The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and its Connection with Other Scripts c6.50

c6.50

Date. Seals like the one found by Mr. Mackay have been found in abundance at various levels at Mohenjodaro and Harappa. The square seal portraying a bull, with one horn visible, standing in profile (facing right), with the symbol [Figure:] in front of his fore-feet, and the text written horizontally across the upper portion of the face of the seal¹, is the commonest find at either site. Now this is the only Indus Valley find in Mesopotamia that can be approximately dated, unless we accept as of Indian provenance the seal found recently by Mr. Woolley, and accept also the genuineness of the cuneiform characters it bears. The latter, which was recently on temporary exhibit in the Assyrian basement of the British Museum would appear to belong to the third millennium B.C. The Kish seal also is not later than 2000 B.C. Meanwhile in India itself, while there is evidence of intercourse with Mesopotamia,² that evidence is insufficient to enable us satisfactorily to date any particular stratum of the ruins. There are a few square seals of black marble, similar in shape and size to those found in Mesopotamia of the archaic period. Some of these bear no legend, and have therefore not been included in these plates. But the ordinary square seal with inscription, that has been yielded in hundreds by Mohenjodaro and Harappa, is different as to material, shape, and the ring attachment on the reverse from these archaic seals. On Sumerian and Elamite analogy, then, one would be inclined to ascribe the archaic-looking seal to the fourth millennium B.C.; while on the evidence of the Kish seal one would ascribe the ordinary seal with ring attachment to the third millennium and perhaps to part of the second also. This does not preclude the possibility of their survival into a later period.