Moenjodaro :a 5,OOO-year- oldlegacy

Khurshid Hasan Shaikhand Syed M. Ashfaque

Cover.A lane in the lower city of Moenjodaro.(Photo: Unesco/McKenzie.)

Published in 1981 by the United NationsEducational. Scientificand Cultural Organization7 place de Fontenoy, 75700 ParisPrinted by Arts Graphiques,Imprimeries Populaires. Geneva.

ISBN No.: 92-3-101881-7

Unesco 1981Printed in Switzerland

Preface

Moenjodaro in the province of Sind, Pakistan, is one of the main centresof the culture that flourished in the Indus Valley 5,000 years ago, extend-ing its influence over an enormous region not only in Pakistan but alsoin the adjoining areas. It provides the earliest instance of an exemplaryform of town planning and community organization and is an extraor-dinary example of a civilization based on an agrarian economy combinedwith an urban political structure.

Due to ravages of time. Moenjodaro is today in danger of totaldestruction. Apart from the threat of floods by the nearby River Indus.the buildings are being gradually eroded by the capillary rise of salinegroundwater. the level of which is considerably higher since the construc-tion of the Sukkur Dam, feeding a number of irrigation canals in thevicinity.

The Government of Pakistan, conscious of the need to preserve andprotect this heritage of mankind, has called upon Unesco, and in turnUnesco is mobilizing international support to aid in carrying out a pro-gramme of conservation.

This book. written by Khurshid Hasan Shaikh and Syed M. Ash-faque, both of the Department of Archaeology and Museums in Pakis-tan, is part of the Unesco campaign to safeguard Moenjodaro and todraw the attention of the international community to the dangersthreatening it

The authors are responsible for the choice and the presentation ofthe facts contained in this book and for the opinions expressed therein,which are not necessarily those of Unesco and do not commit the Organi-zation.

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Discovery . . . .Geographical extent .Roots of the Indus

Valley CivilizationEconomic prosperity and material culture . . . . . .Spiritual outlook and social life . . . . . . . . .Town planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Arts and crafts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Inscribed seals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Faience and steatite objects . . . . . . . . . . .Weights and measures . . . . . . . . . . . .Indus Valley script . . . . . . . . . . . . .Moenjodaro, signpost of a civilization . . . . . . .The excavated remains . . . . . . . . . . . .Architectural features . . . . . . . . . . . . .Causes of deterioration of Moenjodaro . . . . . . .Master plan for the preservationof Moenjodaro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Groundwater controlConservation of

structural remainsProtection against

the River IndusLandscaping and

plantation of salt-t o l e r a n t t r e e s

International symposium . . . . . . . . . . . .Appeal by the Director-General of Unesco . . . . . .

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Introduction

Moenjodaro is located about 400 kilometres north of Karachi onthe right bank of the Indus in the Province of Sind in Pakistan. Itcommands a high position in world archaeology, rivalling that ofancient Babylon, and possibly even exceeding it in its revelation ofsome aspects of an extinct society’s human ingenuity in organizingliving for collective welfare. For any intellectual visitor to Pakistan.Moenjodaro occupies one of the foremost places on his itinerary.while for students of the cultural history of mankind, a visit toMoenjodaro is a pilgrimage to the ancient ruins sanctified by thepassing millennia, and a homage to the devoted labours of thedistinguished excavators of the present century.

DiscoveryThe remarkable discovery of Moenjodaro in 1922 was at first noth-ing more than the result of routine explorations by the Archaeolog-ical Survey of British India, recording twin mounds. one large andthe other small, in the District of Larkana about 12 kilometres eastof the small town of Dokri. Of the two mounds surrounded by flatmarshy ground of the Indus flood plains. the one closer to the riverwas lower. standing 5 to 7 metres above the general plain level andoccupying an area approximately 450,000 square metres.

The smaller mound. measuring about 400 metres from northto south. and 200 metres from east to west. lay to the west of the

. Location map : larger mound and was separated from it by a strip of low groundMoenjodaro was built about 200 metres wide. Its small size of 80,000 square metres was.near a source ofwater-the water

however. compensated for by its higher relief, nearly 22 metreswhich now threatens from the level of the surrounding plain. On its top there was aits remains. Buddhist stupa of the Kushan period (second century AD).

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A profusion of baked bricks visible in the eroded gullies andoutcroppings of the buried walls on both the mounds. with surfacesprinkling of potsherds of apparently distinct character. and somepieces of steatite seals with strange inscriptions and animal figures.recalled to mind the observations of General Cunningham on theantiquity of culture at the site of Harappa. The site, which he firstvisited in 1856. lay nearly 800 kilometres away to the north-east inthe Sahiwal District of the Punjab. The similarity of cultural de-posits at the two places situated such a long distance apart raisedintriguing questions that necessitated thorough investigations.

The excavations at Moenjodaro started in 1922 gainedmomentum under the direction of Sir John Marshall, then Direc-tor General of the Archaeological Survey. culminating in the pub-lication of his report (in three volumes). Mohenjodaro and the In- A general view of dus Civilization. in 1931. The work was continued up to 1936 by Moenjodaro from

Ernest Mackay. who published his Further Excavations at Mo- the Great Bath.

henjo-Daro (in two volumes) in 1938. These publications arousedgreat excitement in the scholarly world. What had appeared in theearly days to be a localized extinct culture at Harappa was in factan extensive civilization spread over the whole expanse of al-luvium plains of the River lndus and its large tributaries.

A typological study of the cultural assemblage at Harappa,Moenjodaro and some other places. such as Chanhudaro in Sind,suggested an age from 2500 to 1500 B.C. This was a tentative esti-mate only of the mature phase of the civilization with no definiteclues to its time of origin. and yet 2500 years B.C. corresponded tothe Classical Sumerian period in Mesopotamia ! This was certainlya tremendous leap backwards in the antiquity of civilization in theSouth-Asian Subcontinent. which before the large-scale excava-tions at Moenjodaro was thought to have a confirmed limit only asearly as the third century B.C., or an unconfirmed limit going backat best to the twelfth century B.C.. as estimated by the scholars ofthe Vedic traditions.

Geographical extentThe last three decades of field researches in both Pakistan andIndia show that the mature phase of the Indus Valley Civilizationspread over a much larger area than was known in 1922. It seemsto have filled all the space shown as a splash of green on anyphysiographic map of the South-Asian Subcontinent, lying be-tween the Suleiman and Kirthar ranges right from the Arabian Building remains D

seaboard to the Himalayan foothills. This area. much larger thanshowing salt-affectedwalls.

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the combined size of Mesopotamian and Nilotic civilizations, maybe taken as a large ellipse with its major axis oriented along theRiver Indus and the sites of Harappa and Moenjodaro forming thetwo foci. Though the axial core of the area lies entirely withinPakistan. its eastern flanks extending across the border show twovery interesting Harappan settlements-that of Kalibangan ineastern Punjab. and that of Lothal in Surashtra. near the head ofthe Gulf of Cambay.

A notable feature in the geographical extension of the MatureHarappan culture is the string of trading outposts found along thecoast of Makran. Three of these. at Balakot, Sokhta Koh and Sut-kagendor, have been studied in detail during the last two decadesof archaeological researches in Pakistan. The significance of thesetrading outposts is that they provide undeniable evidence of thecommercial and cultural contacts between Mesopotamia and theIndus basin at the height of their ancient civilizations in the Chal-colithic Age. lndus seals are known to have been found at variousSumerian sites. especially in the cultural deposits of the Akkadiantimes (2300 to 2000 B.C. or a little later). and there are also tracesof the characteristic Harappan pottery at archaeological sites inBahrein and some of the coastal points of the Gulf. The As-syriologists point to certain Mesopotamian tablets with economictexts. mentioning items imported from Melluha, a name likely tobe from regions situated in the east, and most probably the vastarea of the Indus Valley Civilization.

Roots of the IndusValley Civilization

Much as in determining the geographical extent, the archaeolog-ical probe in Pakistan has been directed towards measuring thetime of origin of the Indus Valley Civilization. The site of Kot Diji,in the Khairpur District in Sind. has yielded characteristic ceramicsof a definitely earlier phase of Harappan culture. The Kot Dijian.or Early Harappan culture. has been struck at Amri with somelittle variations. at Sarai Khola near Taxila, Jalilpur in the MultanDistrict. Rahman Dheri and Lewan sites in the Bannu basin, andat Mehrgarh in Baluchistan south and east of the Suleiman andKirthar ranges. Thus, the early stage of the Indus Valley Civiliza-tion is visible at places distributed over all the provinces of thecountry.

Of the Early Harappan sites. the recent discoveries at Mehr-garh in particular show almost an unbroken sequence of cultural

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evolution at least from the sixth millennium B.C. to the beginningof the Mature Harappan culture.

It appears that towards the close of the Neolithic Age inancient Pakistan, when there was increasing dependence onpeasant economy. the widely scattered communities settled downin various small river valleys and at other fertile or favourablespots. This nascent society in divided pockets had its own localpeculiarities of material culture. and even showed occasionalforeign intrusions in some cases. But, generally speaking. thecommunities had the same broad cultural traits, as some levellingmechanism of interdependence must have been at work to meettheir material needs.

Yet, it looks puzzling that. within a short span of a few centur-ies separating the Early from the Mature phase of the Harappanculture. this nascent society should have assumed the status of acohesive civilization and with all the stamps of uniformity. andspread over such a large area as the entire Indus basin. Though notborn Minerva-like. fully grown. the Indus Valley Civilizationsprings to adolescence with surprising celerity. in spite of its earlyphase visible in the Kot Dijian levels of the various archaeologicalsites.

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Economic prosperityand materialculture

A probable solution to this paradox may be sought in the econ-omic phenomenon called a ‘Rush’. Modern history has seen a‘Rice Rush’. a ‘Gold Rush’ and a ‘Tobacco Rush’. More recently.the Sugar-cane Rush’ necessitated the mass import of labour fromabroad and now the ‘Petroleum Rush’ in the Gulf states has ab-sorbed an enormous number of technically competent workersfrom overseas. with a resultant pace of progress in the host coun-tries but also creating quite a few problems.

An ‘Economic Rush’ can better be understood from the pre-ceding analogies than defined in a precise way. It is a complexphenomenon that has both good and bad effects in disturbing thebalance of cultural inertia. The leap of the Early Harappan cultureto its mature phase of the Indus Valley Civilization may be at-tributed to the first such economic phenomenon ever experiencedin human history. The commodity vitally involved in precipitatingthis change was most probably cotton.

As cotton seeds have been found in the organic matter col-lected from deposits of the sixth millennium B.C. at Mehrgarh.and these are indeed the earliest samples found so far anywhere inthe world. there is ample reason to believe that this plant wasnative to this part of the Indus basin, and was possibly ‘domesticat-ed’ in those early millennia for its fibres. The utility of the fibreonce discovered. its cultivation might have progressively increased.The produce, either in raw form or in spun yarns, probably foundits way to the neighbouring areas, and among them to the fairlyadvanced communities of Iran and Mesopotamia.

The attractions of cotton yam, no doubt, must have beenspontaneous. and the commercial demands colossal. However, thesmall. loosely knit communities of the Kot Dijian period growingtheir cotton plants in small plots in the backyards of their houses,

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were unable to supply all the demands pouring in from abroad.Something had to be done quickly. It was not simply a question ofcalling the whole village together and telling the people to growmore cotton. It was a social and cultural revolution for massiveagricultural activities. something to be achieved by collective good-will and a proper division of labour. It also required vast stretchesof fertile land. not the small coves and fertile patches of the Gomalor Bolan rivers. It induced the small farming communities to colo-nize the vast ‘prairie’ lands along the Indus and the Hakra andother rivers in between. The small, scattered cultural pockets of theKot Dijian population moved towards the axial belt of the ellipseof the Indus basin, living together. intermarrying, and mergingtheir identities in a new cultural milieu, more advanced, refined,tolerant and absorbing. Of course. the efforts of a few growingseasons of cotton were not sufficient to achieve a full-grown civili-zation. It must have taken several centuries finally to succeed, andin the process to undergo a transformation from good intentions tothe discipline of the Indus Valley Civilization.

This oversimplified but graphic sketch of the first ‘CottonRush’ may lie at the root of the rise of a mighty cotton empire,which the Mesopotamians have called ‘Melluha’ in their tablets ofeconomic texts. The inhabitants of this empire growing richer eachyear sought for the better comforts that their wealth could procure.

The expanding business of cotton trading congregated insome favourable spots, which gradually grew into mighty citieswith residential houses, business centres, dyer’s quarters. smithies,carpentery shops. paved boulevards. covered drainage. water sup-plies-and most important of all-an administrative complex withits treasury. courts. exchequer’s office, governor’s residence. priest’scloisters, etc.

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Spiritual outlookand social life

Perhaps. the speed with which this society evolved towards a ma-terialistic civilization was too rapid to allow crystallization into awell-defined religion of the spiritual tenets inherited from the nas-cent culture of the Kot Dijian period. The religious mores of thesociety. as gathered from the motifs on painted pottery and as seenin the sculptural art, indicate a far more widely diffused heathen-ism than that encountered in the contemporary civilizations ofMesopotamia and Egypt. There is overwhelming evidence of afertility cult and of superstitious preoccupation with various spiritsof Heaven and Earth.

The cult objects show little change from Kot Dijian elements.and include the motif of peepal leaves (Sanskrit asvattha or nia-grodha. ficus religiosa). fishes and fish-scale patterns. swastikas.hatched circles. rhombs. wavy lines. and other geometrical pat-terns. a large variety of ‘mother goddesses’. phallic symbolism, treespirits. and a homed deity recognized as ‘proto-Siva’. On thewhole. these features suggest affinity with an early stratum of spiri-tual outlook which is an animistic belief of a hunting and gatheringsociety. Traces of animal motifs. such as ibexes and goats paintedin a stylized way. indicate prehistoric social contacts with westernand central Asia through the widely scattered village cultures ofBaluchistan, while some art motifs, such as trefoil patterns, aresuggestive of earlier social contacts with the classical Sumerianperiod of Akkadian times.

The ruins of the Indus Valley Civilization are singularly lack-ing in monumental temples. unlike those of Mesopotamia andEgypt. The priestly liturgies and shamanistic rituals can certainlybe inferred on public occasions and on important events in in-dividual lives. The public festivals may have corresponded withseasonal changes, characteristic of a peasant society and, therefore.

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there must have existed some kind of primitive calendar basedupon observations of heliacal risings and settings of certain constel-lations. aided by a count of the lunar phases.

The priest was probably recognized as both the spiritual mi-nister and the temporal authority. commanding the reverence ofthe people. and enjoying certain privileges. But the architecturalremains in the ruins of the Indus Valley Civilization do not showany great difference of class in the sizes and layout of residentialhouses of the rich and the poor. the rulers and the ruled.

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Town planning

The poorer dwellings on the outskirts of the thickly built areas ofHarappa and Moenjodaro have been distinguished as ‘workmen’squarters’. They may be so. as suggested by their uniformity ofplan. and the cramped spaces allotted to them. But this may beinterpreted as a viably economic solution of the housing problemsarising out of the flux of the working population towards largecities where urban land would have become substantially morecostly than in the rest of the countryside. On the whole, the citiesin the Indus Valley Civilization present from the social viewpointthe picture of a fairly egalitarian society.

A remarkable feature of the large urban settlements of theIndus Valley Civilization is the regularity and order in the townplanning and consideration given to the civic amenities. the sewer-age system and drainage. The main streets of the cities at bothHarappa and Moenjodaro are generally oriented from north tosouth, with connecting streets running east to west, and thus divid-ing the cities into large rectangular or square blocks on a gridironpattern. The main street running across the length of the lower cityat Moenjodaro from north to south is a little over 9 metres in widthwhile the others measure 2 to 5 metres. The subsidiary lanes lead-ing to the interior of the city blocks are much narrower, allowingnot more than two people to walk side by side. The subsidiarylanes are generally ‘dog-footed’. i.e. going straight for some dis-tance in one direction, turning left or right round the comer ofsome building. turning again in the previous direction and endingup at some door front.

Great care was taken in shaping the drainage within thebuilt-up areas of cities. The water-discharge sluices from housesfirst collected the dirt and refuse in small cesspits lined with bricksat the base of the walls. from which the dirty water was led

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through conduits to the main drains running through the middleof the streets below pavement level and covered with flat stonesand sturdy tile bricks. The system of covered drains was connectedto the larger sewerage outlets. also covered at the top. which finallyled the dirty water outside the populated areas.

The average house in these ancient cities appears to havestood at least two storeys high. as suggested by the thickness of theenclosing wall and by remnants of wide staircases where the stepsand risers still survive to considerable height from the occupationlevel on the ground floor. The houses were built on plinths risingabove the street level. with flights of steps recessed in the wall atthe front door. The doors of the houses usually opened on to theside lanes rather than on to the main streets, which might havebeen considerably busy in the waking hours of the crowded cities.

The general plan of the residential houses suggests a square ora slightly oblong courtyard open to the sky. and surrounded byrooms and chambers. The entrance door normally led to an ante-chamber with passages towards the kitchen, pantry and living-rooms. The rooms and parlours usually had one or two windowsplaced high above the floor, and covered by alabaster lattice tokeep out the excess glare of the scorching sun during summer.

The roofs of the houses appear to have been flat. supportedupon a framework of wooden beams and purlins, covered withterracotta brick tiles, and made waterproof by rammed earth anda further plaster of impervious clay. Though the timber work couldnot survive the ravages of white ants, terracotta brick tiles from thedebris of the collapsed roofs and terracotta conduits for letting therain-water out from the roof tops have been found in sufficientnumber.

Most of the residential houses had their own wells in the court-yards for drawing water, There also seem to have been publicwells near open squares for the benefit of those whose houseslacked this amenity. The wells were all lined with brickwork, andhad protective revetments at their mouths to prevent children anddomestic animals from falling into them.

In brief. the architectural features of these vestiges suggestsomething profoundly human-a love of comfort and collectivewelfare. The dilapidated townships of the Indus Valley Civilizationmight almost be the prototypes of modern and scientific townplanning and. therefore. are of immense interest to students ofarchitecture and urban geography.

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Arts and crafts

Further insight into the skill of the people is provided by the mov-able cultural material and small finds from excavations. This cul-tural assemblage comprises a wide range of utilitarian, recrea-tional. artistic and cult objects made of baked clay. lapidary. met-als. ivory, conch shell, faience and other substances. Their handi-work in more vulnerable organic substances has not survived. andwe are left to guess what kind of furniture they used, or whatvarieties of textile patterns they liked. The indications of the dyer’sworkshop in the remains of Moenjodaro. and certain patterns de-picted on dresses worn by sculptured figures do, however, suggestthat they liked colourful clothing. often embroidered or printed.

A whole spectrum of pottery types. mostly wheel-turned, pre-sents a multitude of forms, sizes and decorative features. Fromsimple bowls or vessels to slim vases and elaborate dishes-on-stand(frukrovnitsa), the potter’s art seems to have surpassed that of themason’s. Dimensions vary from miniature containers for cosmeticsto large troughs for washing clothes and feeding cattle. There arealso perforated vessels used perhaps as sieves or incense burners.and loaf-shaped hollow boxes definitely used as mousetraps.

Specialists in ceramic studies are of the opinion that theshapes of many pottery features, such as bases. necks and rims, goback to Kot Dijian times. The modes of pottery decoration aresmooth or matt surfaces. often polished with red or cream slip.Pottery painted with black or brown tints is characterized bygeometrical designs. blended with vegetation, animals, birds andhuman forms. Their exuberance and richness bear the stamp of anaturalistic style. The chequered patterns and wavy lines suggestcultivated fields and flowing water, while plant motifs, ears of corn.birds. fish. stylized figures of homed animals, and the sun symbolsbespeak of an obvious delight in the bounties of nature.

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The use of baked clay was not limited to making pottery, aswe find other terracotta objects. including a profusion of femalefigurines. a rich variety of toys and recreational paraphernalia. andother useful items. such as sling balls and terracotta cakes for toiletuse. The female figurines with prominent busts are usually bejew-elled. and are shown wearing a peculiar kind of head-dress. Theirnumber suggests that they were cult objects. probably associatedwith the fertility cult. and as such, they are commonly called‘mother goddesses’ in archaeological literature.

Terracota toys include miniature bulls with movable heads.carts with tiny solid wheels drawn by a pair of bullocks. such as westill find in reality with slight change in the design of wheels trund-ling along the dusty tracks in the countryside around Moenjo-daro. Other amusing toys are whistling birds. monkeys. broods ofchicken. and pet dogs. A glimpse of contented domestic life isreflected in the relics of indoor games. the bagatelle and a primi-tive kind of chess-board designed on brick tiles. with gamesmenmade of agate or ivory.

It appears that in an area of extensive alluvial plains. wherestones are difficult to find and costly to transport. most of theirfunctions were taken over by baked clay. Thus, for instance. terra-cotta sling balls were used by the Harappan people to keep thewild animals at bay or flocks of voracious birds away from thecornfields. A vast quantity of terracotta cakes suggests not onlytheir use as toilet items. but also as props for household furniture.and as supports and fillers between the stacks of unbaked potteryput in the firing kilns.

Nevertheless. as the term ‘chalcolithic culture’ indicates-andto which the Indus Valley Civilization rightly belongs-the use ofstone is evident in the range of their cutlery and other tools, Rib-bon flakes. blade cores. serrated blades. and drill heads. all madeof chert stone. are found in great quantity. Good sources of chertare either in the Kirthar hills or in the Sukkur and Rohri hills.Indeed the demand for chert tools in the Indus Valley Civilizationand also in the preceding Kot Dijian culture led to a depredationof the interesting Palaeolithic industrial sites that existed in theSukkur and Rohri hills from Pleistocene times.

Archaeological researches, recently published. indicate that alarge percentage of chert tools used in the Mature Harappan cul-ture are reworked specimens of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithictools lying in the source areas of the Sukkur and Rohri hills. ThePalaeolithic tools, much patinated in the hot and humid climate ofan interglacial phase and sand-blasted in the arid climate of thelast glacial phase. still lie strewn there. side by side with the re-

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worked tools of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods. the latterwearing a fresher look

Besides using chert flakes as knives or scrappers, and chertcores for striking sparks to kindle fire, the people of the IndusValley Civilization also used precious and semi-precious lapidary,mainly in jewellery. Agate, jasper, carnelian, chalcedony and lapislazuli make a fair list. An important centre for making carnelianand other beads seems to have been at the town of Chanhu-Daroin Sind. While some of the stones might have been of indigenousorigin within the South-Asian Subcontinent, others might havebeen imported from far-off places. The nearest source of lapis la-zuli, for instance, appears to have been in Badakhshan in thePamir region of central Asia. Possibly there might have been sometrade link with that region along the ancient route. following theupper Indus Valley. and across the Karakoram mountains.

The acquaintance of the people of the Indus Valley Civiliza-tion with metals seems to have been limited to copper, gold andsilver. Copper smelting furnaces occur in quite a large numbernear the sites of Harappan culture. the latest known being atBalakot in Las Bela District. and those surveyed in the HakraValley in the Cholistan deserts of Bahawalpur. The nearest sourcesof copper are outside the Indus alluvium plain in the Rajputanaregion of India or in Chagai District of Pakistani Baluchistan. Thecopper furnaces show a profusion of slag material scatteredaround.

The copper objects comprise various utensils and cooking ves-sels, broad flat axes with rounded edges but without shaft holes,spear heads, knives, mirrors, pins with looped heads. needles. rings.beads and fish hooks. At least two female statuettes cast in copperare well known. one being the famous Dancing Girl found fromexcavations at Moenjodaro. Numerous oblong copper tablets withthe peculiar Indus script and pictures of animals also occur.

Instances of silver and gold used in jewellery as beads andspacers are also common. These precious metals were obtainedeither by ‘panning’ the gravel and sand from beds of rivers as theyemerged from high mountains or by trading overland from distantsources such as peninsular India or the Ural Mountains. Extractionof gold from the sands of the Indus is. however, attested by theaccounts of Herodotus, Megasthenese and Pliny.

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Inscribed seals

Other cultural items, such as combs, beads, rosettes and buttonsmade of ivory and the ladles and spoons made of conch shell, helpin filling up the details of the people’s daily life. But the mostinteresting objects in this distinctive culture are the steatite sealswith enigmatic writings and portraits of various animals.

The Harappan seals, as these are generally known. appear intwo conventional shapes. i.e. rectangular and square. The rectan-gular seals, exclusively bearing inscribed texts, are reported to havebeen found more numerous in the lower or earlier cultural de-posits. Their sizes vary from 4 to 6 centimetres in length and about1.3 centimetres in average breadth. The square seals, bearing in-scriptions as well as miniature shapes of real and mythologicalanimals or various kinds of deity in human form, were less fre-quent in the earlier levels. but increased in number in successivelayers upwards. The square seals occur mostly in two standardizedsizes. the majority measuring 2.3 cm2. The larger square seals are2.8 cm’. Unlike the rectangular steatite seals. the copper seals ofthe same shape noted earlier carry both inscriptions and animalfigures. No square copper seals are in evidence so far. Only fewinstances of cylindrical seals of Sumerian convention are on recordfrom excavations of the Indus Valley sites.

Some of the rectangular seals of copper and steatite appear tohave been worn by the people as amulets, or as identity cardssignifying some official position of the bearer. The square sealsgenerally seem to have been used for stamping commoditiespassed through customs or taxation formalities or as hallmarks ofbusiness houses. Their reversed and embossed impressions havebeen noted on clay sealings, probably attached to cotton bales orspun yams, and even on certain pieces of terracotta pottery. In thelatter cases. the seal impressions must obviously have been applied

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before the wet clay had dried hard and been put in the firing kiln.A correct determination of the purpose or purposes for which

the various kinds of seal were used is a task of prime importance.It may explain in a more definite way the religious. social andintellectual organization and attainments of a vanished commu-nity-and even help in deciphering its strange script. Some of thegenerally accepted but hypothetical purposes delineated abovehave led the epigraphic experts in certain promising directions intheir attempt to decipher the Indus Valley script. as we shall pre-sently see.

Colour pages1. Voices from the past are speaking inthe pictographic script of these sealsfound at Moenjodaro.

2. The Mother Goddess, richlybejewelled.

3. The Great Bath where Moenjodaro’selite probably gathered on religiousoccasions.

4. The King-Priest: his serene andpowerful face tells of authority no lessthan his trefoil-patterned robe.

5. 6. Toy figures and a toy cart discoveredat Moenjodaro.

7. Large stone weights and smallmeasures of agate cubes used to ensurethat customers received full measure.

8. A fascinating stalemate for thearchaeologist-were these gamesmen usedin the earliest form of chess?

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Faience and steatiteobjects

Besides making stamp seals, the use of steatite extended to manu-facturing beads and brooches for ornamental decorations. Steatiteground to powder and made into a paste with some adhesive solu-tion is very useful in modelling small ornamental or decorativeobjects. It acquires a vitreous hardness on heating above 8OWC.and is known as faience. A large number of miniature birds.monkeys and squirrels modelled in faience have been found fromexcavations of the Indus Valley sites. As a medium of plastic art.therefore. faience is more sophisticated and durable than bakedclay. A steatite object polished with abrasives and coated withalkaline substances also acquires a vitreous lustre on heating. Prob-ably. because of the high cost of production. the use of steatite andfaience remained limited to small objets d’art. such as ornaments.miniature animal models. and stamp seals.

At least in one case. steatite has been used for making a hu-man bust. 18 cm in height. This is the celebrated ‘King Priestfound in excavations of the Lower City of Moenjodaro. The titlegiven to this piece of sculpture appears to be justified. as a steatitebust of an ordinary person is unlikely to have been made in thisexpensive medium.

It cannot be said with certainty that the sculptor who mod-elled the ‘King Priest actually succeeded in presenting a faithfulportrait of the potentate. His half-shut contemplative eyes, lowforehead. and densely grown but short cropped beard look ratherstylized. The auricles of the ear, as they are very difficult to make.were simplified to concave hollows marked by oval rims. But thewell-proportioned face and the roundness of the neck and should-ers indicate a rich man of some account.

The man’s authoritative bearing is also reflected in his attire.A fillet tied round his forehead with a circular ring, and the same

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kind of ornament used as an arm band on the right side, indicatesome kind of dignitarian symbol. The flattened occupit at the backand slits made over the ears on both sides suggest that the person-age originally wore some kind of headgear, made perhaps of goldor silver, which might have also been studded with precious stones.

Even more than the fillet and the arm band. his shawlwrapped diagonally across the chest. leaving the right shoulderbare. speaks of distinction. The trefoil pattern on this shawl, in-terspersed with occasional circles, has been compared with similardesigns on a number of Mesopotamian cult objects of heavenlyconnotation. such as the Bull of Gudea, and many heavenly lionsfound on the boundary stones of the Babylonian empire. Suchtrefoil rosettes also decorate a pedestal for linga worship in theHarappan culture.

It would seem that the Harappan culture arising out of theparental Kot Dijian stock to solidify into the expansive Indus Val-ley Civilization. did not have much time to evolve an elaboratesystem of protocols. The functions of a spiritual and temporalguardian. presumably combined in the King Priest, were probablyinduced to some extent by the concept of heavenly pontificationseen in the Sumerian civilization. This might have happened afterthe establishment of regular trade relations between the two re-gions, as discussed earlier.

The Moenjodaro King Priest did not adopt the wig and thelong wavy and tapering beard of King Sargon I and his successors.and there is no evidence of the high Ziggurats raised to MardukEnlil. Anu and Ea. However, an ecclesiastical symbol like the tre-foil pattern of the Mesopotamians. which coincided with their ownnotion of the cosmological scheme, might well have been acceptedby the people of the Harappan culture.

Whether we accept the steatite bust of the King Priest fromMoenjodaro as representing the image of some ipso facto ruler, orreject it as just an object of art, it cannot be denied that whoeverruled over such a vast area knew how to assert his authority uni-formly over the whole domain. This is already borne out by theregimentation of civic principles in the architectural design andtown planning of the Indus Valley Civilization. But it is even moreevident from the uniformity and regimentation seen in the weightmeasures for trading goods.

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Weights and measures

Balance pans of small sizes made of terracotta. or of larger sizesmade of copper, have been found in appreciable number at Moen-jodaro and other sites. The small weight measures of agate cubescarefully polished and the larger weights of marble or other stonesmade into elongate prisms of tri-lobe sections can be viewed in therepositories of the site museums. The order of ascension of thesmaller weight measures appears to be binary. while that of thelarger weight measures is decimal. with an intermediate range offractional units in octad. and dodecanery. The binary ratio 16.weighing 13.625 grams, seems to have been the conventional unitof common use. Perhaps the weight measures used in the South-Asian Subcontinent till very recently before their displacement bythe current decimal system were possibly connected with those ofthe Indus Valley Civilization.

The weight measure of any specific denomination at one placein the Indus Valley Civilization matched almost exactly with thesame unit at any other place. There seems to have been an un-relenting vigil over the business ethics of giving full measure tocustomers-no possibility of cheating them by using spurious anddeficient weights. This is. indeed. a feat of administrative catho-licity. of which there may be only few examples over such a vastarea in the history of individual epochs of other civilizations. Byinference. therefore. the Indus Valley possessed an efficient mech-anism of control. means of communication and transportation.and clerical staff to carry out the day-to-day administration.

Just as the Indus Valley Civilization was to a great extent theproduct of the substratum of the indigenous Kot Dijian culture. itsprocess of growth cannot be viewed in total isolation from culturaldevelopments in central and western Asia. A number of culturalitems. like the internally segmented alabaster cups. point to its

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intimate relations with the Chalcolithic communities at Susa andother Iranian sites.

All these features of its material culture, however. are only ofacademic interest. and the question of their origin in the nativeland or as exotic elements is beset with polemical arguments. Amore definitive picture of the Indus Valley Civilization will have toawait the deciphering of its script.

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Indus Valleyscript

The Indus Valley writing is one of the most difficult undecipheredscripts of the world. So far no bilingual epigraphs are in evidencefrom anywhere within the region. or beyond its geographical bord-ers. Unlike the Rosetta Stone. which unlocked the mystery of theEgyptian hieroglyphs. or the Behistun edict. which opened theflood gate of cuneiform literature in Assyriological researches, thetiny staccato messages of the Indus Valley epigraphs remain mute.inconvertible into human speech, remote, austere and challenging.

Despite the inscrutability of the script, the epigraphists andlinguistic experts of the world have made many attempts at itsdecipherment during the last fifty years. The account of theirefforts would make a long tale of trials and errors. Suffice it to saythat the net positive gain of their researches so far has been recog-nition of nearly 350 different pictographs, and the fact, now nearlyconfirmed. that the script was written from right to left.

The pictographic elements of the Hindus script are remarkablyclose to the natural world of flora and fauna, with the addition ofsome geometrical shapes and material entities of an agrarian cul-ture. There are. thus. simplified figures of fish. crabs. scorpions,fowls. birds. man. bifurcate boughs of pipal trees. thorny branches.segmented circles. squares. rectangles, rows of triangles like a rangeof serrated hills. upright arrows without feathery ends. sets of threeparallel strokes. zigzag parallel lines as if indicating rivers, shortvertical strokes. and long vertical strokes varying in number fromone to twelve-the larger numbers mostly arranged in rows andcolumns. and a multitude of other utilitarian objects. such ascombs, brooms and dumb-bells.

The pictorial features of the script suggest it to be at an ele-mentary stage of evolution. but sufficiently standardized in its cul-tural milieu. Attempts to trace its origin to early cuneiform and

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hieroglyphic scripts have failed, except for a general agreementamong scholars to date its beginning in the same era of evolutionas the agrarian societies in Mesopotamia and Egypt. In fact. aproto-Indus Valley script has been reported from the Kot Dijianlevels at Rahman Dheri in the Bannu basin of the north-westernprovince of Pakistan. Some graffiti symbols scratched on stray pot-sherds collected from the site have been tabulated to demonstrateconvincingly that the Indus Valley script was not borrowed by theMature Harappan culture from outside. but had its beginning in itsown native setting of parental culture.

A significant difficulty presented by the Indus Valley script isthat it has not been found in any long inscribed texts running, intoseveral lines or paragraphs like the hieroglyphic and cuneiformtexts. On any one Harappan seal, the number of pictographshardly exceeds half a dozen. Despite this, a structural analysis ofthe contents has looked quite tempting to many scholars. who havetried to search for grammatical pauses. stops. inflections, marks ofpossessive and accusative cases, and so forth. Some of the smallvertical strokes. and the oblique and horizontal ones may well beligatures imparting different meanings or nuances to the samebasic pictographs. while others may signify diacritical marks toparticular lexemes and graphemes, according to the given usage ofthe unknown language. But as long as the language itself is notrecognized with reasonable certainty, these hypothetical featuresamount to nothing more than building grammar in a vacuum.

The meaning conveyed by some of the pictographic symbolsis tantalizingly within grasp. Unfortunately. we get no clue to theirphonetic character and pronunciation. The vertical strokes stand-ing singly or in rows suggest numerical values. but their limitedmaximum of twelve makes the case doubtful.

According to Father Henry Heras of Bombay. the vertical fishsign in the script means a star! In his researches he argues that theword ‘min’ is a homonym for both the fish and the star in most ofthe Dravidian languages now spoken in peninsular India. Theselanguages are generally considered to be the offshoot of a morearchaic parent language. proto-Dravidian, which was possiblyspoken throughout the entire region of the Indus Valley Civiliza-tion from the middle of the third millennium to the beginning ofthe second millennium B.C. This fundamental concept in the evo-lution of the Dravidian languages as a basis for decipherment ofthe lndus script is favoured by the scholars of the Soviet Academyof Science. and even more by the scholars of the ScandinavianInstitute for Asian Studies at Copenhagen. led by Dr Asko Parpolaof the University of Helsinki.

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Dr Asko Parpola and his associates have carried out studiesfor over ten years to prove that the language of the Indus ValleyCivilization was proto-Dravidian. one of whose dialectical andmuch altered forms, the Brahui, is still spoken by a small tribalcommunity living in central parts of Baluchistan.

This may or may not be so. especially as the proto-Dravidianorigin of the Brahui language has recently been challenged bycertain linguists. But the encouraging factor emerging out of thestudies of the Scandinavian scholars is an intensification of theefforts to decipher the Indus Valley script by using computer tech-niques. This has resulted over the last few years in lists of thou-sands of Harappan seals distributed in hundreds of museums allover the world. besides those in the museums of the South-AsianSubcontinent and their archaeological depositories. The listing ofseals lying in little known collections. and those discovered in re-cent excavations of the various other Harappan sites. is still con-tinuing. It is a painstaking task for which the Scandinavian scholarshave enlisted the co-operation of many archaeologists from theregion and its completion will take a long time. Perhaps too muchfaith is being put in the power of the computer finally to decodethe script. But even so. it will be a positive achievement to knowthe facts and figures of all the available material.

A germinal development in Dr Parpola’s attempt to decipherthe Indus Valley script has been his frequent references to thepossible association of some of the script characters with the primi-tive concept of planetary motions in the Indus Valley Civilizationto keep track of time or to have an agricultural calendar for sowingand harvesting the various crops at different times of the year. Inthis context. he takes recourse to many terminologies of primitiveastronomical nature current in the usage of the living Dravidianlanguages. He combines them with the traditional celestial lore ofVedic times. with the result that an integrated mosaic of an earlynotion of the astronomical phenomena starts to take shape.

Dr Parpola’s underlying argument that the primitive conceptsof the celestial motions held by the proto-Dravidian people of theIndus Valley Civilization were acquired gradually by a new racewhich occupied the western parts of the South-Asian Subcontinentcorresponds fairly well with the observed archaeological facts of adying Harappan culture being supplanted by an alien culture ofthe Jhukar and Jhangar type near Moenjodaro. and the PaintedGreyware culture elsewhere.

Despite its obscurities and difficulties of verification, this fer-tile avenue of researches presents a challenge to the historians ofscience, and also offers some promise of solving the mysteries

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which shroud many features of the history of primitive astronomy.For instance, one of the problems still debated by the historians ofancient astronomy is that of tracing the origin of the Old Worldpattern of constellations-and particularly of the Zodiacal constel-lations.

Dr Parpola’s surmise that some of the Indus Valley scriptcharacters might be associated with primitive astronomical orcalendrical problems has led one of the authors of the present textto examine the question in broad detail in the light of the ancientMesopotamian and Vedic science of primitive astronomy. The re-sults of the publication. though naturally inconclusive at the pre-sent stage. do suggest that the Indus Valley Civilization was inpossession of a fairly accurate luni-solar calendar. The figures ofvarious real and mythological animals or deified human shapeswere possibly the symbolic expressions of most of the zodiacalconstellations encountered in the Vedic nakshatra. If this be so. theminiature pictures carved in relief on the square steatite seals andon the rectangular copper seals from the Harappan sites do appearto hold the key to the decipherment of the Indus Valley script.

In brief. the decipherment of the Indus Valley script appearsto be difficult, but not impossible. It is certainly beyond the compe-tence of archaeologists or linguists alone, unaided by the historiansof science. In some ways. it poses the same problems as thoseencountered by scholars in the decipherment of the MinoanLinear B script of ancient Crete. The fact that Michael Ventris andJohn Chadwick were able to decipher the Linear B script owedmuch to the clear precepts of the purpose of writing formulated bySir Arthur Evans-the main purpose being maintenance of theaccounts of the king’s stables and armoury.

In the case of the Indus Valley script, the main purpose ap-pears to be the indication of time-the date. the bright and thedark halves of the lunar months, positions of the various visibleplanets or heavenly deities in the constellations of the primitivelunar zodiac. planetary weekdays, and the year as a whole. Theshort texts of the pictographic inscriptions are obviously not preciseenough to tell very long stories, unless we concede to them mean-ings more complicated than those of our modem mathematicalsymbols. They may at best tell the name of a person. the seasonand year of the harvest of an agricultural produce being exported.the year of pleasure or wrath of a heavenly deity, and similarevents. They might well be the precursors of the long tradition ofthe Venus Tablets that assyriologists call ‘judicial astronomy’.

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Moenjodaro, signpost ofa civilization

These general observations upon the Indus Valley Civilization asa whole enable us to look at some of the salient features of theexcavated structures of Moenjodaro with deeper understandingand empathy. The name of the site. spelt ‘Mohenjodaro’ in theofficial reports of its discovery in the early 1920s. and in the variouspublications by Sir John Marshall and his followers. had generallybeen agreed to mean the ‘Mound of the Dead’. As the word for thedead in Sindhi language is ‘moen’. in 1960 the spelling was rectifiedto ‘Moenjodaro’. which is now officially adopted by Pakistan.

The change in the name of the site from Mohenjodaro toMoenjodaro has caused some heated discussion in scholarly de-bates. The opponents of the change express doubt whether thenomenclature originally ever meant the ‘Mound of the Dead’.They argue that giving this meaning to the name of the place infersa prima facie knowledge of the archaeological character of themound as a place for burying the remains of a dead civilizationbefore its actual systematic excavation. As the name existed fromtime immemorial. it could certainly have not meant the ‘Mound ofthe Dead’. but something else.

A more plausible explanation advanced is that the namemeans ‘the mound of the Mohana people’. Mohana is actually thename of a minority tribe of fishermen living in boats and spendingtheir whole lives on the crafts floating over the River Indus in itsstretch from Sukkur to Manchar Lake. They earn their livelihoodby fishing. catching waterfowl in flood seasons. and as porters andferrymen serving the small villages of the settled rural com-munities.

The Mohana boatmen speak the Sindhi vernacular of therural areas. but they are said to have a number of peculiar wordsand some cultural traits which set them apart from the rest of the

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rural population. A detailed ethnological study of the Mohanapeople is lacking. but it appears that they are a remnant commun-ity or ethnic group of a native population which must have beenmore numerous in the past.

The Mohana boatmen still hold an annual festival of tradi-tional kind at a point on the river bank right opposite the site ofMoenjodaro. It is held some time at the beginning of the floodseason and is marked by boat racing, swimming long distancesalong the direction of the currents. singing. dancing and other re-velries. This is. indeed. very suggestive of their ancestral customsassociated with the history of Moenjodaro, which probably de-serves the name of ‘Mohana-jo-Daro’.

The name Mohana also has some affinity with Melluha. men-tioned earlier, occurring in the Mesopotamian tablets with eco-nomics texts and used to refer to a country situated to the eastfrom thence. which supplied a number of commercial items. It isquite possible that the ancestors of the present Mohanas were thedaring sailors who used to venture out in their flat-bottomed sailboats laden with cotton bales and other products of the country,and voyaged across the Arabian Sea within sight of the Makrancoast to such trading outposts as Balakot, Sokhta Koh. Sutkagen-dor. and further on to the isles of Bahrein and other landing placesin Sumerian climes.

Like the solid-wheeled bullock carts still plied in the country-side around Moenjodaro. and pointed out as a living example ofthe continuity of traditions reflected in the terracotta toy carts inHarappan culture. the flat-bottomed sail crafts of the Mohanaboatmen also resemble the pictures of boats seen on a few seals atMoenjodaro. A detailed ethnological study of this amphibiouscommunity. such as their traditional designs of wood carving todecorate the interiors of their house-boats, may reveal other resem-blances with the sculptural art of the classic period of the IndusValley Civilization. Even more productive may be a philologicalstudy of the odd words and phrases current in their dialect in orderto trace the nature of their original language. getting thereby someclues to the decipherment of the Indus Valley script.

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The excavatedremains

Over 100 hectares of the archaeological remains excavated duringSir John Marshall’s time make only about 10 per cent of theknown extent of the buried ruins at Moenjodaro. The excavatedparts are grouped into four main sectors, known as ‘S.D.‘. ‘D.K.‘.‘V.S.’ and ‘H.R.’ areas-the abbreviations indicating the names ofthe principal excavators. Siddiqui. Dikshit, Vats and Hargreavesrespectively. Of these. the first area exposes the buried structures inthe north of the smaller but higher mound. popularly called the‘Stupa Mound’. while the other three reveal the thickly constructedparts of the larger but lower mound to the east. There is anothersmall sector of excavations over the south of the Stupa Mounddesignated as ‘L’ area in the old published plans. which was ex-cavated in 1936.The Great Bath. The most celebrated architectural remain atMoenjodaro is the Great Bath situated in the S.D. area of theStupa Mound. It is a beautifully laid-out rectangular pool con-structed in brick. measuring 11.9 metres in length and 7 metres inbreadth-the longitudinal axis oriented north-south. The pool,which is 1.9 metres deep, has flights of steps at the northern andsouthern ends. Originally it seems to have been surrounded by apavilion and a row of adjacent chambers. The rectangular poolwas kept open to the sky. It was supplied with water drawn froma double-ringed well situated outside the eastern wall of the enclo-sure. The water drawn up in buckets was let into a covered drainpassing beneath the floor of the cloister. The pool must have beenkept clean by draining off the stagnant water through another cov-ered drain towards its south-western corner. The outlet drain witha corbelled arch can be traced to some length. It led the used wateroutside the built-up areas of the Stupa Mound towards the lowground.

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A close inspection of the Great Bath reveals many featuressuggesting that extraordinary care was taken in its construction.For instance, the water pool had a floor of bricks set in gypsum tomake it watertight. The masonry linings of the retaining wall hadbeen provided with a packing of bitumen to prevent lateralseepage of water. The steps going down into the pool seem to havecarried wooden batons to protect the edges, and also perhaps toprevent them from becoming slippery.

The cloistered area of the Great Bath originally appears tohave had two entrances each on the northern and southern sides,and one opening on to the eastern side. The northern and southernentrances were symmetrically disposed on either side of the longi-tudinal axis. One of the southern entrances was later closed upby a brick wall. Outside the building towards the north. across abrick-paved lane. there is a double row of public toilets. with theirentrances arranged in contraposed positions for the sake of pri-vacy. This area of public convenience was probably a part of theestablishment of the Great Bath.

From its architectural appearance. the whole complex of theGreat Bath of Moenjodaro seems to have carried some ritualisticsignificance. It was most probably a place for social gatherings ofthe elite of the city on religious occasions. It would seem that thechief priest and some of his ministers performed the liturgies bydescending into the water pool from either of the northern orsouthern steps. and wading across slowly to the other end. chantinghymns and prayers to the deities. The rest of the gathering stand-ing in the surrounding pavilion might have joined them in offeringovations to the gods. The occasions calling for such prayers mighthave been the new-year celebrations after observing the heliacalrising of the Pleiades. the transit of some benevolent or ominousplanet. lunar or solar eclipses. earth tremors, threatening floods.predictions of disastrous storms. visitations by locust swarms, pesti-lence and epidemics.

The Granary. A second interesting architectural feature on theStupa Mound is the podium of the great Granary situated on thewestern flank From an analogy with a similar granary studiedearlier in the excavations at Harappa. Sir Mortimer Wheeler wasable to demonstrate its purpose as a State Treasury by reconstruct-ing it in drawings to show its various functional parts. The podiumof the building. made of solid brick square-shaped platformsseparated by a gridiron of straight and narrow passages. is thoughtto have been covered by a floor of wooden boards, and probablythe superstructure was also made of wood. This hypothesis is sup-

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ported by observation of the narrow vertical grooves on the peri-pheral edges of the outer rows of the square platforms, indicatingthat they were meant for fixing vertical wooden beams to bear theload of the superstructure.

The gridiron of the straight narrow aisles in the podium. asargued by Sir Mortimer Wheeler. was made to provide air ductswhich could keep the floor of the grain storage dry and safe frommildew. A quantity of charred grains of wheat collected from theexcavations puts the nature of the building beyond any doubt. Onits western side. there is also a brick-paved apron. approachedfrom the lane below by a ramp. Wheeler suggests that this couldhave been the loading platform where bullock carts could bedriven up to discharge their load of sacks of grain collected as taxfrom cultivators.

It is interesting to note that the use of this State Treasurycontinued for a long period during the heyday of Moenjodaro. butthe building ultimately fell into disuse with the decline of the city.This is clearly suggested by the remains of shoddy masonry of awell dug close to the loading platform at a later period. which leftno room for the bullock carts to operate, as seen in Wheeler’sreconstruction.The Pillared Hall. A third important building in the ‘L’ area of theStupa Mound is known as the Pillared Hall. signifying its architec-tural layout or utilitarian function. The building. enclosing a smallcourtyard. probably carried a large roof supported on twenty pil-lars arranged in rows of five. It might have served as the court ofthe city magistrate or as a secretariat of the State.

One thing which clearly stands out from observation of these fewimportant architectural remains on the Stupa Mound is that thispart of ancient Moenjodaro in its prime was the chief administra-tive centre of the city, and probably also of the whole Indus ValleyCivilization. From its elevated position above the flat countrysideand the roof-tops of the Lower City sprawling on the eastern side.one can visualize the watchful gazes of the protectors of the law ofthe land. Any column of smoke rising from an accidental outbreakof fire. any shrieks by a victim of oppression. any riotous criesraised in the crowded city. any shouts of alarm of burglary or ofwild beasts in the dead of night, or any suspicious straggler blund-ering unannounced into the sensitive heart of the domain wouldhave put into motion the appropriate machinery of the State todeal with the situation.

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Site plan ofMoenjodaro.

Excavated remains of Dthe Citadel area.

The Lower City. From the Stupa Mound to the Lower City is ashort walk of a few hundred metres. Here. even in the limitedportions laid bare by the archaeologists’ spade. one is likely to getlost in the maize of lanes and by-lanes where the view is obstructedby, the high standing house walls. On the first visit to these ancientrums. it is better to be accompanied by a guide or equipped witha detailed plan of the city. It is rather Like walking through afossilized embryo of a miniaturized Manhattan. This analogy hasoften tempted scholars to label its thoroughfares running fromnorth to south as First Street or Second Street.

A contour plan of the mound of the Lower City of Moenjo-daro looks like a magnificent tamarind tree. with its trunk goingsouthwards. and the broad leafy canopy rising in bellowing massestowards north. The length of the canopy from north to southmeasures nearly 820 metres. its width at the base 720 metres. whichtapers north to nearly 330 metres. The total area covered by thisroughly trapezoid canopy is 5.62 times larger than that of theStupa Mound.

Well shafts. sunk by later generations.

Nestling in this canopy to the north are the excavated remains used as measuringof the D.K. area in two parts. one on its eastern and the other on sticks of the depth to

its western flank. The western flank of the mound remained awhich Moenjodarowas buried.

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preferred ground of investigations by the early excavators. as wesee from the V.S. area in its lower middle and the H.R. area situ-ated towards its base. The First Street of Moenjodaro. traceablealmost straight through the length of the western flank of theLower City. cuts across the H.R. and V.S. areas, and marks theeastern border of the thickly built D.K. area. The orientation ofthis arterial street makes an angle of almost 15°.

A bird’s eye view of the excavated remains in the Lower Citymay give a misleading concept of the layout of the settlement atvarying levels. unless one bears in mind the fact that these are notthe remains of buildings erected in one period alone. Actually theyare the cumulative result of nearly one thousand years of building.demolition. and rebuilding of the structures. The varying heights ofthe doors suggest at least seven different levels of occupation.though there may be substantially more, as the borehole sectionsshow occupation floors situated 11.9 metres below the present sur-face levels.

A constant rise in the occupation levels at Moenjodaro is re-vealed by the chimney-like brick masonry of wells dug by lateroccupants of the city from the ground levels of their time. Suchwells. especially notable in the D.K. area. are sunk deep down. inmany cases cutting through the floors of the bed-chambers orkitchens of the earlier houses.

The process of building up the cultural mound at Moenjodarohas been assisted to a great extent by flood depositions by theRiver Indus. The average rate of thickening of the alluvial depositsin the lndus plains has been estimated at 18 cm per century. Inmany parts of the excavated sections, the cultural debris showsclear indications of water-borne sand and silt layers interveningbetween two successive occupation levels.

This brings out the hard fact that Moenjodaro in its lifetimeweathered many storms and floods. emerging every time moreresolutely determined to survive. But the war of attrition fought byits inhabitants against the forces of nature for some one thousandyears finally took its toll. probably in one of the severest floods.when the civilization was already in the last phases of decline.

The end of Moenjodaro in a ‘sea of mud’ is an attractivetheory. advanced by Robert L. Raikes and George F. Dales. whichrivals Wheeler’s theory of a wholesale massacre of its inhabitantsby the murderous Aryan hordes. Perhaps both are partly right-the whole truth probably being a slow strangulation of the city bya combination of various natural forces and sociological factors.

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Architecturalfeatures

The houses at Moenjodaro are built with bricks of nearly uniformdimensions, 27.94 cm in length. 13.42 cm in breadth, and 6.35 cmthick. The average weight of a single brick is such that one personcan easily hold it up with one hand. This factor is indicative of theeconomy of the labour force employed in the construction ofhouses. The profusion of burnt bricks used in all constructions alsoindicates a broad-based commercial tradition of a brick-makingindustry. Some scholars have tried to build up an argument ofradically different climatic conditions in the times when Moenjo-daro was flourishing on the evidence of mass-scale production ofburnt bricks. for it suggests plenty of firewood which in the presentclimatic conditions seems doubtful.

The designs and sizes of the houses indicate some variationsin the social status of the owners. Some houses are larger thanothers with more suites of rooms and larger courtyards. The court-yards are normally placed towards the northern sides of thehouses. The entrances lie through antechambers or rooms access-ible from the narrower side lanes. In some cases, they are alsoopened in the courtyards bordered by a street. The outer walls ofthe houses are mostly plain and featureless. except where brokenby the entrance doors or rubbish chutes.

Even a cursory glance at the layout of the different housessuggests that they were used for other purposes than residential.Some of the houses with larger courtyards probably served as in-dustrial units for the potter’s, carpenter’s or wheelwright’s trade.The dyer’s shop in the H.R. area is a clear example of the commer-cial use of the built-up areas. Here we find rows of conical depres-sions. lined with rubbed bricks to provide secure bases for thedyer’s vats.

The scientific value of the structured remains of Moenjodaro

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in the study of Harappan culture lies in the fact that. whereas thearchaeological remains of Harappa itself had been much disturbedand robbed of bricks by railway contractors before their properexcavation. the mounds of Moenjodaro were discovered in an al-most undisturbed state. Unfortunately, the field techniques of ar-chaeology in the early 1920s were not adequately developed totackle the tremendous task with much deftness and precision. Themethod used for determining the relative ages of the structures. forinstance. was by a comparison of their levels with a hypotheticaldatum calculated from the mean sea-level. The concept of strati-graphy as a more secure basis for determining the relative ages wasnot given due cognizance until Sir Mortimer Wheeler introducedit as a fundamental necessity in all archaeological studies.

The failure of the early excavators of Moenjodaro to recordexact stratigraphic relations of the structural features. as well as theprecise location and layers of the movable cultural material in theexcavated areas, has raised many problems of interpretation andinterrelationship between various objects and their cultural signifi-cance. Most of the interpretations seem to proceed from precon-ceived models of society in the Chalcolithic Age.

In order to obtain a fuller picture of the stratigraphic relationsbetween the structures and the small finds, Sir Mortimer Wheelerstarted a limited excavation at some of the selected spots at Moen-jodaro in 1950. His scheme failed, however. when he reached thesaturation level of the groundwater table below which it becameimpossible to record stratigraphic layers.

A second attempt at salvaging the stratigraphy of Moenjodarowas made by Professor George F. Dales during 1964-65. when helaid an extensive trench on the western flank of the H.R. area ofthe Lower City. With a vast quantity of cultural material collectedfrom the trench and the stratigraphic and borehole data recorded.Professor Dales is expected to publish his results in the near future.

A very useful recent development in retrieving the finer detailsand planimetry of the early excavations at Moenjodaro has beeninitiated by Dr. Michael Jansen with financial grants frorn theUniversity of Aachen (Federal Republic of Germany). With aninvaluable collection of the photographic records of the early exca-vations at Moenjodaro obtained from the Archaeological Surveyof British India. Dr Jansen has already started his painstaking workwith a team of competent architectural draftsmen and other tech-nicians stationed at the Campus of the Moenjodaro Museum.

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Causes of deterioration ofMoenjodaro

At the time of the excavations in 1922 the structural remains werein an excellent condition. For as long as they were buried. theremains of Moenjodaro were preserved. like a bee in amber. forfuture generations. In 1933. not long after the discoveries at Moen-jodaro. the Province of Sind began to be irrigated all the yearround from controlled river water supplies of the Sukkur Barrage.about 125 km north of the site. The Dadu Canal on the right bankof the Indus has been irrigating the area around Moenjodaro eversince and flows not more than 4 km to the west. whereas the IndusRiver itself is about 1 km to the east of the archaeological remains.The Indus feeds the groundwater reservoir during periods of floodwhereas the Dadu Canal, in combination with the lands irrigatedby it. contributes to the rise in groundwater levels. As at otherplaces in Pakistan where an artificial irrigation system has beenintroduced. the double menace of waterlogging and salinity hasappeared at Moenjodaro. This has been caused by a steady rise inthe surface water-table. which in 1922 was reported to be nearly8 m below normal ground level. The present level of the ground-water table fluctuates between 1.52 m in October and 3.66 m inMay every year.

The major cause of deterioration of the site is the high water-table. Groundwater always contains some salts. and the transporta-tion of these salts associated with the rise in the water-table consti-tutes a serious threat. The salts travel with the water rising throughcapillary action. While moisture evaporates, the salts are left on thesurface. Under the climatic conditions prevailing in this region. i.e.high evaporation and low rainfall. the evaporation of moisturecauses a progressive concentration of soluble salts. particularly atthe base of the buildings. The action of these soluble salts leftbehind in the pores of building materials causes weathering and

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disintegration of the materials. Both physio-chemical and physicalprocesses play their role in this disintegration. The chemical actionbetween the salts and the building material leads to weakening ofthe material. In the process. heavy pressures are exerted on thesides of the pores which break up the surface of the bricks. Acontinuous cycle of saturation. evaporation and crystallization iscreated, causing the brick masonry to exfoliate and crumble intodust. Over the past thirty years the twin menace of water-loggingand salinity has reached alarming proportions. and today threatensthe very existence of the remains of this remarkable civilization.The alarming pace of the deterioration was dramatically expressedby Dr H. J. Plenderleith who came to Pakistan in 1964 as bead ofa Unesco mission. His assessment was: ‘If nothing is done to pre-serve it. all the existing excavations will crumble within the next 20

Movement of saltsin the ruins.

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Laid bare virtuallyintact. these walls arecrumbline under thepressure of saltscrystallizing from themoisture which hasseeped into them.

or 30 years and one of the most striking monuments of the dawnof civilization will be lost for ever.’

Coupled with the menace of the rising water-table is the lesspersistent but more erratic behaviour of the River Indus in thevicinity of Moenjodaro. It threatens to wash it away in one of thosedisastrous floods that are common in this monsoon land. The rav-ages of this mighty river. caused by its ever shifting course. are wellknown from time immemorial. Even the destruction of Moenjo-daro has been attributed to it by certain archaeologists.

The Government of Pakistan has tackled the problem of saltencrustations on the structural remains with constant vigilance butlimited success. This complex problem required not only hugefinances which were beyond the resources of the Government ofPakistan but also technical know-bow of a multi-disciplinarynature. In 1960. the Government of Pakistan entered into nego-tiations with Unesco. and as a result a number of individual ex-perts and missions of experts visited Pakistan to study the situationand suggest remedial measures. The first Unesco mission of ex-perts. headed by Dr H. J. Plenderleith and with Theodore deBeaufort and Dr C. Voute as members. visited Moenjodaro inJanuary 1964. This was followed by the visit of Professor S. J. VanKregten in June 1966. and L. C. Krepel in 1966 and 1967. A feweminent archaeologists. including Sir Mortimer Wheeler. ProfessorK. Michalowski. Professor J. O. Brew and Professor C. Schaefferwere invited in 1968 with the assistance of Unesco to undertake astudy of the danger facing Moenjodaro.

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The views expressed by the members of these missions wereas follows :

Sir Mortimer Wheeler (United Kingdom). It is important to save theremains of Moenjodaro for two reasons. First, it is one of theearliest cities of the world known to us at present. It is importantto preserve it for future examination by scientists and archaeolog-ists who can tell us more and more about the city from the relicsleft behind. Secondly. Moenjodaro is important as a great docu-ment in the pre-history of Pakistan. It is vital that these remainsshould be available for a very long time to come so that the com-ing generation of Pakistanis can see something of the previousachievements of their ancestors. He further remarked that the com-ing generation could find instruction and entertainment in seeingsomething of the problems and successes. perhaps even thefailures. of those who built civilization first in this great land.

K. Michalowski (Poland). Moenjodaro must be saved from de-struction in an international way like Nubia in Egypt.

Dr Claude Schaefer (France). No archaeological problem can besolved without reference to the Indus Valley Civilization. For us.dealing with Mediterranean and Near East archaeology, Moenjo-daro is the eastern-most horizon. The problem of Moenjodaro isnot the problem of Pakistan alone. but of the whole world.

Professor J. O. Brew (United States of America). All my life I havebeen studying the pre-history of the world and I found Moenjo-daro a great archaeological site. No archaeological site of suchdimension can be found in any other part of the world.

Finally. a Unesco mission of experts comprising Dr Zaky Iskander.Raoul Curiel and S. J. Van Kregten visited Moenjodaro in 1972.This mission along with experts from Pakistan, after further studyof the problem and taking account of the observations and sugges-tions made by earlier missions. prepared a comprehensive MasterPlan for the preservation of Moenjodaro. The Plan proposes deal-ing with the problem in three directions. namely: groundwatercontrol; protection against the River Indus and conservation of thestructural remains. The cost of the first phase of this programmewas estimated at $7.5 million in 1972, but due to price escalationand certain other changes made at the recommendation of theInternational Consultative Committee, it now stands at $11.67 mil-lion.

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Master plan for thepreservation of Moenjodaro

The salient features of the various schemes are as follows:

Groundwater controlThe deterioration caused by salinization and waterlogging can bearrested only by lowering the water-table, which is also considerednecessary from yet another angle. The origin of the Indus Civiliza-tion remains obscure in spite of the determined efforts of ar-chaeologists. In 1950 an attempt was made to reach the lowestoccupational level but it was not possible because of sub-soil wateroozing from the trenches. Further lowering of the water-table willenable the archaeologists to venture deeper and unearth an oldersettlement which is confirmed by the fact that the boreholes drilledin 1960 encountered pottery at a depth of about 18 metres belowthe existing ground level. Groundwater recharge sources in thisarea-the Indus River and the Dadu Canal-are quite substantial.making lowering of the water-table a serious problem. In 1962. thefirm Sir Macdonald and Partners produced an interim report sug-gesting the use of tube-wells for lowering the water-table. In 1966.the firm NEDECO. commissioned by Unesco. recommended deepdrains to achieve the objective. The latter scheme was, however.rejected by the Unesco mission headed by Sir Mortimer Wheelerwhich came to Pakistan in 1968. It suggested the use of tube-wellsfor lowering the water-table. According to the plan prepared bythe Water and Power Development Authority of Pakistan the low-ering of the water-table will be done in three stages in Area A. Inthe first stage it is proposed to install a ring of fourteen wells tolower the water-table to 6 metres below ground level. These wellswill operate at 71 per cent annual operation factor. Twelve addi-

Project layout:groundwater controlwill be achieved byinstalling rings of -tube-wells round thesite.

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tional wells will be installed in the same circle during the secondstage. This will result in a lowering of the water-table to 9.75metres below ground level. In this phase the wells will operate at74 per cent operation factor. Eventually, in the third stage, thirtyadditional wells will be installed in a second ring, 244 metres awayfrom the first circle. The water-table can then be maintained atabout 20 metres below ground level by operating all fifty-six wellsat 74 per cent operation factor. The de-watering in Area B is out-side the scope of the present scheme.

The lowering of the water-table would not only benefit theworld-famous remains of Moenjodaro. but would also promote theeconomic development of the area. An average of 123 cusecs ofwater pumped from the wells would help to cultivate intensivelyan area of about 6,000 hectares. Rough estimates of cost and pro-duction indicate that the net income of the farmers of this areawould increase by thirteen times and gross production by eighttimes. In addition to its promotion of the Moenjodaro area as amodel of agricultural development. the indirect investment in irri-gation would also result in extra revenues for the government.which could be used to underwrite a major share of the opera-tional costs of the proposed tube-wells.

Conservation ofstructural remains

Even after the root cause threatening the existence of Moenjodarohas been removed by groundwater control as maintained earlier. itwould still be essential to take further measures for the properconservation of the structural remains. The problem has beenstudied carefully by experts from Unesco and Pakistan and thefollowing conservation measures, which are both preservative andprotective in nature. have been recommended:

Underpinning of undermined walls. A large number of walls at thesite have been undermined by the effects of salts and are hangingprecariously. Such structures must be treated immediately by un-derpinning the overhanging portions. By this method the decom-posed. disintegrated and crumbling portions of the walls will bereplaced by new ones in the original style using original brickswhere possible. If a wall has completely disappeared, it will berebuilt so that the original layout plan is restored. In doing so. itwill be ensured that no change takes place in the appearance of thesite.

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Damp-proof course. The salts which attack the brickwork arebrought up from the sub-soil by moisture through capillary action.If this rise of moisture is stopped. the transfer of salt will also bestopped. In order to protect the structures from the capillary actionthat draws water and salts. it is essential to provide damp-proofcourses. This will be done with precast concrete slabs of suitablesize coated with bitumen on the unexposed surfaces, which areinserted into the masonry. The joints will be filled with bitumenunder pressure. The exposed surfaces of the concrete members willbe treated with pulverized brick and provided with artificial verti-cal joints. This method has been tried in the past and has provedquite useful.

Mud plaster. Salt-free mud will be plastered on the outside faces ofthe walls to afford some protection of the brickwork The salt col-lecting on the surface crystallizes in the plaster causing this to dis-integrate instead of the brickwork.

Mud-capping. Although the annual rate of rainfall at Moenjodarois low. its intensity is very high. The rain-water absorbed by the topsurfaces of walls travels downwards into the core and comes out ata lower level bringing with it mud mortar from the core and fromthe joints of the masonry. However. if one or two layers of mud-bricks are kept on the top surfaces of the walls. the rain-waterdissolves these mud-bricks and the thick mud slurry which flowsdownwards not only replenishes the weathered. decomposed andsalt-affected mud mortar. which has come out from the joints ofthe brickwork through the effects of wind and rain. but at the sametime makes the tops of the walls watertight as well. Apart fromthis. the mud of the bricks dissolved in the rain-water leaves a thinfilm of slurry coating which protects the masonry of the walls fromsalts borne by wind. This process has proved very effective.

Removal of salt-laden earth. The salt-saturated soil within therooms has a damaging effect on the walls which are in contact withit. It has been observed that where the salt content of the soil islow. the degree of decay is also low in comparison with soil withhigh salt content. Experiments were conducted in certain areas andsalt-saturated soil was removed from the rooms and replaced bysweet-earth maintaining the original levels. It was observed that alayer of sand spread below the sweet-earth considerably blockedthe re-entry of salts into upper layers. This measure has checkedthe action taking place at ground level where the walls are in

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contact with the soil and has been very helpful in saving the brickmasonry from the disastrous effects of the salts.

Brick-on-edge flooring. Like most of the wails. the brick-on-edgeflooring. both ordinary as well as cut and dressed, has also becomedecayed and disintegrated. Moreover the floor. being at groundlevel, has suffered more from the disastrous effects of salinity thanother structural remains. Even the floor of the Great Bath, whichhad a sealing layer of bitumen under it, was completely decom-posed and had to be renovated.

Drainage. At the end of the excavations, all the rooms. streets andhouses had been left at different levels with the result that therain-water now accumulates in different depths inside these struc-tures all over the sites until it is either absorbed into the ground orevaporated in the atmosphere. This has a highly damaging effecton the structures and weakens the very foundations of the build-ings. In order to overcome the situation. it is necessary to: (a)maintain proper levels in all these rooms. houses and streets, sothat the rain-water may flow easily out of the city area without anyobstruction; and (b) provide a network of drainage pipes. sewersand channels to collect rain-water from the different levels anddischarge it away from the sites into the river or other low-lyingareas.

Removal of debris. The millions of tonnes of debris which wereexcavated while exploring the remains were not. unfortunately,disposed of away from the site but dumped adjacent to the ex-cavated remains. This spoil earth is highly saturated with salts andas it is at an elevated level the rain-water flows down these dumpsinto the remains. carrying large quantities of salts that saturate thesoil and attack the brickwork Apart from being a source of saltinflow. these debris dumps also obstruct the drainage of the siteand prevent the rain-water from flowing away into low-lying areas.The dumps of debris are to be removed to a safer distance.

Protection againstthe River Indus

Moenjodaro is located on the right bank of the River Indus, whichruns at a distance of about a kilometre from the eastern edge of theremains. During the last three decades or so. the river in front ofMoenjodaro has been eroding its banks at varying rate at one or

the other place and has been moving closer and closer to the ar-chaeological remains. The existing depressions in the north andsouth of the remains. though small. are stated to be old rivercourses, One of the probable reasons of destruction of this ancientcity. according to experts. is the River Indus. The invaluable herit-age of the ancient civilization has thus been under a constantthreat of erosion from the meandering and mighty Indus. Thefront embankment at a distance of about 4 km downstream of theremains became eroded during the early 1960s. This added to theapprehension of both the experts and the public. To keep the cur-rent of the Indus at safe distance a scheme was prepared by Pakis-tani specialists in 1972. It proposes that the system of training theriver for the protection of Moenjodaro should be on a permanentfooting so that (a) it pins down the extreme limit of the current atan optimum safe distance from the right edge of the river: (b) it issubject to the least possible strain during its life span. so that itsmaintenance can be kept at a minimum: and (c) it does not createany erosion problem elsewhere.

The scheme suggested construction of a hockey-cum-slopingspur and a guide bank. It could not be implemented mainly dueto financial constraints. Meanwhile the river conditions changedaltogether during the high floods of 1973 and 1975. It was there-fore considered necessary to have the scheme for training the riverreframed to suit the changed river conditions. The revised schemeenvisages the construction of seven short T-head spurs in the riverreach between mile 16/5 to mile 22/5 of Larkana-Sehwan Bund.

Landscaping andplantation of salt-tolerant trees

Lately. it has been observed that wind-borne salts also constitute asource of destruction. The salts are brought by the prevailing windsor wind storms from adjoining areas. In order to provide protec-tion from this potential threat. it is proposed to have landscapingof the site around the remains and to plant salt-resistant trees andgrass. It is expected that this will reduce the drifting of salts andtheir carriage by winds and by contact with the atmosphere. Thetrees will be planted in belts around the remains. The species oftrees and grass have been recommended by specialists in the field.

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Internationalsymposium

The Director-General of Unesco, in his message to the interna-tional symposium. held in Pakistan in 1973. while recognizing theneed for the preservation of Moenjodaro, remarked that these re-mains represented one of the greatest manifestations of the histori-cal and cultural achievement of ancient man, and they belongednot only to Pakistan. but also to the entire world. He concluded hismessage by expressing his confidence that ‘if we work together, wecan save Moenjodaro’.

H.I.H. Prince Takahito Mikasa of Japan. who was also a dele-gate to the symposium. in his address said:

This is indeed the most precious heritage of all mankind and we do wishthat it should be saved by all possible means, so that we may be able topass it on to the next generation. I consider it the duty of all the partici-pants in the Symposium to communicate to their own people what theyhave seen and discussed at Moenjodaro. It will help to mobihze worldpublic opinion in order to preserve the relics of the great and most valu-able Indus Valley Civilization.

The delegates to the symposium, in a unanimous resolution.stressed the significance of Moenjodaro and the gravity of theproblem of its preservation in the following words:

That the Director-General of Unesco be informed of the success of thiswidely attended Symposium. with the earnest and urgent hope that theMaster Plan which the Symposium discussed and approved for the con-servation of the site of Moenjodaro as an outstanding monument ofmankind’s earlier aspiration and advance towards a mature civilizationmay be implemented as a project of high priority. worthy in every senseof the fullest international support. Moenjodaro is a memorial not merelyof the State of Pakistan. which is now fully conscious of its responsibilities

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as its custodian, but is a visual document of the initial progress of human-ity towards an evolved civilization. It is indeed today the property ofmankind.

Professor Van Lohuizon de-Leeuw, University of Amsterdam, inher address to the delegates of the Second Conference on SouthAsian Archaeology. held in 1973. drew their attention to the chal-lenging task of the preservation of Moenjodaro in the followingwords :

The outstanding remains of Moenjodaro are in a state of utter disintegra-tion and decay and are rapidly approaching the fate of total destruction.Moenjodaro. the city of the dead. is indeed rapidly decaying and ap-proaching its own death.

The importance of Moenjodaro is thus universally accepted. Tosave the site from total destruction is also important for yet anotherreason. The origin of the Indus Valley Civilization is not yetknown. In order to unfold this mystery. it is necessary. not onlythat the site be preserved but the water-table be reduced to makedeep diggings possible. Only then can we know about the earlieroccupational levels of Moenjodaro.

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Appeal bythe Director-Generalof Unesco

M. Amadou-MahtarM’Bow. Director-General of Unescoand His ExcellencyIqbal A. Akhund.Ambassador. MinisterExtraordinary andPlenipotentiary.Permanent Delegateof Pakistan IO Unesco.signing the agreementbetween Unescoand the Governmentof Pakistan.

The General Conference of Unesco. by resolution 3.421 adopted atits seventeenth session. authorized the Director-General to mobi-lize international assistance for the preservation of Moenjodaro,which represented a culture that flourished in the Indus Valley5.000 years ago and was notable for its advanced town planning.hydraulic works and community. The Director-General of Unescolaunched an appeal on 11 January 1974 to the conscience of theworld to raise $5 million. The total cost of the priority work. whichwould take five years to complete, was obviously beyond the re-sources of a developing country like Pakistan which had to meet so

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many needs. however skilled its technicians and however deter-mined its leaders. The Director-General of Unesco said:

By the generous provision of money, equipment and services, govern-ments, public and private individuals will not merely be helping to savea precious record of man’s past. they will also be demonstrating andstrengthening that intellectual and moral solidarity on which true peacemust be founded.

Moves to make the master plan a reality started soon after itsapproval by the General Conference. Unesco made availablefunds for equipment for two experimental tube-wells which wereset up at the site. Unesco also provided equipment for a laboratoryat Moenjodaro. a study course for the chemist in charge of it. amission to Egypt by the Pakistani Director of the Project, so thathe could profit from the experience of the campaign to save themonuments of Nubia. and an on-site course at Moenjodaro forconservators working on the remains. Simultaneously. the Govern-ment of Pakistan. pending execution of the master plan. prepareda scheme for short-term measures to arrest the further decay of theremains. In addition. access roads have been made, a hotel builtand an airport constructed to bring the site within easy reach oftourists.

The agreement between Unesco and the Government of Pakistanwas signed on 10 October 1979. It provides that Unesco, throughvoluntary contributions, will make an effort to raise a sum of $5million for the project. The international community has so farcontributed an amount of $1.2 million to the Trust Fund forMoenjodaro. Unesco has therefore again appealed to its MemberStates and Associate Members to support the project. which willensure for the people of Pakistan and for the whole of mankind thepreservation of one of the world’s most important sites marking, theemergence of urban civilization from the preceding simple neo-lithic communities.