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An early Mesopotamian link with India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Max Mallowan
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This year on the eve of his 80th birthday, which we now celebrate, Sir Mortimer Wheeler has been responsible for drafting the report on the UNESCO Mission to Mohenjo Daro. No honour could be better deserved, or give him greater satisfaction, than the implementation of the important and judicious recommendations on which he and his colleagues have agreed for the conservation of this world-famous site and, complementary to this, for its excavation down to the deeply waterlogged levels. For all who are aware of the massive remains of superimposed architecture which still adorns Mohenjo Daro it is staggering to learn that even below the present average flood-plain level “recent borings have shown at more than one spot that brickwork in fact goes down as much as 60 feet (18 m.)”. A combination of international skills, engineering, hydrological, and archaeological, are available to encompass that great task, which is one that deserves the large funds required. Moreover the lessons which would be learned from the application of the practical techniques would be directly relevant to the opening and exploration of world-famous ancient sites in the great alluvial valleys of Western Asia—Nile and Tigris, Euphrates and Ganges as well as the Indus.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 102 , Issue 2: Studies in Honour of Sir Mortimer Wheeler , April 1970 , pp. 192 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1970

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References

1 Mackay, E. J. H., Further excavations at Mohenjo-Daro (India Press, New Delhi, 1938), Vol. I. Text, p. 652Google Scholar, and Vol. II, Plate CXII No. 7.

2 Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, XX, PI. XXXVIII Nos. 12, 17, 18. These sherds are characteristic of the stratum labelled Ninevite 2(b) and occur at a depth of some 70 feet approximately below the late Assyrian levels. They are closely associated with Samarra ware and are not likely to be later than the sixth millennium b.c.

3 Herzfeld, E., Die vorgeschichtlichen Töpfereien von Samarra, Band V, Berlin, 1930Google Scholar. Much information has subsequently come to light from the further excavations of Faisal-al-Wailly and Behnam Abu Suf at Tel-es-Sawwan (Samarra) and of Joan Oates in the district of Mandali, see her informative article in Iraq, XXXI, Pt. 2, 1969, “Choga Mami, 1967–68, a preliminary report” and particularly the summary conclusions on p. 142 ff.

4 J.N.E.S., III, 1, Jan. 1944, Nos. 227–9, not dissimilar, are so labelled; but the zigzags 225, 226, a nearer comparison, may have been derived from basketry. The closest parallel is that from Nineveh cited in Note (2) supra.

5 op. cit., pp. 44, 45.

6 op. cit., Vol. II, Pl. LXVII, Nos. 3, 4.

7 op. cit., Pl. CXII, No. 1, and p. 458.

8 Woolley, Leonard, “Ur excavations, the early periods”, U.E., IV, 1956Google Scholar, Plate 16—U.14993.

9 Mallowan, M. E. L., in Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. LV, 1969Google Scholar, “Elamite problems”.

10 Bridget and Raymond Allchin, The birth of Indian civilization, 139 f., are, I think, inclined to offer unduly low dates, influenced no doubt by a series of depressed Carbon 14 assessments. It is now established that as we go back in the third millennium b.c. Carbon 14 results become progressively too low—at the top end of it, by more than five centuries.