Museums

Visits to ancient Indus objects in museums on three continents.

At the National Museum, Delhi

On a recent visit to Delhi, I found myself free for two hours and made my way in a rickshaw from Jama Masjid to the National Museum. It was a Sunday afternoon. After paying the entrance fee and breathlessly arriving at the Harappan Civilisation doorway, I found that it was closed for renovations! Momentarily dispirited, it turned out that there was another entrance and much of the gallery was still open – disaster averted.

Four Seals Up Close

A visit to the National Museum of Pakistan in Karachi gave me the opportunity to take close shots of four seals from Mohenjo-daro. They show both the exquisite workmanship of Indus craftsmen and the merciless wear, in different degrees, of four thousand years of history.

The Musee Guimet Indus and Amri Collection in Paris

In the summer of 2019, one of the warmest ever in Paris, I managed to slip one afternoon into the Musee Guimet, and click away on my iPhone at objects usually not seen in colour. This French national museum which contains one of the best collections of Asian Art in the world (as one collector of Indian art, Gursharan Sidhu once put it, the French taste in objects from India is second to none).

Ram @ Guimet

"The abundance of animal figurines at the major [Indus] urban centers suggests that they were commonly used in household and public rituals," writes Mark Kenoyer (Ancient Cities, p. 118). "All major domestic and wild animals are represented by terracotta figurines, but only a few animals were made in stone or faience. Two fragmentary stone sculptures of a seated ram were recovered from excavations at Mohenjo-daro," he continues; one was a faience amulet with a hole drilled through it, and there was also a larger sandstone of a seated ram [Image 3]. Ernest Mackay too noted how "model animals

Mundigak at the Guimet, Paris

A brand new slide show has just been opened featuring objects from Mundigak, a little-known Bronze Age [c. 4000-2400 BCE] set of mounds in southern Afghanistan. The objects are now at the Guimet, the French National Museum of Asian Art in Paris. Their similarity to objects and motifs in the ancient Indus Valley is remarkable. Examples include the pipal leaf, a rat trap, the humped bull, a bird whistle and classic goblets the Mundigak excavators called "brandy balloons." There is even a stone sculpture which resembles the "priest-king." This 33 slide section Mundigak @ the Guimet is accompanied

Chanhu-daro in Boston

The Museum of Fine Arts (MoFA) in Boston, USA has the largest collection of Indus artifacts outside India and Pakistan. MoFA collaborated with the American School of Indic and Iranian Studies in 1935-36 to excavate Chanhu-daro in Sindh, Pakistan, then British India. This mysterious, small and sophisticated craft manufacturing town about 80 miles south of Mohenjo-daro was discovered by N. G. Majumdar in 1931. He and the leader of the Chanhu-daro excavations Ernest J.H.

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