Mohenjo-daro

The city

The site covers well over a square kilometre and is divided, as Indus cities characteristically are, into a raised western mound and a lower eastern town. The lower town is laid out on a grid of streets running north-south and east-west, with blocks of houses built of standardised baked brick, most of them arranged around internal courtyards and equipped with wells, bathing platforms and drains.

The drainage is the most remarked-upon feature: covered brick channels run beneath the streets, fed from individual houses, with inspection holes for clearing. Nothing comparable is known from contemporary Mesopotamia or Egypt.

The raised mound

The western mound carries the buildings usually called public, though what they were for is not established. The Great Bath is a watertight sunken tank of finely fitted brick sealed with bitumen, approached by steps at either end. Beside it stands a large structure with regular brick plinths, conventionally called the granary though no grain has been found in it, and a pillared hall.

No building has been identified as a temple or a palace, and no royal burial or unambiguous ruler image has been found — which is the central puzzle of Indus political archaeology.

Excavation and condition

R. D. Banerji identified the site in 1922, and excavation proceeded under John Marshall, Ernest Mackay and later Mortimer Wheeler. Only a portion has been dug.

The site is now seriously threatened. Salt crystallisation from a raised water table is destroying the exposed brickwork, and conservation has been difficult and intermittent. Excavation has largely been suspended in favour of protection, and parts of what earlier archaeologists uncovered have since deteriorated badly.

The name

Mohenjo-daro is a modern Sindhi name meaning something close to the mound of the dead. What its inhabitants called it is unknown, and will remain so unless the Indus script is read.