Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.118

c12.118

Leaving for the time being the type and significance of the seals themselves, we may note a few definite facts about the Harappā script. Once again it is necessary to say that it has not been read or transliterated; the language it represents is quite unknown; the script has no direct affinities with any other known ancient script in Western Asia (or indeed elsewhere). These facts have not, however, deterred the irresponsible theorist, and the Harappā inscriptions have been ‘read’ with a bland assurance and a complete lack of any authority by more than one person, and given more than one interpretation. One can only say that, apart from attempts to connect it with the nineteenth-century ‘script’ of the natives of Easter Island in the Pacific, the Harappā script has perhaps suffered less from lunatics than the Minoan. But perhaps it is only the shortness of the available Harappā inscriptions that has deprived us of such entertaining fantasies as the transliteration of the Phaistos Disc into Basque hexameters.