Page 310 - The Tigris Expedition

In the Indus Valley in Search of Meluhha

the Indus civilisation a
deuce it is most remarkable. It will give of the Sumerian and
formative date coinciding with the foundation
Egyptian dynasties. It is not surprising that si m pier minds are ready
at that time
to accept the wildest of all theories, that civilisation
dropped down on our planet from outer space.
When our guide, Sani, led us between the ancient walls of
Mohenjo-Daro, the broad streets were empty and the roofless ruins
around us looked naked and cheerless, gaping towards the sky. But
in our minds we filled the avenues and side-lanes with visions fresh
in our memory. If anything, life in Mohenjo-Daro had been still
more colourful, still more attractive and advanced than in Ormara.
It was easy to imagine the tumultuous movement of crowds in the
main streets, while others sat lazily in the shaded side lanes dozing,
chatting, or playing games. One could almost hear the noises and
scent the smells of hump-necked cattle, hay and spices that filled the
air between sunbaked walls at the height of the day; tanned men and
women hurrying by with beasts and burdens; rumbling carts with
palm leaves for thatching or with cotton for the weavers and food
for the market; fishermen with baskets on their heads; bakers with
their warm bread; women with eggs, pastries and tropical fruits;
crying babies, singing birds; the clinking from the smithy; bleating
beasts and shouting children running through the side-lanes while
others sat indoors with priests teaching them the script we have
never managed to decipher.
I We had to multiply our impressions of Ormara a hundredfold to
recreate the life of Mohenjo-Daro with its vaster dimensions,
broader streets and higher standards. Ormara had never been
designed. Each little hut had been put up at the convenience of the
fisherman who had built it for his own family. That village, like
most others, had been created by natural growth over centuries and
had led to no major invention. No sewage system. As we walked
through Mohenjo-Daro, from the lower town up the stairways
between the buildings clustered around the central tower, we knew,
from what fifty years of excavation had revealed, that this was the
empty shell of a community once ruled by a priest-king, regarded as
a demi-god, just as were the rulers of Mesopotamia and Egypt.
These streets, carefully oriented to the sun, had seen his wise men
walking about among the common crowd: high priests, scribes,
astronomers, architects, inventors. The elite of this society,
together with the rulers of the equally large and no less important
city of Harappa, five hundred miles further up the river, had created
a common empire that had left its ruins and monuments through-

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