Published ARASI 1924-25, Plate XXVI (d). Title: ‘Harappa: Mound A Large sized Ring of Polished Stone’
Despite the object label of Pl. XXVI d, which notes the provenance as Harappa, this plate is documented in ARASI 1924-25 as a find at Mohenjodaro, and compared by John Marshall to the ‘mace-heads’ of Sumer, ‘undulating shape and ponderous in size’ (p. 61).
John Marshall wrote:
“Though much smaller than Harappa, an excavator could hardly hope to find a more promising site than that of Mohenjo-daro. It consists of about a square mile of rolling mounds rising some 40 feet, at their highest, above the dead level of the surrounding plains. Wherever trenches have been sunk in these mounds, the remains have been disclosed immediately below the surface of a finely built city of the Chalcolithic period (3rd millennium B. C.) and beneath this city of layer after layer of earlier structures erected successively on the ruins of their predecessors. The buildings hitherto exposed in the uppermost stratum belong to two classes: temples and private houses both constructed of kiln-burnt and sun-dried brick, the latter being employed mainly for the foundations of terraces and courtyards. The temples stand on elevated ground and are distinguished by the relative smallness of their chambers and the exceptional thickness of their walls—a feature which suggests that they were several storeys in height. To a temple also doubtless belongs the spacious courtyard with chapels or other apartments on its four sides. Whether the worship performed in these temples was iconic or aniconic, has yet to be determined. The only objects found in association with them and intended apparently for cult worship are of two kinds, namely “ring stones” Plate (XXVI (d)) and “chessmen.” The former have been compared with the “maceheads” of Sumer but their undulating shape and the ponderous size of many of them (they require 4 or 5 men to lift) make it very doubtful if they were intended to represent mace-heads. The latter are sometimes of faience, sometimes of stone or other substances.”
- John Marshall, ‘The Prehistoric Civilization of the Indus’, in ARASI 1924-25, p. 61.