The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables c4.s2: 2. The Indus seals and the external contacts of the Indus Civilization
The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables c4.s2
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2. The Indus seals and the external contacts of the Indus Civilization
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Immediately after the first news about the discovery of the Indus Civilization was published in 1924,⁹ it became apparent that the Harappans had been in contact with the ancient cultures of West Asia. Evidence for this was Indus seals coming from Susa, Ur, and other Mesopotamian sites;
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⁹ See John Marshall, First light on a long forgotten civilization, *The Illustrated London News*, 20 Sept. 1924, 528-532, 548.
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For the other Harappan sites in India with objects included in this volume, see the preliminary yearly reports in *Indian Archaeology - A Review* (= IAR, quoted here gratefully from the unpublished index by Gregory L. Possehl): Alamgirpur, 58-59: 50-55; Banawali, 83-84: 24-29; Chandigarh, 70-71: 7-8; Desalpur, 63-64: 10-12; Hulas, 82-83: 100-103; Kalibangan, 60-61: 31-33; 61-62: 39-44; 62-63: 20-31; 63-64: 30-39; 64-65: 35-39; 65-66: 38-41; 66-67: 31-33; 67-68: 42-45; 68-69: 28-32; Pabumath, 78-79: 67-68; 80-81: 14; Prabhas Patan, 55-56: 7-8; 56-57: 16-17; 71-72: 12-13; 75-76: 13; 76-77: 17-18; Rohira, 82-83: 65-66; Rojdi, 57-58: 18-23; 58-59: 19-21; 62-63: 8; 64-65: 12; 82-83: 28; 83-84: 19-20; Rupar, 53-54: 6-7; 54-55: 9; Surkotada, 70-71: 13-15; 71-72: 13-21. For Dholavira, cf. D.K. Vaidya, The Harappan seal from Kotda Timba near Dholavira in Khadir, *Bulletin of the Baroda Museum* 25 (1973-74), 33-36 & pl. XI; for Rakhigarhi, cf. Eric Grinstead and Asko Parpola, A Harappan seal from Rakhigarhi, Haryana, *Acta Orientalia* 35 (1973), 103-114 & pl. I; for Tarkhanewala-dera, cf. A. Ghosh, The Rajputana Desert - its archaeological aspect, *Bulletin of the National Institute of Sciences of India* 1 (1952), 37-42.
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among these were both square stamp seals of a purely native Harappan type and seals combining Harappan and local elements such as the cylinder form.¹⁰
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¹⁰ See C. J. Gadd, Seals of Ancient Indian style found at Ur, *Proceedings of the British Academy* 18, 1932, 406-422 & pl. I-III. See now also Dilip K. Chakrabarti, Seals as an evidence of Indus - West Asia interrelations, in: Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (ed.), *History and Society: Essays in honour of Professor Niharranjan Roy*, Calcutta 1978, 93-116; Robert H. Brunswig, Jr., Asko Parpola and Daniel Potts, New Indus type and related seals from the Near East, in: Potts (ed.) 1983 (see fn. 12), 101-115 & pl. I-III.
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Later, a few round Indus seals (a type rarely found in the Indus valley) were discovered along with a large number of local round stamp seals¹¹ on the islands of Failaka and Bahrain in the Gulf, where excavations since the 1950's have revealed a flourishing "Dilmun Civilization".¹² Furthermore when one purely "Dilmun-type" seal (L-123) was found at Lothal,¹³ much attention was paid to cuneiform sources dealing with the early maritime trade of Mesopotamia. Three foreign countries are referred to as participants of the sea trade: Dilmun (closest to Mesopotamia), Magan and (farthest away) Meluḫḫa. Magan is now widely identified with Oman and the opposite coast of Makran, and Meluḫḫa with the Harappan realm. Some tablets refer to a village of Meluḫḫans residing near Lagash for generations.¹⁴
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¹¹ See Geoffrey Bibby, The 'Ancient Indian Style' Seals from Bahrain, *Antiquity* 32, 1958, 243-246 & pl. XXVI-XXVII; Brunswig et al. (see footnote 9); and Poul Kjærum, *Danish Archaeological Investigations on Failaka, Kuwait. Dilmun/Failaka - The Second Millennium Settlement*, Vol. 1:1 Stamp and Cylinder Seals, Jutland Archaeological Society Publication XVII:1, Aarhus 1983.
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¹² See Geoffrey Bibby, *Looking for Dilmun*, Pelican Books, Harmondsworth, 1972; Daniel Potts (ed.), *Dilmun: New Studies in the Archaeology and early history of Bahrain*, Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient, 2, Berlin 1983; Amiet 1986 (see fn. 20), 171-180. For the cuneiform references to Dilmun, see Pettinato 1972 (see fn. 14).
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¹³ Cf. S.R. Rao, A 'Persian Gulf Seal from Lothal, *Antiquity* 37, 1963, 96-99 & pl. IX-XI. Some further Dilmun seals are reported from the submerged city of Bet-Dwaraka off the Kathiawar coast (cf. *The Statesman*, Delhi, April 17, 1985), but they are yet to be published.
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¹⁴ A. Leo Oppenheim, The seafaring merchants of Ur, *Journal of the American Oriental Society* 74 (1954), 6-17; Giovanni Pettinato, Il commercio con l'estero della Mesopotamia meridionale nel 3. millennio av. Cr. alla luce delle fonti letterarie e lessicali sumeriche, *Mesopotamia* 7, 1972, 43-166; Simo Parpola, Asko Parpola and Robert H. Brunswig, Jr., The Meluḫḫa village: evidence of acculturation of Harappan traders in late third millennium Mesopotamia? *Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient* 20:2, 1977, 120-165.
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The gradual evolution of the Indus Civilization from the earlier neolithic cultures of the Indo-Iranian borderlands and the relationship of these cultures with those of the ancient Near East and particularly with the cultures of the Iranian plateau and Turkmenia have started being properly understood only during the past decade or so. The French excavations at Pirak (1968-74)¹⁵ and at Mehrgarh, Sibri and Nausharo (1974-87) have been really revolutionary in providing an unbroken stratigraphic sequence from the early 7th millennium to the middle of the 1st millennium B.C. in the Kachi plain, which leads from the Indus valley to the highlands of Baluchistan.¹⁶ The Italian excavations at Shahr-i Sokhta in Seistan,¹⁷ the American excavations at Tepe Yahya in Southeastern Iran,¹⁸ and the Soviet excavations in Central Asia¹⁹ are just some of the other crucial archaeological research projects of recent times which have created a veritable explosion of knowledge. The emerging new picture stresses the leading role played by the Proto-Elamites in the increasing cultural interaction in the Iranian plateau during the first half of the third millennium B.C.²⁰
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¹⁵ J.-F. Jarrige, M. Santoni & J.F. Enault, *Fouilles de Pirak* I-II, Paris 1979.
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¹⁶ See J.-F. Jarrige, Chronology of the earlier periods of the Greater Indus as seen from Mehrgarh, Pakistan, in: B. Allchin (ed.), *South Asian Archaeology 1981*, Cambridge 1984, 21-28; id., Continuity and change in the North Kachi
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¹⁷ Maurizio Tosi (ed.), Prehistoric Seistan, Vol. 1, Roma 1983.
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¹⁸ C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran, 1967-1969, American School of Prehistoric Research Bulletin 27, Cambridge, Mass. 1970; id., Tepe Yahya 1971 - Mesopotamia and the Indo-Iranian Borderlands, Iran 10 (1972), 89-100.
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¹⁹ See Philip L. Kohl (ed.), The Bronze Age Civilization of Central Asia: Recent Soviet Discoveries, New York 1981; Viktor I. Sarianidi, Die Kunst des alten Afghanistan, Leipzig 1986.
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²⁰ Cf. C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, Third millennium structure and process: From the Euphrates to the Indus and the Oxus to the Indian Ocean, Oriens Antiquus 25: 3-4 (1986), 189-219; Pierre Amiet, L'âge des échanges inter-iraniens 3500-1700 avant J.-C., Notes et documents des musées de France 11, Paris 1986.
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Another revelation is the expansion of the Bronze Age Civilization of Northeast Iran during the second half of the third millennium from the Gorgan plain (Tepe Hissar III and related sites) to Southern Turkmenia (Namazga V and related sites), to Seistan (Shahdad), to ancient Bactria (Dashly and Sapalli in Northern Afghanistan), to Baluchistan and to the Indus valley.²¹ The current excavations of Sibri and Nausharo near Mehrgarh have proved that intrusive NE Iranians became a dominant element in the lower Indus valley around 2000 B.C, and that their merging with the Indus Civilization started the Late Harappan period.²²
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²¹ Cf. the literature in fn. 19 and 20. There are weighty reasons to assume that the NE Iranians represent the first wave of Aryan-speaking immigrants in South Asia, cf. Roman Ghirshman, L'Iran et la migration des Indo-aryens et des Iraniens, Leiden 1977; Homer L. Thomas, Archaeological evidence for the migrations of the Indo-Europeans, in: Edgar C. Polome (ed.), The Indo-Europeans in the Fourth and Third Millennia, Ann Arbor 1982, 61-86; A. Parpola, The pre-Vedic Indian background of the srauta rituals, in: Frits Staal (ed.), Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar, Vol. II, Berkeley 1983, 41-75; moreover, the three-walled fortress of Dashly suggests that the NE Iranians were the Dāsas mentioned as their enemies by the Rigvedic Aryans, cf. A. Parpola, The Sky Garment, Studia Orientalia 57, Helsinki 1985, 76-78.
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²² Cf. Jean-François Jarrige, Les relations entre l'Asie centrale méridionale, le Baluchistan et la vallée de l'Indus à la fin du 3e et au début du 2e millénaire, in: L'Archéologie de la Bactriane Ancienne, Paris 1985, 105-120; id., Der Kulturkomplex von Mehrgarh (Periode VIII) und Sibri, Der "Schatz" von Quetta, In: Vergessene Städte am Indus: Frühe Kulturen in Pakistan vom 8.-2. Jahrtausend v. Chr., Mainz 1987, 102-111.
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This immigration is reflected in the seals of the Jhukar period at Chanhujo-daro in Sind (C-41 to 50, especially C-49 and C-50) and at Shahi-Tump (Sht-1) and Mehi (Mehi-1) in Baluchistan. Distant interaction between the NE Iranian and Indus Civilizations is evidenced earlier during the Mature Harappan period. While two Harappan seals have been unearthed at Altin Tepe in southern Turkmenia,²³ one clearly NE Iranian type stepped seal comes from Harappa (see H-166).24 The
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²³ See V.M. Masson, Seals of a Proto-Indian Type from Altyn-depe, in: Kohl (ed.) 1981 (see fn. 19), 149-162, with
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plain (Baluchistan, Pakistan) at the beginning of the second millennium B.C., in: J. Schotsmans and M. Taddei (eds.), South Asian Archaeology 1983, Naples 1985, Vol. 1, 35-68; etc.
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few cylinder seals found at the Indus sites have so far been thought to indicate connections with Mesopotamia, where this seal type is most characteristic. However, we now know that the NE Iranian civilization, too, used cylinder seals (which there, of course, ultimately go back to Mesopotamian inspiration);25 indeed, one cylinder seal from Mohenjo-daro (M-419) resembles more closely the NE Iranian type cylinders in having an engraved motif at the round ends, too. It seems that the cylinder seals of Daimabad (Dmd-4) and Maski (Msk-1) continue the NE Iranian tradition.
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Thus the seals have played a leading role in the discovery of the Indus Civilization and its external relations. They continue to be centrally important in the archaeological study of the bronze age, not least as chronological indicators.26