The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and its Connection with Other Scripts c9.5

c9.5

Many of the signs bear a remarkable resemblance to the monumental script of Ancient Egypt. The entire body of anthropomorphous signs have Egyptian equivalents which are virtually exact. And it is interesting to note that not one of these anthropomorphous signs have the remotest parallel in Sumerian or Proto-Elamite. On the other hand there are many of our signs that are exactly paralleled in the Proto-Elamite and Jemdet-Nasr tablets, such as ⁋ that have no conceivable morphographic equivalent in Egyptian. One is bound to conclude that the presumption is strong that our script has been borrowed in part from Egypt, and in part from Mesopotamia.¹ Of course there is a considerable proportion of signs that are common to all three scripts, such as the signs for tree, fish, bird. But this is coincidental, and indeed inevitable in the very nature of pictography. It is only safe to draw inferences of causal connection where the less obvious and more conventionalised ideograms, especially those that are so conventionalised that their pictographic origin is hardly determinable, show a marked correspondence; and in a lesser degree, where easily recognisable pictographs show the same variations. Now the latter is very marked as between our script and Proto-Elamite, as will appear from a study of the Comparative Table.