Twin Cities of the Indus Valley
Today when we think of Pakistan the image that comes to mind is of a deeply troubled state struggling to exist.
But 4,500 years ago, an ancient civilization flourished there. It had more than 1,000 settlements scattered over a million square kilometres. Its people built the great cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, but underwent a transformation after climate change hit around 2,100 B.C.
In many ways it’s an enigmatic civilization. They had a script that we cannot decipher. We have a poor understanding of how its religion worked, and we know virtually nothing about its politics and social organization. Today we call it the Indus Valley or Harappan Civilization.
Major Discovery
In 1829, Charles Masson, a deserter from the British Army of Bengal, discovered the city of Harappa and wrote about it in his book, Narratives of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan and the Panjab. He thought it was the legendary city of Sangala. However, it wasn’t until 1920-1921, when Sir John Marshall, Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, sent archaeologist Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni to excavate the ruined city.
Daya Ram Sahni found a number of seals, marked with Harappan symbols. But Marshall did not realize what he was dealing with until 1921. In that year a dig by Rakal Das Banerji at Mohenjo-daro, 650 km from Harappa, turned up the same symbols. Marshall then realized that the two sites were part of a new, very ancient, civilization. From that point on the pace of investigation accelerated with both Harappa and Mohenjo-daro being excavated throughout 1923-1924.
Growing Civilization
As Professor Gregory Possehl documents in his paper, The Transformation of the Indus Civilization, ever since 7,000 B.C., the number of sites in the Indus River Valley, and the total area settled, had grown exponentially. The settlements we call “Harappan” extend from the area where the Ganges River forms in Northwest India, to the Iran-Pakistan border. At its northern extremity there was a remote colony called Shortughai in the Oxus River Valley in Afghanistan. In the period 7,000-5,000 B.C. there was 20 sites occupying just over 50 hectares of land. In 4,300-3,800 B.C., there were 84 settlements occupying nearly 300 hectares of land. In the period just before Mohenjo-daro and Harappa flourished (3,200 – 2,600 B.C.) there were 477 settlements occupying about 2,200 hectares of land.
By the Mature Harappan phase (2,500-2,000 B.C.), the time when the two cities thrived, there were over 1,000 settlements occupying more than 7,000 hectares of land: the Indus River Valley area had grown into a large and complex civilization.
Twin Peaks
During 2,500-2,000 B.C., the sites of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa flourished as ancient metropolises. Mohenjo-daro was the larger of the two, with a population of roughly 35,000 people compared to Harappa's 30,000, and seems to be something of an upgrade on the earlier city.
Harappa, just south of modern day Lahore, was built mainly out of mud and mud brick, and there is no evidence of any serious grid planning being done. It was surrounded by a wall with a gateway on its west side. The northern end of the settlement has what is believed to be a series of granaries used for the storing and processing of barley and wheat, the foodstuffs most used in Harappa. The granaries are massive, taking up nearly 9,000 square feet of space, and are actually made of baked or un-baked bricks. The likeliest reason they were not made of mud materials is that the grain processing activities required a more durable floor. Some scholars have questioned whether these were granaries at all.
Right beside the granaries there is an area that has been identified as a “workers quarters” by some archaeologists. It is believed that they could have been used as simple living quarters for temporary workers during harvest time. It’s likely that there were also some sort of administrative buildings in Harappa however archaeologists so far have either not found or not identified them.
Clean Living
Mohenjo-daro, the other major city, is located on the west bank of the Indus River, about 200 km north of the ocean. As Professor Possehl writes in his book, The Indus Civilization, even today, 4,000 years after abandonment, the place has a unique sort of magic to it:
“One of the most remarkable features of the Indus Civilization is the baked-brick architecture of Mohenjo-daro, with splendidly preserved buildings lining its streets and lanes. This is the largest Bronze Age city in the world where one can walk down streets well defined by the high walls of homes and other buildings, climb the stairways used in antiquity, peer down ancient wells, and stand in bathing rooms used over 4,000 years ago,” he says. “One feels a sense of being in a living community; Mohenjo-daro is an extraordinary, unique place.”
Mohenjo-daro is the only Harappan settlement constructed mainly of baked brick. It was built on a floodplain and as such the buildings were built slightly elevated on platforms or on the remains of older buildings. The buildings seem adhere to some kind of grid system, but it is hardly precise, and many streets stop abruptly as dead ends.
Town planners they may not have been, but, like the Romans, they excelled in the area of hygiene, and even had their own system of drainage pipes. Constructed of baked brick and usually running underground, these pipes allowed wastewater to flow out from the houseseither onto the street or into a cesspit or pot.
The 'Great Bath', a public bathing facility that was possibly used for religious purposes, is one of the most impressive buildings in the city. It was 12 by 7 seven meters, with a depth of 2.4 metres at the deep end. Bathing platforms were also common in individual houses at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. They were square or rectilinear, around two meters on each side, with a drain that would let bathwater out onto the street.
A number of notable artefacts have also been found in the city including the dancing girl of Mohenjo-daro and the so-called 'priest king' figurine.
Keeping it Simple
Despite the size of the cities it appears that the elite avoided the ostentatious burials seen in Egypt and Mesopotamia. As scholar Paul Rissman writes, people were buried in quite simple process, with nothing more than pottery (the record being 72 pots in one tomb) and in some cases jewellery. Gold and copper artefacts were rarely buried with individuals - in fact Rissman says that “no grave contains more than a single copper artefact,” and only five graves have been found that contain any gold. However, in one instance a person was buried with a dog.
It wasn’t that there were no signs of social differentiation. Some graves contain more goods than others. It is just that there are no examples that compare to the Royal Graves of Ur or of the pharaohs in Egypt. This has led scholars to speculate that Harappa was an egalitarian society, devoid of rich elites. The rulers might have been chiefs who ruled stretches of Harappan territory in a manner similar to how a Polynesian chief ruled over an island.
It’s a difficult argument to prove or disprove. No administrative complexes or palaces have been positively identified. But as scholars have pointed out, this could simply be because those buildings didn’t survive until the present day or we have been unable to pick them out from the buildings we already know of.
The Storm God Controversy
The religious beliefs of the Indus Valley remain something of a mystery. Terracotta female figurines and tablets found have led some scholars to believe that they worshipped a sort of great mother goddess. Some of these figurines were clearly toys but others may have been votive offerings or cult images.
More controversial is John Marshall’s idea that the Indus people also worshipped an early version of the Vedic god Rudra, a storm god who is considered by Hindus to be an earlier representation of the god Shiva. He based this interpretation on a seal found in a Mohenjo-Daro that shows a man in a yogic position and wearing what appears to be a headdress. Above him are five Indus symbols.
Many scholars have strongly disputed Marshall’s assertion that this seal represents Rudra.
Lost Language, or Simple Symbols?
In the same time period as the cities existed (2,500-2,000 B.C.) a written script developed in the Indus Valley which we still cannot decipher today. It contains more than 400 known symbols, which have been found inscribed on
many surfaces including, seals, copper plates, incised shells, pottery fragments, weapons and even rocks, although usually in short examples of around 5 symbols.
The difficulty of decoding the script has led some scholars to question whether it is a script at all or whether they are just symbols – not meant to convey spoken language. One team of American scholars points out that the longest example of Indus Script is 17 symbols, with most examples having less than 10. No script in the world, including Egyptian hieroglyphics and Mesopotamian cuneiform, is so uniformly brief. They argue that the “script” is in fact symbols unrelated to spoken language, making a comparison to the Vinca Symbols used in Southeastern Europe (6,000-4,000 B.C.). However, other scholars have posited the idea that the people of the Indus Valley wrote their longer writings on perishable items such as wood or cotton cloth, that have long since decayed.
Eco Meltdown?
Between 2,100 and 2,000 B.C., climate change hit the Indus Valley hard. Scientists have found that the river flow fell and the intensity of the winter rains increased. Archaeologists have noted that during this time Harappa's size was halved (although settlements increased slightly), and Mohenjo-daro was abondoned altogether.
As the two great cities emptied, and towns became smaller but more numerous, the Indus script vanished and society became more agrarian, with no major urban centres. In the past scholars have referred to this as the “fall” of the Harappan civilization – although today many think of it as a transformation.
Images by Ameer Hamza, Agha Waseem, and Pasupati K Pillai. All rights reserved.
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Comments
really interesting piece! amazing what kinda of places from so long ago can still be randomly discovered!
really itis nice
hi, its anoushka here. its a good site as we can gather information on harappan civilization
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