The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and its Connection with Other Scripts c9.7

c9.7

The resemblance of our script to Proto-Elamite is closer than its resemblance to Sumerian. This is natural in view of the geographical proximity of Baluchistan to Elam. The resemblance to Sumerian is not really apparent till we reach the Jemdet-Nasr period. Now the script of that period (B.C. 3500) is so closely related to Proto-Elamite that Professor Langdon affirms a common ancestry of the two. This would seem to be confirmed by the evidence of our script, which approaches the Sumerian in similarity in measure that the latter approaches Proto-Elamite. One is led to the conclusion that the element in our script which was borrowed from Mesopotamia was borrowed at a period before the separation of the Sumerian and Proto-Elamite scripts. Of course it is possible that all three had a common ancestry, and that the Egyptian element in our script alone was borrowed. It is even possible that all four scripts may have had a common origin. But this is an enquiry that does not concern us here, and which in the nature of pictography, would be very hard to solve without the aid of anthropological evidence as to whether or not there was in prehistoric times racial affinity between the inhabitants of the Nile, Euphrates and Indus valleys.