The Indus and The Pentateuch

Extract

The realisation of the significance of Harappa and the excavation of Mohenjo Daro are events of outstanding importance in the progress of archaeology during the last fifty years. Harappa, a very old town- site in the Montgomery District of the Punjab, has been known for some time and a few small softstone seals and other objects have been found. Only gradually did it become clear that these remains had no relation to any other civilization of India. Harappa had suffered for many years from the inroads of brick-robbers and offered, by itself, little prospect of further significant information. The enthusiasm of Sir John Marshall led to the search for other sites of a similar nature. In 1922 such a site was discovered in the lower valley of the River Indus in the Province of Sind, south of the Baluchistan frontier. Since then other sites have been found and it has been possible to estimate, to some extent, the territorial expansion of an entirely unknown civilization which had attained an exceedingly high degree of development.

Most of the work has centred round Mohanjo Daro, the site discovered in 1922, and, with the exception of Harappa, a great deal remains to be done before the full significance of the other sites can be made known. Such conclusions as have been reached are based mainly upon the excavations in Mohanjo Daro and to a lesser, though important degree, upon the findings in Harappa. That we have at present only a very unsatisfactory picture, is obvious from the opinion of Marshall that the Monhanjo Daro culture extended from beyond Harappa to the mouth of the Indus ‘in a south-easterly direction at least as far as the Gulf of Cambay. ‘