Great Bath

Construction

The tank measures about twelve by seven metres and is some 2.4 metres deep, with brick steps leading down at the north and south ends. It was made watertight with tightly fitted sawn brick set in gypsum mortar and backed by a layer of bitumen, with a further brick wall behind — an unusual investment in waterproofing.

An outlet drain leads from one corner to a corbelled channel. Around the tank runs a colonnaded corridor, with rooms behind it on several sides, and a well nearby that could have supplied it.

Interpretation

The care taken over waterproofing, its position on the raised mound among the other large structures, and the scale of the thing have led most interpreters to read it as a ritual bathing tank rather than a swimming pool or a reservoir. The parallel usually drawn is with the tanks attached to later Indian temples and the importance of ritual bathing in later Indian religion.

The reading is plausible and is not established. There is no image, inscription or associated deposit indicating what happened there. The rooms alongside have been read as changing rooms or as priests' quarters, both of which are inferences from the assumption rather than evidence for it.

Significance

The Great Bath is the strongest single piece of evidence that Indus cities had communal or ceremonial functions concentrated on the raised mound. It is also a good illustration of the limits of the material: the most impressive public structure in the best-known Indus city can be described in detail and cannot be explained.