Stamped Tokens with Cuneiform Inscriptions from Bahrain: New Light on Kingship and the Gods in Early 2nd Millennium BC Dilmun

In this paper, we publish three exceptional tokens from Bahrain bearing impressions of two seals with cuneiform legends. In addition to expanding the small corpus of Early Dilmun cuneiform texts, these objects raise questions concerning their function and use. Both seals belonged to a certain Yaglī-’el, who styled himself “the servant of the (goddess) Panipa.” His name and epithet recall those of the namesake king of Dilmun, who called himself “the servant of (the god) Inzak of Agaš.” This raises a key question: do these references concern two individuals named Yaglī-’el, or the same person? If the latter, what is the significance of this dual designation? More broadly, what role did the obscure goddess Panipa play in Dilmunite kingship? To address these questions, we contextualize these finds and examine their connections with contemporary Dilmunite evidence from Bahrain and Failaka. The results shed new light on religion and royal ideology in Dilmun during the Middle Bronze Age.