MOHENJO-DARO: The Symbolic Landscape of an Ancient City by Gregory L. Possehl
The University of Pennsylvania Museum
Philadelphia, PA 19104

The Indus or Harappan Civilization arose on the plains of the greater Indus Valley, Baluchistan, Gujarat and northwestern India in the middle of the third millennium BC. (2500-1900 BC). Mohenjo-daro is one of the principal urban centers of this Bronze Age civilization. It appears to have been a "founder's settlement" conceived and built very early in the history of the Indus Civilization, possibly within the so-called "Early Harappan-Mature Harappan Transition" (2600-2500 BC), a period of pyroxic change within which the distinctively urban features of Indus life were defined and developed. Given the observation that Mohenjo-daro is an urban environment that was first conceived and planned, then built, at the very beginnings of the Indus Civilization there is reason to believe that it reflects the new ideology of the Harappan peoples, just as the various "Alexandrias" reflect the ideology of the ancient Greeks. One of the clearest ideological principles of the Indus Civilization is in fact urbanization itself.

Another ideological focus of the Indus peoples is water, and its management. This is clearly seen at Mohenjo-daro with the many brick lined wells, elaborate drainage system, bathing facilities in virtually all of the houses, and a ritual structure commonly called the "Great Bath." The bathing facilities in each house inform us that washing and cleanliness was important to the Harappans. We have to anticipate that this involved both physical cleanliness, as well as something of a more symbolic nature. The many wells throughout the city were sources of new, pure water, essential for effective cleanliness. The drainage system served to move the effluent away from the houses, and their occupants, below ground, safely out of the way and safely out of sight, in brick lined channels that prevented massive contamination of the earth of the city.

In some ways the Great Bath is simply a bathing facility, raised to the civic level. It is larger and more complex, but conforms to the proposition, that cleanliness (both physical and symbolic) was an important element in the Harappan ideology. It is interesting too that the builders of the Great Bath used elevation and distance to symbolically set it apart from the rest of Mohenjo-daro. This was important ritual space, and one that would seem to have been reserved for the elites of the city, possibly all of the Mature Harappan world.

Gregory L. Possehl
is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, and is the Curator of the Asia Section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Professor Possehl received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1974. He has conducted excavations in India on the Indus Civilization since 1980. His recent publications include: Indus Age: The Beginnings, 1999; Indus Age: The Writing System, 1996; Harappan Civilization and Rojdi, 1989.