Tigris, 1977-1978
The art of the ancient Egyptians contains representations of sailors in papyrus boats. In 1968 Thor Heyerdahl toured the pharaoh’s tombs in the Valley of the Kings at Luxor and experienced this art firsthand. He subsequently became increasingly fixated on another conundrum: Did the early civilizations that emerged in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and Egypt have contact with each other via the nearby seas?
The Sumerians, in ancient Mesopotamia, had both boats and sails.
Scholars agreed that the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia had boats with sails but believed their seafaring had been limited to the rivers and coastal waterways. Contrary, Heyerdahl believed that in ancient times, primitive vessels had also been used to sail the open seas, as he had already proved possible by his Kon-Tiki, Ra and Ra II expeditions. Heyerdahl was becoming ever more convinced that the world’s oceans were not barriers to contact between ancient civilizations, but highways facilitating contact.
In 1976, Heyerdahl was in Iraq – former Mesopotamia – in order to study the Ma‘dān or Marsh Arab reed boat. He was told that buoyancy is best if the reed is harvested in the month of August.
Heyerdahl followed this recommendation when, in 1977, he led construction of his largest reed vessel – at 18 meters long – on a site where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers conjoin in the former Mesopotamia. The boat was christened the Tigris.
This time too, Heyerdahl got to sail under the UN flag. He had an international crew of 11 men with him.
including three of his partners from the two Ra expeditions: Norman Baker (USA), Yuri A. Senkevich (Russia) and Carlo Mauri (Italy). The rest of the crew of Tigris: Rashad Salim (Iraq), Asbjørn Damhus (Denmark), Hans Peter Bøhn (Norway), Germán Carrasco (Mexico), Norris Brock (USA), Detlef Soitzek (Germany) and Toru Suzuki (Japan).
The Tigris began its journey from the river Shatt al-Arab in Iraq and continued down the Persian Gulf and out into the Arabian Sea. Unlike the Kon-Tiki and the Ra boats which were propelled by winds and currents, the Tigris was to be sailed on a predetermined course, however she quickly proved more difficult to navigate than anticipated.
Nevertheless, the vessel managed to reach the Indus Valley in what is today Pakistan as well as Djibouti in the Horn of Africa.
Heyerdahl was tempted to sail the Tigris into the Red Sea, but due to actions of war, he decided that Djibouti would be the journey’s end. They had voyaged a total of 6800 kilometers in 143 days.
Heyerdahl had once again proven the seaworthiness of the oceangoing reed vessels, enabling the civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley to have frequent contact.
As a protest against war and violence, Heyerdahl decided that the Tigris should be burned.
On 3 April 1978 the Tigris was engulfed in flames outside the port at Djibouti.
The crew signed a letter to the UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim with a call to citizens of all industrialized nations:
“We are all complicit unless we demand from those responsible for decisions made on our behalf that modern weaponry must no longer be made available to any peoples whose forefathers denounced simple swords and hatchets.”
In 1979 a book on the Tigris expedition was first published in Norwegian.
An english edition was published in 1984, with the title The Tigris Expedition : In Search of Our Beginnings.