 |
| Indus seal from Gonur Depe with elephant and inscription, showing contact between Indus Valley and Bactria-Margiana culture: EGG ON NEST / BI-QUOTES / FISH UNDER CHEVRON / FISH / MAN HOLDING DEE-SLASH / MALLET / TRI-FORK / POT (Kohl 2007: 199, fig. 5.12a). |
I have now discussed all of the Indus signs in my list, a
list based on signs found in other lists, namely those of Fairservis, of Wells,
and of Koskenniemi and Parpola.
Iravatham Mahadevan has also compiled a list along with a concordance of
inscriptions (1977). I only have an
unclear copy of his list, not the work itself, so I have not mentioned Mahadevan’s sign numbers in my
discussion. Both Wells and Parpola have
also published revised lists, in which both the total number of signs differs
from those I quoted here previously, and the numbers designating the individual signs
differ. The Koskenniemi and Parpola list
that I used includes 396 signs (1982), while Parpola’s revised list includes 398 (2009). Wells originally listed 588
signs, later revising that to 958 (1998 and 2011). Fairservis, of course, is at the low end with
230 (1992). My own list, with 694
separate notations, splits several groups of variants into an unnecessarily large number of
categories. Were I to revise it, the
number of signs would shrink, though perhaps the total would remain a little
higher than Parpola’s total. In Deciphering the Indus Script, Parpola
mentions Mahadevan’s list, which includes 417 signs (2009: 78).
The total number of signs cannot be pinned down precisely, as
of yet, because no two researchers count them in exactly the same way. But if we average the above results, we get a
more or less accurate total of 526.
That’s lower than either of Wells’ totals (which are probably too high, as is my own total). It’s also higher than Fairservis’ total (which
is too low). One might
wonder what difference it makes what the precise total is. But it is significant, even without greater
precision because, theoretically, this information can suggest what type of
writing the Indus system is.
 |
| Plaque from Agrab in the Diyala Valley with humped bull, an animal often pictured on Indus seals (Kohl 2001: 225, fig. 9.12). |
There are too many signs for it to be an alphabet, to begin with. The English alphabet, for example, has 26
letters, the Cyrillic alphabet of the Russians contains 33, and the Mkhedruli
of Georgia (a Caucasian country formerly part of the Soviet Union) has 40
(Nakanishi 1980: 20 and 24). These are much smaller
figures than even the lowest estimate of Indus symbols. Even if we double these alphabetic totals,
counting capital letters and small letters as separate symbols – yielding 52
letters in our alphabet, 66 in Cyrillic, and 80 in Mkhedruli – the numbers
remain below 100. and far below the number of Indus signs by anyone's count. We can safely
conclude, then, that Indus script is not alphabetic.
A syllabary
easily may have a larger numbers of symbols than an alphabet. Thai script contains 50 consonant + vowel
symbols, as well as 21 additional diacritical marks to indicate vowels other
than the inherent –o, plus four signs
to represent tones, yielding a total of 75 symbols (Nakanishi 1980: 76). The Japanese writing system is more
complicated, with 77 katakana signs (or
53, depending on how one counts them) for writing foreign words, 73 hiragana signs (or 50, again depending
on how one counts them), for a total of 150 (or 103) (Nakanishi 1980: 94). Each of these syllabic symbols represents
either a vowel (V) or consonant + vowel group (CV), with the exception of n.
More complex syllabaries may also include symbols representing CVV or a consonant plus diphthong (e.g., dwa,
as found in Linear B), VC (e.g., an, as in Sumerian cuneiform), or CVC (dur, as in Sumerian cuneiform). The inclusion of these additional types of
syllables can increase the number of signs substantially.
 |
| Ceremonial axe head with eagle design from Tepe Yahya Per. IVB (Kohl 2001: 216, fig. 9.6). |
The kana form only
part of the Japanese writing system, which also makes use of Chinese characters
or kanji. The latter belong to another type of script,
typically termed logographic, in which each word is written with a distinct symbol (or, more precisely, each morpheme is written with a unique symbol). In such a writing system, the total number of
symbols is in the thousands. The modern Chinese
writing system contains tens of thousands of characters, in part due to its
long history, but about 5,000 are commonly used for newspaper writing. The earliest Chinese writing is found on
so-called oracle bones, dating to the Shang period (about 1200 B.C.E.). This system may have contained as many as
5,000 characters total, though precision is just as difficult as with numbering
Indus signs (Keightley 1985: 59).
Scholars can read approximately half of that total. Whatever the precise figure, whatever the
period, Chinese writing has many more characters than Indus script has signs.
 |
| Indus seal in stepped diamond shape with eagle motif from Harappa (H-166); compare the motif to that on the axe head from Tepe Yahya. These bear a resemblance to seals and motifs from Altyn Tepe also. |
The Bronze Age scripts contemporary with the Indus
civilization are mostly mixed systems, combining a syllabary with
logographs. This complicates the matter
of determining a total number of symbols, especially when a given symbol has
more than one interpretation. For
example, Middle Egyptian makes use of 700 to 800 glyphs, with more variation
than currently exists in Chinese (Gardiner 1976). Many glyphs have more than one use, sometimes
functioning as ideographs (or determinatives), sometimes serving to indicate
(consonantal) sounds. Sumerian cuneiform
includes a comparable number of signs, many of which also have multiple
interpretations. Generally speaking, the
earlier the script, the higher the total number of signs. The totals for proto-cuneiform and
proto-Elamite signs sometimes rise above 1,000, for example, while the earliest
cuneiform contains several hundred symbols.
As cuneiform was adopted by people other than the Sumerians, the number
of signs often decreased. Elamite
cuneiform, for example, includes about 600 signs, while the much later Old
Persian contains around 50 (36 appear in Budge 1920; closer to 50 are included
in the unicode, which contains phonetic elements, word symbols, punctuation
marks, and numerical symbols). Thus,
going by symbol count alone, these facts would seem to indicate that the Indus
script is logo-syllabic. In fact, this is
the conclusion drawn by some researchers (e.g., Parpola 2009: 85).
However, the frequency statistics suggest that the Indus
script may be something else. Mahadevan
provides a table showing the frequency distribution of the 417 signs that he
includes in his list (1977: 17; after Parpola 2009: 78). Using Wells’ latest data, we can see which
signs occur most frequently, those which may be most amenable to statistical
study (2011: 166-233). This information
reveals the fact that over 50% of all sign occurrences are due to appearances
of 33 signs, with all the other signs appearing fewer than 100 times. As frequency drops, the number of signs
increases, with the result that singletons and signs that appear fewer than 10
times form the largest group by far.
|
Frequency
range
|
Number
of
signs
|
Total
sign
occurrences
|
Percentage
of
total
|
|
1000+
|
1
|
1,395
|
10.43
|
|
999-500
|
1
|
649
|
4.85
|
|
499-100
|
31
|
6344
|
47.44
|
|
99-50
|
34
|
2381
|
17.81
|
|
49-10
|
86
|
1833
|
13.71
|
|
9-2
|
152
|
648
|
4.92
|
|
1
|
112
|
112
|
0.84
|
|
Total
|
417
|
13,372
|
100
|
Table 1. Frequencies
of Indus signs (from Mahadevan 1977).
The most frequent sign, the only one that occurs more than a
thousand times, is POT, which appears most often at the end of an inscription (i.e., as a terminal sign). The second most common sign is BI-QUOTES,
which Korvink characterizes as the constant (or final) element in the prefix of
inscriptions (2007: 18). Looking just at
this data, some researchers conclude that these two signs must be grammatical
markers, phonetic symbols, or both (e.g., Fairservis considers POT an honorific ending and BI-QUOTES a locative case suffix).
According to Wells’ figures, two other signs appear more
than 500 times, namely CUP and TWO POSTS.
This analysis is problematic, however, because many of the occurrences
are on tablets, either those made in molds and so providing multiple copies, or
on copper tablets, again with multiple copies.
If one discounts the copies, the frequency of both these signs falls. Still, CUP appears frequently enough to be among the common signs.
 |
| Tablet H-216A and B sides with inscriptions: STRIPED FAT CHEVRON / STRIPED VEST / POT // (B) 3 POSTS / CUP (many tablets have CUP plus two to four POSTS on the B side). |
Additional signs with frequencies over 400 include COMB,
THREE POSTS (same problem as with TWO POSTS), and FISH. Those appearing between 200 and 300 times
include WHISKERED FISH, SPEAR, CIRCLED FORK, VEE IN DIAMOND, FISH UNDER CHEVRON,
CARTWHEEL, CIRCLED VEE, PINCH, MALLET, HAIRY HUNCHBACK (same problem as with
CUP), CUPPED POST, and POTTED ONE. Those
with frequencies between 100 and 199 include SINGLE QUOTE, SINGLE POST, BELTED
FISH, POT-HATTED BEARER (combining all types), MAN, RAKE, BOAT, FOUR POSTS
(same problem as with TWO POSTS), CRAB, GRID (combining all types again),
WINGED MAN, FORK-TOPPED POT (combining the TRI-FORK TOPPED POT and BI-FORK
TOPPED POT), FORK (combining BI-FORK, TRI-FORK, QUAD-FORK, and QUINT-FORK),
PRAWN, FOOTED STOOL, OVERLAPPING CIRCLES, BLANKET (combining those containing 4
to 10 “ticks” as well as any with additional internal marks), FAT-LEGGED
LAMBDA, CROSSROADS EX, and LOOP-ARMED MAN WITH SLASH. This gives a maximum total of 40 symbols that
one might profitably study with statistical methods (although there are fewer
such symbols if we follow Wells’ criteria for separating signs). The other 300 to 900 (depending on the total
number of signs) appear too seldom for meaningful statistical measures.
Such frequency data are quite different from the frequencies
of letters in alphabetic texts. We know
that in English “e” is the most frequent letter, while “q” and “z” are
relatively rare. The majority of
letters have a frequency in between the two extremes; a frequency table for the
English alphabet would not show such a large clustering of letters at the
bottom. One might wonder, then, whether
the frequency data for Indus signs resembles that for glyphs in Middle Egyptian
texts or for signs in Akkadian cuneiform.
Based on my experience with such writing systems, I expect to find
multiple appearances of symbols representing phonetic elements, while the
logographs (signs or glyphs representing words or determinatives in words) are
less frequent. In Egyptian, for example,
the glyphs in the “alphabet” (i.e., those used to represent a single consonant
sound) are the most common, so that virtually any text will have many bread
loaves (t) and chicks (w), owls (m) and ripples of water (n). A brief glance at a passage from the Book of the Dead demonstrates this:
 |
| Part of a passage from the Book of the Dead, in which one can see 3 repetitions of the bread loaf(here resembling a thick hyphen) just in the far left column, 3 repetitions of the chick (once in the left-most column, twice more in the second from the left), and 3 repetitions of the seated god with the beard (once in each column). Other symbols repeat as well, including the djed-column (shish kebab) which appears doubled twice and singly once. |
But is a section of a book – even an ancient one –
equivalent to the content of seals and very small tablets? It is possible that the Indus inscriptions
mostly contain names and titles, as Parpola suggests on the analogy of Near
Eastern seals (2009: 117). So a better
comparison with Egyptian hieroglyphs might be to the cartouches and serekhs
containing the pharaoh’s name, sometimes with an accompanying title. Since Egyptian hieroglyphs continued to be
used a good deal longer than Indus script, I compare only the royal cartouches
and serekhs from the 1st through the 11th dynasties,
dating from about 2650 BCE to 2000 BCE.
This includes the Old Kingdom, First Intermediate Period, and the first
dynasty of the Middle Kingdom, a time during which the Indus civilization
passed through its Early to Mature Harappan Transition and Mature Harappan
periods.
|
Frequency
range
|
Number
of signs
|
Total sign
occurrences
|
Percentage
of total
|
|
20-35
|
4
|
118
|
29.57%
|
|
11-19
|
5
|
70
|
17.54%
|
|
6-10
|
14
|
92
|
23.06%
|
|
2-5
|
27
|
78
|
19.55%
|
|
1
|
41
|
41
|
10.28%
|
|
Totals
|
91
|
399
|
100%
|
Table 2. Frequencies
of Egyptian hieroglyphs in cartouches and serekhs
of Dynasties I - XI (data from Budge 1978: 917-922).
We can see that singletons and rare signs (those appearing fewer than 10 times) form the majority, while a smaller set repeats frequently. The two most common signs in these royal names are theophoric elements, the name of the sun (N5, 35 occurrences) and of part of the soul, the ka (D28, 33 occurrences). Other common signs are mostly phonetic elements, including the ripple of water spelling n (N35, 22 occurrences), the bread loaf spelling t (X1, 28 occurrences), folded cloth spelling s (S29, 13 occurrences), and chick spelling w (G43). Other glyph found frequently in royal names are nfr, which means “good, beautiful” (F35, 18 occurrences) and the sun rising over a hill (N28, 14 occurrences).
A title that often appears in a cartouche refers to the Two
Lands, a name for Egypt (N16, 14 occurrences).
This glyph demonstrates one of the problems with counting symbols. In all of the royal names in my sample where
this symbol appears, it is doubled. This
might suggest the doubled element is a single glyph if we did not know other
uses. As it happens, the glyph also
occurs singly; it just does not do so in this set of royal names. If we take the doubled glyph as a single
glyph, though, that would halve its occurrences. That, in turn, would drop it from the
frequent group.
 |
| The Egyptian hieroglyphic "alphabet" (uniliterals), the signs that frequently repeat in inscriptions (from an old postcard). |
There is, then, the question of the reed (M17). It appears singly 9 times, doubled 7
times. I have separated these
occurrences into two categories, since the single reed spells i and the doubled ones y.
But if we combine these two sets and count each reed, there are 23
occurrences. Counting this way, the reed
moves from the infrequent to the frequent group. Some Egyptian glyphs also occur in groups of
three. In this group of royal names, the
ba bird (G29, representing another
part of the soul) appears singly as a singleton, but when tripled it occurs
twice. When there are three in a row,
this represents bau, in Budge’s
transcription, the plural form of ba. Although not seen in this sample of names, the
ka is also tripled in some cases,
e.g., in Menkaure (a Fourth Dynasty pharaoh).
The kau in the middle of this
name – and this element in other names – can be spelled out with the glyph of
the ka plus the chick, or it can be
represented graphically as a tripling of the ka glyph. Although rare, one
occasionally finds a quadrupling as well.
The name of the New Kingdom official Neferneferuaten may be written with
four nfr signs, three of them
representing the plural form neferu,
the fourth representing the repetition of nefer.
 |
| Tablet M-495A with inscription (from right): PACMAN / CRAB / HAIRY HUNCHBACK / POT / BEARER // TRIPLE CUPS / SINGLE POST (note that tripling is unusual). |
These kinds of problems of counting also occur with Indus
signs. Some only appear in doubled form,
including the QUOTE UNDER CHEVRON. Others
appear both singly and doubled, such as variants of GRID. Occasionally, a sign is tripled, as on two
tablets from Mohenjo daro and two from Harappa, each bearing TRIPLE CUPS
(M-494, M-495, H-764, H-765; also in graffiti on Rhd-53-56). Further repetition is almost exclusively
found in apparent numerals (QUOTES, POSTS).
There are just two signs other than “quotes” and “posts” that repeat
four times in a row: QUADRUPLE CEES (M-136) and QUADRUPLE TRI-FORKS (M-1123). Parpola takes these quadrupled symbols as
equivalents of FOUR POSTS/QUOTES + sign (2009: 81). This seems reasonable, although the Egyptian
example of Neferneferuaten indicates quadrupling can have a non-enumerative
meaning.
In Egyptian names as in other texts, it is the phonetic
elements that repeat in non-consecutive positions. For example, the chick appears twice but
non-contiguously in the famous Fourth Dynasty Khufu’s name, spelling out the u after kh and after f. The reed both begins and ends one of the
names of the Fifth Dynasty king, Tet-ka-Ra Assa, with a doubled bolt between
them (issi in modern transcription). The bread loaf appears twice in the name of
the New Kingdom pharaoh Tutankhamen, representing both t sounds. These uniliterals –
glyphs that represent a single consonant – are found in initial, medial, and
final positions from name to name.
 |
| King Tut's names, at left as on a cartouche-shaped box, and at right as in embossed gold glyphs on the cover of the book Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs (Hawass n.d.). Note the repetition of the semi-circular bread loaf by the chick for the two t's in this name. |
This type of non-consecutive or random repetition is less
common in the Indus inscriptions than simple doubling. Examples of it include M-396: FOOTED STOOL /
PINCH // FISH UNDER CHEVRON / BLANKET
WITH 4 TICKS / RAYED CIRCLE / DOUBLE CEES / CIRCLED DOT / BACKSLASH IN FISH
/ BLANKET WITH 4 TICKS / ANT (6
LEGS); M-627: FISH / TABLE (LONG LEG) / GRID
/ POT (or POTTED ONE) // STRIPED LOOP UNDER CHEVRON / DOUBLE GRIDS; M326B: CARTWHEEL / BI-QUOTES (?) // EX / STRIPED
MALLET // BARBELL ON POST / TWO
POSTS & BACKSLASH / BARBELL ON POST;
M-634: CARTWHEEL / LOOP ARMED MAN
HOLDING SLASH / CARTWHEEL / CIRCLED
BELTED RECTANGLE / CARTWHEEL /
SINGLE QUOTE // RAKE / FISH // POT // EX UNDER TABLE; and H-369: POTTED ONE / TRI-FORK / POTTED ONE / SINGLE POST / CUPPED SPOON
/ THREE POSTS / SPEAR // (B side) THREE POSTS / CUP (counting A and B sides as
a single inscription would make THREE POSTS repetitious here).
 |
| Seal M-627 with inscription showing two kinds of sign repetition: FISH / PINCH // GRID / POT // STRIPED LOOP UNDER CHEVRON/ DOUBLE GRIDS (the POT may be a POTTED ONE). |
REFFERENCES
Budge, E.A.W. 1978. An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary with an Index of English Words, King List and Geographical List with Indexes, List of Hieroglyphic Characters, Coptic and Semitic Alphabets. Vol. II. New York: Dover (orig. 1920 by John Murray, London).
Fairservis, W.A. 1992. The Harappan Civilization and Its Writing: A Model for the Decipherment of the Indus Script. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Farmer, S., R. Sproat, and M. Witzel. 2004. "The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization," in Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 11 (2): 19-57.
Faulkner, R.O. 1994. The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.
Hawass, Z. n.d. Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic.
Joshi, J.P. and A. Parpola. 1987. Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions. 1. Collections in India. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.
Korvink, M.P. 2007. The Indus Script: A Positional Statistical Approach. Gilund Press. (Amazon.com)
Kohl, P.L. 2001. "Reflections on the Production of Chlorite at Tepe Yahya: 25 Years Later," in Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran 1967-1975. The Third Millennium, C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Pp. 209-230.
Kohl, P.L. 2007. The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia. Cambridge: University Press.
Mahadevan, I. 1977. The Indus script: Texts, concordance and tables. Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, no. 48, Delhi.
Nakanishi, A. 1990 and 1980. Writing Systems of the World. Boston: Tuttle Publishing.
Parpola, A. 2009 and 1994. Deciphering the Indus Script. Cambridge: University Press.
Shah, S.G.M. and A. Parpola. 1991. Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions. 2. Collections in Pakistan. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.
Wells, B. 1998. An Introduction to Indus Writing: A Thesis. and
Wells, B.K. 2011. Epigraphic Approaches to Indus Writing. Oxford and Oakville: Oxbow Books.
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