Harappan period, around 2400 BCE, the Harappans sailed all the way to Mesopotamia, but soon thereafter, the Dilmun culture of the Gulf seems to have become a mediator of this sea trade. In Early Harappan times, the trade was overland, with the Proto-Elamite people as the partners/mediators. There is a chance that a cuneiform tablet is found, which has the impression of an Indus seal and which mentions in cuneiform the name of the Indus seal owner (cf. my book Deciphering the Indus script, 1994, p. 273-274, quoting a parallel with the impression of a Dilmun seal).