Ancient Indus Civilization Blog

Few things better represent the power of ancient Indus cities in their time - much like subways and digital switches do modern cities - than brick drains. Four drains that could from Harappa and Mohenjo-daro show that the volume of water that flowed through these structures must have been like nothing seen before by ancient wayfarers. John Marshall writes: "A remarkable feature of the city of Mohenjo-daro is the very elaborate drainage system that exists even in the poorest quarters of the city. Every street and lane had one or two water-channels with brick or stone covers that could easi… >

Ramprasad Chanda, was "one of the best archaeologists that the Survey [of India] had trained under their scholarship scheme," and organizer of one of the first Indus exhibitions at the Indian Museum in Kolkata in 1924. >

There are two crocodilians found in the Indus river system: One is the mugger crocodile (Crocodylus palustris) also known as 'magar much', and the other is the gharial (Gavialis gangeticus). >

If we may fantasize about where ancient Indus archaeology could go online, one need not look farther than the City of Ur project. >

Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the excavator of the wall shown here, wrote that ". . . . both Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were dominated by am embattled acropolis or citadel, occupying a marginal block and built up with mud and mud-brick to a height of forty or fifty feet above the featureless lain with a revetment of backed brick. Upon this acropolis were ritual buildings and places of assembly. . .. From its acropolis one may suppose that each city was regarded by rulers who may on general probability had had priestly attributes but, as their well ordered towns and evolved dwellings imply, were essenti… >

Evidence for a tsunami hitting Dholavira at some point in the past was recently presented by scientists from the Indian National Institute of Oceanography (NIO). >

Quite a bit. Release weekend August 12-14 visits to the site went from about 2 thousand to 8 thousand per day. With the latest stats, Facebook demographics and poll question. >

"The earliest representation of a unicorn is found on seals and sealings from sites in the northern Indus region, dated to c. 2600 BCE," writes Jonathan Mark Kenoyer. "This motif is not reported from any other contemporaneous civilization and appears to be unique to the Indus region. The unicorn motif continued to be used throughout the greater Indus region for over 700 years and disappeared along with the Indus script and other diagnostic elements of Indus ideology and bureaucracy c. 1900 BCE (Kenoyer 1998; Possehl 2002). The unicorn motif found on seals and other forms of Indus iconography … >

The film Mohenjo Daro opens in the remote village of Amri, where Sarman (Hrithik Roshan) and his friends wrestle a large crocodile in a riverine gorge. Amri is shown as a remote farming village from where the villagers travel to Mohenjodaro as it offers a bigger market for their wares. In this post we shine a light on the archaeological evidence from the ancient site of Amri, which lies on the western bank of the Indus, about 160 km south of Mohenjodaro. The archaeological importance of Amri was demonstrated in 1929 by the excavations of N.G.Majumdar, who discovered there, for the first t… >

The seal that the publicity emblem (above) for the film Mohenjo Daro is actually based on (below) offers the opportunity to look at one of the most unresolved issues in ancient Indus studies: what was the so-called one-horned unicorn, and where did it come from? Drs. Parpola and Kenoyer have two different perspectives. Asko Parpola writes "One broken round Indus seal from Mohenjodaro, M-417 (below), shows animal foreparts (protomes) arranged in a whorl. The animals preserved include the tiger, the Indian bison, the 'unicorn' bull, and the "'unicorn' with two zebu-like "horns". The oc… >

A wide-ranging interview with one of our ancient Indus scholars, author and archaeologist Shereen Ratnagar. >

"On another seal, No. 510 [in Mackay], a buffalo appears to have attacked a number of people who are lying on the ground around him in every conceivable attitude," writes the excavator Ernest Mackay. "It is undoubtedly the wild rather than the domesticated species that is represented in on this seal, an altogether finer animal which stands 16 to 16.5 hands high at the shoulder. Unlike the domesticated variety, it is very truculent and when wounded is very savage; it was, therefore, a fitting vahana or vehicle for Yama, the god of death. "The little drama depicted on this seal may … >

Will the movie Mohenjo Daro open the floodgates of popular interest in the ancient Indus civilization? What do you think? Twenty-one years into running Harappa.com, the release of Mohenjo Daro is a landmark for interest in the subject (traffic in the last few days has doubled to five thousand people a day). >

1. A clay sealing from the Harappa Phase levels (2600-1900 BCE) that may have come from a large bundle of goods shipped to the site from a distant region. The clay does not appear to be the same type of clay as found near Harappa and has the impression of two different seals. 2. A clay sealing from the Harappa Phase levels (2600-1900 BCE) that may have come from a large bundle of goods shipped to the site from a distant region. The clay does not appear to be the same type of clay as found near Harappa and has the impression of two different seals. >

Mohenjo-daro has been called the "city of wells." Mark Kenoyer writes: "On the basis of the number of wells found in the excavated areas, Michael Jansen has calculated that the city may have had over 700 wells. In contrast Harappa may have had as few as 30, since only 8 wells have been discovered in the areas excavated so far. The difference between these two cities may be that Mohenjo-daro had less winter rain and may have been situated far away from the Indus river. At Harappa a large depression in the center of the city may represent a large tank or reservoir accessible to the inhabitants … >