In the paper we read: „The scene can be coherently read from the bottom to the top. In the foreground, we see a long-haired personage in kneeling position who grabs from the throat two massive humped bulls facing each other in a heraldic position. Below the neck of the animals runs a strip simiilar to a rope…The bulls (probably sky creatures) emanate heavy water flows, causing a major flood. At the end, the first mountain (or mountains) emerges from the flooded world, as water retires. Then another long-haired personage, accompanied by two heavenly signs (moon and star), puts in the sky an imposing rainbow, and signals that the flood is finished. Beyond the rainbow, a renovated world has finally emerged from the deadly waters.“
So the paper interprets the scene from the vase as „a representation of a destructive flood, ending when a divinity lifts a rainbow in the sky at which point the first mountain emerges from the flood waters“. And it then goes on to compare these images with Old Babylonian and later cuneiform versions of flood myths.
I would have to strongly disagree with this interpretation.
I don’t think that the scene depicts a destructive flood and certainly not „The Flood“. Instead it depicts the annual flood, the snowmelt flood, which was the main source of water, and life, for the people of the Jiroft culture.
The rivers in the mountain areas of Iran, including the Halil river, around which the Jiroft culture was based, are fed by rainfall during the winter, but mostly by snowmelt during spring and summer. The snowmelt starts in late Feb early Mar, and peaks in late Apr, early May.
Pic: the flow of Iranian rivers, which have a spike between Mar and Aug with peak in late Apr early May…
