Figure 1.--The Indus people are enigmstic as they have left relatively few depictions. Archeologists have found beautiful, but obscure small, square steatite seals which are impressed with human or animal motifs. Numerous such seals have been found at Mohenjo-daro, many bearing pictographic inscriptions which are believed to be a script. This one ws apparently found in Harappa. Unfortunately, no one has yet dechired this script. It is probably not proto-Sanskrit, but little is actually known about the script. We like to load depictions of children, but we know of no such imagery from the Indus Valley civilzations.

There are only limited samples of Indus Valley civilization (Harappan) script. While about 4,000 artifacts with script have been found, most have only about five characters. Most of these items were seals. This makes any study of script very difficult. And as a result, the script which has been found still have not been dechiphered. The origins of the script fate to the fourth millenium B.C. The script gradually developed into what seems a mature writing system (26th and 20th centuries BC). As the Indus civilization seems to have disappered abruptly, it has no lingustic descendants in the modern world. The fact that the language the script is based on is completely unknown language greatly complicates the problem of dechiperment. The number of characters/signs suggests that the Indus script is probably logophonetic. This neans it had both signs which had meanings and signs representing phonetic values. The language appears to be an isolate. It is not known if the language is related to other Indian language. It is even unknown whether the early Indus scripts were truly a writing system. Although the Indus people were in contact with Mesopotamia, there are no known bilingual texts. Unless such a text is found, decioherment seems unlikely.

Created: 4:56 AM 12/10/2009
Last updated: 4:57 AM 12/10/2009