Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c13.28

c13.28

A most interesting contrast and comparison with Harappā is afforded by the Jhukar seals and allied amulets found abundantly in Chanhu-daro II (Fig. 27). The seals are made of pottery, faience, stone, and metal, and are totally different in their ornamental motifs from the well-known Harappā series; they also lack any inscriptions. But they are stamp-seals (usually circular, exceptionally square) within the great Western Asiatic family of such objects, and certain parallels can be noted. One of the faience seals has a pattern precisely comparable with that on the copper seals from the Shahi-tump cemetery; the treatment of animals on two others recalls Sumer and Elam rather than anything Indian; an interlaced coil pattern on another seal is best paralleled in Hittite contexts in Asia Minor, and this region produces many other less precise parallels for the types of seals and double-sided amulets in Chanhu-daro II. Whatever may be said of the pottery, the Jhukar seals are foreign to India, and imply newcomers from the west, not unconnected with those who buried their dead at Shahi-tump.