An outline, era by era

Harappa, Mohenjo-daro; planned cities; undeciphered script

Bronze Age · ~3300 – ~1200 BCE

The Indus Valley Civilization, also called the Harappan civilization, flourished across what is now Pakistan and northwest India from about 3300 to 1300 BCE. Its mature phase, from about 2600 to 1900 BCE, saw cities such as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro on the Indus and its tributaries, with others like Dholavira, Lothal and Rakhigarhi spread over an area larger than Egypt or Mesopotamia. Harappa was first dug into by Alexander Cunningham in 1872 to 1873, and systematic excavation of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro began in the 1920s.

The cities are known for their planning. Streets ran on grids, buildings were made of mud brick and standardized baked brick, and many houses had private wells, bathrooms and covered drains. The people used uniform weights and carved stamp seals with short inscriptions in a script that has never been deciphered. Little is known of their rulers or beliefs, and no palaces or royal tombs have been clearly identified. After about 1900 BCE the cities declined and the script went out of use. The civilization matters as one of the first urban societies, and as a reminder of how much remains unknown.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. The Great Bath as a place of ritual purity

    Popular belief

    The legend

    At the heart of Mohenjo-daro lies the Great Bath, a large brick pool. It is said that priest-kings led the people in ritual washing there, much as Hindu worshippers bathe in sacred waters today, so the city was ruled by a priestly class.

    The rest is history

    The Great Bath is real. It is a watertight pool about 12 metres long, lined with fine brick and sealed with bitumen, standing on the citadel mound. Its purpose is not known. The ritual-bathing idea was suggested by early excavators such as John Marshall and Ernest Mackay, and is plausible but unproven. The idea of a priest-king rests largely on one small steatite bust found at Mohenjo-daro in 1927. No temple or royal building has been securely identified, and many scholars doubt that a single priestly elite ruled.

    Sources

    1. BookMarshall, John, ed. Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization. 3 vols. London: Arthur Probsthain, 1931.The first full excavation report, including the Great Bath.
    2. BookKenoyer, Jonathan Mark. Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
    3. BookPossehl, Gregory L. The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002.

  2. The massacre at Mohenjo-daro

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Mohenjo-daro is said to have been destroyed by invading Aryan warriors who swept in on horse-drawn chariots. Skeletons lie scattered in the streets where the inhabitants were cut down, and the Rigveda is said to recall the storming of the forts of the enemies of Indra.

    The rest is history

    This was proposed in the 1940s and 1950s, most famously by Mortimer Wheeler, who linked skeletons at Mohenjo-daro to the Rigveda's fort-destroying god Indra. Wheeler and others also read terms such as dasa and dasyu in the hymns as names for the earlier inhabitants, an interpretation that is contested and has been criticised as projecting later ideas of race onto the texts. Later study found that the remains came from different periods, showed no clear signs of a battle, and were not a single massacre. There is no layer of burning or conquest across the cities. Most scholars now point to gradual change, including shifting rivers, weakening monsoons and a move of population toward the east and south, as causes of urban decline after about 1900 BCE.

    Sources

    1. BookWheeler, Mortimer. The Indus Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953.
    2. BookPossehl, Gregory L. The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002.Reviews the invasion theory and the evidence against it.

  3. The script is a lost language that no one can read

    Popular belief

    The legend

    The Indus seals are said to hold the secret history of a vanished people, and the script is a code waiting for one brilliant mind to crack. Every few years someone announces that it has finally been deciphered.

    The rest is history

    The script remains undeciphered. About 4,000 inscribed objects are known, mostly seals and tablets, and the average text is only about five signs long, with the longest around 26. There are roughly 400 signs, and no long text or bilingual inscription like the Rosetta Stone. The underlying language is unknown, and proposals linking it to Dravidian, Indo-Aryan or other families remain unproven. Some, such as Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat and Michael Witzel, have argued it may not encode language at all, though this is disputed. Asko Parpola's Deciphering the Indus Script (1994) surveys the many proposed readings, and none has won general acceptance.

    Sources

    1. BookParpola, Asko. Deciphering the Indus Script. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
    2. BookPossehl, Gregory L. Indus Age: The Writing System. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

  4. Meluhha, the distant land of the Indus

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Mesopotamian texts speak of Meluhha, a distant land in the east whose ships bring carnelian, lapis lazuli, ivory and timber to Akkad. It is often said that Meluhha was the Indus Civilization, and that its merchants even lived in Mesopotamia.

    The rest is history

    Many scholars identify Meluhha with the Indus Civilization. Akkadian inscriptions from Sargon's time mention ships from Meluhha, Dilmun and Magan at Agade's quay. Indus-style seals, carnelian beads and weights have been found at Ur, Kish and other Mesopotamian sites, and some Mesopotamian objects reached Indus towns. A cylinder seal from the Akkadian period belonged to a man described as a Meluhhan interpreter, suggesting the languages differed. The port structure at Lothal, once called a dock, is now debated. The identification is widely accepted, though not certain in every detail.

    Sources

    1. BookPossehl, Gregory L. The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002.
    2. BookRatnagar, Shereen. Encounters: The Westerly Trade of the Harappa Civilization. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981.
    3. BookFrayne, Douglas R. Sargonic and Gutian Periods (2334-2113 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Early Periods 2. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.Inscriptions of Sargon's dynasty that mention Meluhha.

  5. Mohenjo-daro as the Mound of the Dead

    Popular belief

    The legend

    The name Mohenjo-daro is widely said to mean Mound of the Dead, and many people imagine from this that the city was struck by a sudden catastrophe in which its inhabitants all died at once.

    The rest is history

    The name is Sindhi and is usually translated as Mound of the Dead. It is a modern place-name, and the ancient name of the city is unknown. The name does not record any tradition of a mass death, and the archaeology does not support one. The city was inhabited for centuries and was abandoned gradually after about 1900 BCE. The site was identified as a major prehistoric city in the early 1920s, after R. D. Banerji's work on the mound, which was topped by a Buddhist stupa of the Kushan period. Harappa had suffered earlier damage in the 1850s, when railway builders took its ancient bricks as ballast.

    Sources

    1. BookMarshall, John, ed. Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization. 3 vols. London: Arthur Probsthain, 1931.
    2. BookLahiri, Nayanjot. Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization Was Discovered. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005.Account of the discovery of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro.
    3. BookPossehl, Gregory L. The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002.

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