Mohenjo-Daro is the largest known city of the Indus Valley Civilization, with an inhabited area now estimated, thanks to surface survey work, at over 250ha. The city proper, covering an area of ca. 80ha as explored through excavations, is a well-planned city located today some 5km from the Indus River. It is not known whether the river flowed closer to the town in Harappan times.
Mohenjo-Daro is also the most extensively explored Harappan city, thanks to excavations conducted first in 1921 by R. D. Banarji, then from 1922 to 1927 by Sir John Marshall, the first director of antiquities of British India, with E. J. H. Mackay continuing until 1931. Work has continued sporadically since the Second World War by British, American, and German teams. Struck by major floods in antiquity on at least three occasions, the city still faces danger today. Through capillary action, the ancient brick buildings suck water from deep in the ground. The salts left behind after the water evaporates corrode the buildings. Effective protection against the rapid disintegration of Harappan architecture has yet to be found.
Although the city wall has not yet come to light, Marshall assumed Mohenjo-Daro was fortified, as has been attested at Harappa and at other, smaller sites. The wall would lie buried beneath the unexcavated alluvial deposits in the surrounding plain. The city plan consists of two main sectors, a higher part in the west, misleadingly called the “citadel” (Figure 4.2), and a lower, larger town to the east. The placement of important public buildings in the north-west, characteristic of the major Harappan sites, recalls Mesopotamian practice: one thinks of the ziggurat and temenos at Ur, sited in the north-west of that city. In contrast with Mesopotamia, however, the lower town
Was laid out on a rough grid plan, with straight streets crossing at right angles. The streets were oriented to the cardinal points of the compass, perhaps for religious reasons, such as to connect the city with the cosmos. In another major difference, baked brick was extensively used, with air-dried mud bricks reserved for fill. Both baked and air-dried bricks came in standard sizes, such as 7cm X 14cm x 28cm. In bathrooms they might be sawn into smaller pieces, and for curved structures such as wells, wedge-shaped bricks were used. This ratio of 1:2:4 for thickness to width to length was standard throughout the Harap-pan world. These proportions were used not only for bricks but also appeared often in the design of rooms, houses, and public buildings. Similarly, stone weights, abundant at Mohenjo-Daro, conform to a uniform system of weights and measures.
Figure 4.2 Plan, the Citadel, Mohenjo-Daro
Why baked bricks? It has been proposed that baked bricks were developed as protection against flooding. Whatever the reason for the initial development, baked bricks became standard in other construction where its water-resistant qualities were key: lining the drains routinely installed in Harappan streets. Such networks of drains, from the latrines of private houses to side streets to large drains from the main streets, covered with bricks or dressed stone, were a common and distinctive feature of Harappan cities. Such systems of public hygiene far surpassed contemporary Mesopotamian or Egyptian efforts.
World History
