The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c20.21

c20.21

Tell Asmar, which has produced two of the seals and significant etched carnelian beads (p. 76), has yielded other relevant material from the same Akkadian deposits. Bone inlays of the characteristic Indus kidney-shape, based on the cross-section of the much-used *chank* or conch-shell, are included, together with pottery bearing knobs *en barbotine*, such as occurs both at Mohenjo-daro and Harappā² but does not seem otherwise to have been located. Far less precise in its indication is the occurrence of a humped bull on Early Dynastic “scarlet ware” at Tell Agrab in the Diyala valley, north-east of Baghdad, and on a steatite vase of Early Dynastic I–II from the same site.¹ The former distribution of the humped bull is not accurately known, and there is nothing Harappan in the workmanship of these examples. It is equally difficult to attach any precise significance to a humped bull scratched on clay in the Sargonid period at Tell Asmar,² or to terra-cotta figurines of humped bulls in Susa D and at Tell Billa. On the other hand, an indubitable link with the West is provided by the fragment of a pyxis of greenish-grey stone (chlorite schist) found at a low and presumably early level in Mohenjo-daro.³ It is carved with the semblance of interwoven matting and is a part of a vessel of known type representing a circular hut with door and windows. Similar stone house-urns have been found at Khafaje, Ur (in the Queen's grave), Kish, Lagash, Adab and Mari in Early Dynastic contexts, and consistently in Susa "II".⁴ Piggott is inclined to trace the type to Makrān and Sīstān, where it occurs and whence it was presumably exported east and west as container of some much-prized local unguent.⁵ Other stone vessels or hardware imitations of them, with simpler chevron or hatched-triangle decoration, probably lasted to a later date but seem to illustrate a similar diffusion; they are square or cylindrical, and are sometimes divided into four compartments to hold separate spices or unguents. Several of them come from Mehi in southern Baluchistan, and others have been found in the upper levels of Mohenjo-daro.⁶