Indus Valley Civilization and Cross-Cultural Contacts

Proto-Elamite bucranium or bovine head, a motif found on pottery (Potts 1999: 53)

During the third millennium BCE (between 3000 and 2000 BCE), early civilizations made contact in an area termed “Middle Asia” by the archeologist G. Possehl (2002: 215).  The Indus Civilization was the easternmost part of this area.  It also included the southwestern portion of Central Asia, which Possehl refers to as Turan; southeastern Iran and the western border of the Persian (or Arabian) Gulf, known to Mesopotamians as Magan or Makan, as well as islands in the Gulf such as Bahrain; and Mesopotamia itself, the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates.  Contemporary kingdoms to the west in Egypt and to the northwest in Canaan were peripheral to “Middle Asia,” although also in contact.

Gulf seal with bucranium (top center), anthropomorph (left), grid,
and scorpion (right), as well as bird (Kjaerum 1983: 37).

There is an Intercultural Style of objects carved in soft stones (including steatite, the material of most Indus seals), common to this area.  Certain motifs appear in this style in several locations.  There are scenes of combat with snakes, depictions of bulls including the zebu or humped bull (seen on some Indus seals), a lion-headed bird called Imdugud in Mesopotamia, depictions of huts or temples resembling the Indus VEST sign, plant-like forms including rosettes and palm trees, and geometric patterns such as grids, whirls, guilloche, and an imbricate motif (nested arcs) (Possehl 2002: 216-7).  The shared motifs may indicate a shared ideology of some sort.  Certainly, though, these are indications of contact and trade, much was which was apparently conducted via waterways.

An Indus bucranium on a pot shard (Shah and Parpola 1991: 374, Rhd-241).

During the Early Dynastic Period in Iraq, the lands of Magan and Meluhha occasionally appear in cuneiform literature.  The early Akkadian king, Sargon, ruled at the time when these lands were known (Possehl 2002: 218).  Copper was mined in Magan during this period and the same metal is mentioned in cuneiform documents as coming from Meluhha (2002: 220).  Other products from Meluhha include semi-precious stones such as carnelian (a red stone), lapis lazuli (a blue stone), and pearls.  A few wood products, a few animals, fresh dates, and some gold also came from Meluhha.  Many more products derive from Magan, including ivory, diorite (a hard, volcanic stone), semi-precious stones, red ochre, special types of wood or objects made of wood, goats, and gold dust (loc. cit.).  The Gulf was a center of this international maritime trade.

A zebu on a plaque from the Elamite Diyala Valley (Lamberg-Karlovsky and Potts 2001: 225).

Four depictions of boats are known from the Indus Valley, three from Mohenjo daro, one from Lothal (2002: 221).  There are many other boat depictions known from Mesopotamia, as well as some from the Gulf.  One witness to this trade comes in the form of stamp seals.  According to Possehl, over two dozen seals have been found in the Near East that either come from the Indus Valley or resemble Indus seals (2002: 221).  They date from the late third millennium to the Babylonian Kassite Period.  Some bear pictorial motifs that resemble those on Indus seals, while others have Indus script or symbols resembling those of the Indus.  Beads are another witness to inter-regional trade, especially beads of etched carnelian.  These were found in considerable quantities at Mohenjo daro, Harappa, Chanhujo daro, Kalibangan, Lothal, and Rojdi in the Indus Valley.  They also appear in Mesopotamia at Ur, Kish, Tell Asmar, Tell Abu Salabikh, and Nippur.  Others show up in Elamite cultural areas including Tepe Hissar, Shah Tepe, Susa, Tepe Yahya, and other locations.

Seal M-1111 from Mohenjo daro with inscription: FAT EX / STRIPED FAT CEE /
POTTED THREE / CRAB / POT (note how different the zebu is from the Elamite example).

Dice are another intercultural phenomenon, both in the cubical form known to the modern world, and “stick dice” (2002: 224).  Various objects of other types also occur in the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, and the Gulf: some types of pottery, a few figurines, spiral-headed pins of copper or bronze, , and Harappan weights.  Oddly enough, though, very little material from the west has been found in the Indus Valley (2002: 227).  Possehl notes six Gulf seals and six cylinder seals, a few metal objects, and the motif formerly described as Gilgamesh battling two animals.  In Mesopotamia, this scene typically shows a hero with a lion, a bull, or between two such animals.  The comparable Indus scene contains two tigers instead.

Panel from an inlaid harp from Ur, Mesopotamia, showing
"Gilgamesh" with two bull-men (Aruz 2003: 106).

Seal M-306 with hero between tigers, the "Gilgamesh" motif
(inscription VEE IN DIAMOND / DOWN MAN ON BASE / POTTED ONE /
CIRCLED FORK / CRAB / POT / TRIPLE BRICK).

Possehl notes one type of artifact that appears to derive from as far afield as the Minoan Crete culture (2002: 228).  The object is a ceramic ring with small cup-like elements attached, a ring-kernos.  The ring is hollow, the cups perforated at the bottoms so that liquid poured into the cups would also fill the ring.  This specialized vessel was later used in the Kernophoria, a Greek festival of the harvest.  Another archeologist, J.M. Kenoyer, cites the pictorial motif of bull leaping as well (2003: 408).  This peculiar activity is familiar to Westerners as characteristic of Minoan Crete.  But there are also at least two Indus seals that seem to bear the same theme (see M-312).  Kenoyer mentions another from Central Asia (2003: 409).

Seal M-312, possibly showing bull leaping.

The Indus Civilization also had contact with a Central Asian area generally termed Bactria Margiana, centered around the Amu Darya river.  This area and parts of eastern Iran form Possehl’s Turan.  The semi-precious stone lapis lazuli occurs in this area, which may account for the presence of Harappan artifacts.  But the earliest evidence of contact is the appearance of pottery with a stepped cross motif, a pattern later found both in Central Asia and in the Indus Valley.  From the Mature Harappan period, there is a stamp seal with two Indus signs from Altyn Depe in Turkmenia.  Another stamp seal is clearly of Indus origin, bearing both signs and the motif of the elephant, this object coming from Gonur Depe.  Moving in the opposite direction, one seal from Harappa bears an eagle that closely resembles seals from Gonur Depe (2002: 230).  The other side of the Harappan seal shows the stepped cross already cited.

Seal H-166A showing a bird (eagle?) with spread wings.

Elamite bird (eagle?) with spread wings on an axe head from
Tepe Yahya (Lamberg-Karlovsky and Potts 2001: 216).

Thus, although many of the details of the trade among the Indus Valley, the Gulf, Mesopotamia, and outlying regions remain unclear, the Harappans had far-reaching contacts during the Bronze Age.

REFERENCES

Aruz, Joan, ed. 2003. Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium BC from the Mediterranean to the Indus. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University.

Kenoyer, J.M. 2003. "The Indus Civilization," in Art of the First Cities, Joan Aruz, ed. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University. Pp. 377-380.

Kjaerum, Poul. 1983. Failaka / Dilmun, the Second Millennium Settlements, Vol. 1:1, The Stamp and Cylinder Seals. Jutland Archaeological Society Publications XVII:1. Moesgard, Aarhus: Jysk Arkaeologisk Selskab.

Lamberg-Karlovsky, C.C. and D.T. Potts. 2001. Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran, 1967-1975: The Third Millennium. Cambridge: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

Possehl, G.L. 2002. The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective.  Lanham, MD: AltaMira.

Potts, D.T. 1999. The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State. Cambridge: Harvard University.

Shah, Sayid Ghulam Mustafa Shah and Asko Parpola. 1991. Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions. 2. Collections in Pakistan. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.

Universal Iconography (or is it?) and Indus Script

American pictographs of the Columbia Plateau, showing a bird and the "universal" X
(after Keyser 1992: 54, fig. 28c).

We are now in a better position to examine claims that one or another sign is universal.  If this term means that the symbol occurs in all cultures, we shall have a very short list of universals.  The vertical stroke – among Indus signs, the SINGLE QUOTE and SINGLE POST – and the CIRCLE may well be universal in the somewhat limited sense that they occur on every inhabited continent.  But these might well be the only universal symbols in that case.

African Adinkra symbol nyame nwu na mawu, "I live not when God is not," a variation of X
(after Willis 1998: 162).

If we expand the definition of “universal” to mean that a symbol appears in societies so widely separated in time and/or space that borrowing is unlikely, then the number of universals increases.  Universal motifs by this definition include CEE, CUP, and ROOF; CHEVRON; CIRCLE, CIRCLED DOT, and DONUT; QUOTES, POSTS, and ZIGZAGS; BARBELL and LOLLIPOP (whether round or angular); and GRID.  Other possibly universal symbols by this definition include EX, CROSS, ASTERISK, CIRCLED CROSS, CIRCLED ASTERISK (or CARTWHEEL), and MAN.  One or another bird as well as some type of quadruped also enter the ranks, but specific details of portrayal vary.

Small plaque from Altyn Depe showing a cross (a variation of the "universal" X),
two "posts," and a crescent (after Masson 1988: Pl. XXII, item 3).

This is beginning to sound much like the proposal put forward by Richard McDorman of a universal iconography (2009).  His thesis is that there is a set of universal symbols that various peoples draw from when creating symbol systems.  But while the shapes are similar from place to place and from time to time, the meanings are not consistent.

European tallies -- Alpine number billets representing numbers of cattle owned,
with X a numerical symbol (after Menninger 1969: 241).

It is this final point that my research reiterates.  Thus, using the meanings of symbols of one culture to interpret the similarly shaped motifs of another culture is unwarranted.  This means that Kinnier Wilson is on the wrong track in interpreting Indus signs as variations of proto-cuneiform signs, reading the Indus signs with Sumerian values, and assuming that this procedure reveals the meaning of the Indus inscriptions (1974).  This much is generally accepted.  That is, most researchers of the Indus script do not today espouse the Indo-Sumerian thesis. 

Indus seal M-326B with inscription including EX near center top.

But other scholars have fallen into the same enticing trap since Kinnier Wilson’s proposal.  Mahadevan uses Egyptian hieroglyphs to interpret various Indus signs (2008).  He notes the similarity of the Indus EX (my II 12) and Egyptian glyph Z10, an outlined “X” shape (which is interesting since this is the Old Kingdom form of Z9, a simple “X” like the Indus sign).  “The comparison enables us to assign the same general meaning to the corresponding Indus sign, ‘to divide, share’” (2008: 3^rd page).  Is it that easy?  Unfortunately not.  In the first place, one might just as easily compare the Old Chinese “X” meaning “five,” the proto-cuneiform asymmetrical “X,” SILA3, which means “street, path, road” (and compare the proto-Elamite M006~b, also an “X”), the Runic “X” which represents g, the Luwian outlined cross representing the syllable lu, the Cretan hieroglyph of a cross with circles at the ends, no. 070, indicating the syllable ro, or North American and Australian “X” shapes in petroglyphs that may represent bird tracks.  Even assuming that the signs of the Indus script have the same underlying meaning as Egyptian glyphs – clearly an unwarranted assumption – the meaning of the glyph Z10 is not simply “to divide.”  As Gardiner notes, when a determinative, Z9 or Z10 can indeed mean “divide” (as in wpi and psš), but it can also mean “break” (as in hdi and gmgm), “to lessen” (as in xbi), to cross or encounter (as in d3i, wšb, 3bx).  The same “X” can mean “one-fourth” as well as serving as a determinative for no explainable reason (as in nkt and t3š).  Instead of a determinative, it can even represent any of half a dozen phonetic elements (including sw3, xbs, and wp).  Given these many uses of Z9/Z10, one cannot be confident that the Indus EX means only “to divide, share” (Gardiner 1976: 538-539).

Detail from a plaque showing the family of Ur Nanshe of Sumer -- note the three triangles above a "rake"
on the man to the far left, KUR, "mountain; (foreign) land; netherworld; the east" (after Aruz 2003: 31, fig. 16).

Mahadevan similarly interprets the Indus TABLE (my III 6) as a variation of the Egyptian glyph N1 (2008: 5^th page).  Because the glyph represents the sky or heavens, Mahadevan reasons, so the Indus TABLE must mean “sky, heaven, pertaining to god.”  Instead of Egyptian, though, one might compare Old Chinese jiung3, “suburbs, country; the space,” now the 13^th radical; or the runic symbol for e, or again similar shapes appearing in North American rock art (see my previous post on III 6 for full listing and references).  Assuming that Egyptian can provide the basis for interpretation of Indus signs, a further objection is that it is not obvious which Egyptian glyph is most similar to the Indus TABLE.  The sky glyph (N1) is not a simple, three-stroke motif as is the Indus sign.  Perhaps a closer match is glyph O1, pr “house.”  Even if we could be confident that the Indus sign followed the Egyptian N1 in meaning, we could not be certain that “sky” was the primary significance.  In some words, the Egyptian N1 appears to represent a gate or portal rather than the heavens (as in rwty, “the double gate,” ht or hyt, “portal,” and perhaps in h3t “ceiling”) (Gardiner 1976: 485).

Egyptian hieroglyphs from a Theban tomb, including the three hills (above three "posts")
glyph N25, determinative of foreign lands and the desert (after Gardiner 1976: frontispiece).

Mahadevan goes a step further when it comes to interpreting compound signs.  He assumes that the parts of the compound maintain their original meanings so that the meaning is also a compound.  For example, the ROOF means “heaven” (more or less) and the EX means “divide, share,” so EX UNDER ROOF must mean “god’s share” (2008: 5^th page). 

Chinese oracle-bone script showing three variants of a character that may be ancestral to yue4,
"mountain peak" (or "wife's parents"), not the same character as shan1, "mountain" (Keightley 1985: 218).

However, in Egyptian, a combination of glyphs may or may not follow this simple additive pattern.  In the combination of the vulture (G1) and sickle (U1), both elements help to spell out m3.  The result is hardly a “harvest of vultures” or “vulture who wields a sickle.”  Both elements are phonetic and neither conveys the meaning (as in sm3wy, “to renew”). 

A second pattern appears in glyph O35, made up of the bolt (O34) atop the walking legs (D54).  As an independent glyph, the first can be an ideograph meaning “bolt” while the second can be an ideograph in “come” or a determinative of movement in general.  But the combination certainly does not signify a wandering bolt.  Instead, the bolt seems to convey the phonetic value s, with the feet still indicating movement.  This is the rule for compound glyphs with the feet (D54).  The reed with feet (M18) appears in the verb ii, “come,” where the reed provides a hint of pronunciation and the feet indicate movement; the pool with feet (N40) appears in the verb šm, “go,” where the pool provides part the first phonetic element and the feet again represent movement (see also T32, the knife with feet; V15, the tethering rope with feet; and W25, the round pot with feet). 

The forearm (D36) combines with other glyphs in a third manner.  While D36 frequently represents a consonant (transliterated with an apostrophe), it does not have this sense in D37, where the hand holds a triangular bread loaf (which is X8).  This combination of D37 + X8 means “to give” (and not “bread in hand” or “handful of bread”).  When the same forearm appears with the hand holding the round pot (D37 + W24) the combination is a determinative for “present” or “offer.”  When the hand holds the flagellum (S45), the meaning is often “protect.”  But if the hand is holding the ‘b3 sceptre (S24), the meaning becomes “administer, control.”  In these ligatures, neither element provides phonetic information.  The meaning derives from the combination though, not from an addition of the meanings of the individual parts.

Detail from Indus seal M-29 with inscription: STRIPED TRIANGLE / SPACESHIP / FISH / BI-QUOTES //
CIRCLED TRI-FORK / FISH UNDER CHEVRON / WHISKERED FISH / STACKED 12 / POT
(does the SPACESHIP mean the same thing as TRIPLE TRIANGLES or are they different?).

In Chinese, several patterns also appear.  There is a character resembling the Egyptian walking legs, ren2, “person.”  It is a common radical in compound characters, usually occurring on the left side.  Beside the character fang1, Mahadevan’s additive method of interpretation would yield something like “human region” or “square man.”  But in fang3, the person radical hints at the meaning while the second element provides the pronunciation.  This word means “to imitate, copy.”  Similarly, the same fang1 (“square, region”) appears to the right of mi4, the character for “silk.”  This compound character is also pronounced fang3, now with the meaning “to spin.”  This type of combination, where one element provides some of the meaning and the other conveys the pronunciation (in a rough way), is the most frequent.

But there are other patterns as well.  Two independent characters sometimes combine to represent a meaning that neither suggests alone.  Such is the case with hao3, “good,” which is written with the character for “woman” (niu3) beside that for “child” (zi3).  The character of the woman also appears beneath the Chinese roof element in the word for “quiet, rest” (an1).  When the same roof is over the pig character, the combination signifies “family” (jia1).  Thus, “woman” plus “child” does not mean “mother” or “family” and “woman” plus “roof” does not signify “woman’s house” or “housewife.”

Indus seal H-515 with inscription: TWO POSTS / MALLET / POTTED ONE / CORN HOLDER /
TRIPLE TRIANGLES / CRAB / POT (do the 3 triangles mean "mountain" or "dairy"?).

Thus, adding together the meanings of Indus signs – even if we could be certain that the separate meanings were correct – may not give the correct definition of a ligature.  This is not the only type of error that researchers make in moving from the known (signs in proto-cuneiform or in Egyptian hieroglyphs) to the unknown (Indus signs).  Fairservis, for instance, defines the Indus SPACESHIP as “mountains” (his N-1, my VIII 22).  The reason for this identification is that this symbol is a “universal sign” (1992: 1978).  Three triangles in a stacked configuration do appear in proto-cuneiform, transliterated KUR following the phonetic form of the later Sumerian descendant of the sign.  In Sumerian, this means “mountain; (foreign) land; netherworld.”  But this is not actually universal.  An Egyptian glyph representing three hills side by side (N25) suggests possible meanings “foreign land” or “desert,” not specifically “mountain.”  A stacked variation does not occur.  Three triangles side by side appear in Luwian hieroglyphs as the ideogram CASTRUM, “fortress.”  The Old Chinese shan1 has three vertical strokes rising from a triangular element with a rounded base.  Wieger interprets the pictorial elements as a single mountain with three rocks on top (1965: 208).  Thus, “mountain(s)” may appear as a symbol with three repetitions in it (as in proto-cuneiform and in Chinese), but such a meaning is not universally conveyed in this manner (as in Egyptian and Luwian).  Besides these facts, it would seem that by Fairservis’ own argument, the Indus TRIPLE TRIANGLES ought to mean “mountain” as well.  But Fairservis does not propose this, defining it rather as “dairy, storage.”

Four variants of Old Chinese yu3, "rain" (Keightley 1985: 217).

Fairservis would seem to be on firmer ground when he proposes the meaning “rain” for the Indus STACKED NINE UNDER TABLE (his F-10, my XII 35).  He compares with this the Egyptian glyph of vertical strokes descending from the sky (N4).  There is a certain resemblance, though the two are not identical.  The Chinese character for rain, yu3, is something like a “table” with a “stacked four” beneath, plus a horizontal stroke above, a vertical stroke descending from the latter down through the rest of the character (thus separating the “stacked four” into two “stacked two” elements).  Again, the character is not identical to either the Egyptian hieroglyph or Indus sign XII 35, but there is a resemblance. 

Two variants of proto-cuneiform GI6, "black, dark," resembling the Chinese "rain."

This Indus sign and the corresponding glyph appear in the list “Signs Universal in the Ancient World” (Fairservis 1992: 228).  In the same table there are two “archaic Sumerian” symbols.  The latter are now transliterated GI6 (a “stacked eight” under a chevron and a rounded “roof” over as many as 14 dots that are not neatly arranged).  This sign, in later Sumerian, does not represent rain but means “(to be) black/dark.” 

The “universal” sign for “rain” does not always mean “rain,” then.  Fairservis includes an Old European motif, a “C” with several horizontal strokes beside it, for comparison, as if to demonstrate the universality of the symbol.  But of course, the meaning of this European symbol is not known, so it may or may not represent rain.  We may also compare the horizontal “comb” element that depicts rain in the Puebloan style of North American art (Newcomb and Kirkland 1996: 198).  The symbol most likely to represent rain in Nevada and eastern California is similar to the “comb,” but also has the stem curving back over it so that it could be a schematic quadruped instead (e.g., Heizer and Baumhoff 1984: 140, fig. 77b).  There is, then, no single “rain” symbol that is truly universal.  A "comb" seems to be more common than dots or lines beneath a roof-like element, despite Fairservis' assertion.  However, the Puebloan comb-shaped element -- known to mean "rain" in the American Southwest -- is interpreted not as rain but as "comb," that is as depicting an actual comb when it appears in the Indus script (Fairservis 1992: 177, his L-9).

Having discussed each of the Indus signs in turn, I would note that such cross-cultural comparisons cannot reveal the meaning of the Harappan symbols.  At best, such comparisons can only suggest possibilities for interpretation.  And since several different meanings are generally ascribed to a given form, anyone who uses comparisons in this way must really investigate each one. 

REFERENCES

Aruz, J., ed. 2003. Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press.

Fairservis, W.A. 1992. The Harappan Civilization and Its Writing: A Model for the Decipherment of the Indus Script. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Gardiner, A. 1976 and 1927. Egyptian Grammar. Oxford: Griffith Institute and Ashmolean Museum.

Heizer, R.F. and M.A. Baumhoff. 1984. Prehistoric Rock Art of Nevada and Eastern California. Berkeley: University of California.

Keightley, D.N. 1985 and 1978. Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China. Berkeley: University of California.

Keyser, J.D. 1992. Indian Rock Art of the Columbia Plateau. Seattle: University of Washington.

Kinnier Wilson, J.V. 1974. Indo-Sumerian: A New Approach to the Problems of the Indus Script. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

McDorman, R.E. 2009. Universal Iconography in Writing Systems: Evidence and Explanation in the Easter Island and Indus Valley Script. Amazon (Kindle edition).

Mahadevan, I. 2008. “Agricultural Terms in the Indus Script” in Journal of Tamil Studies, available:
http://www.harappa.com/arrow/indus-agricultural-terms.pdf

Masson, V.M. 1988. Altyn-Depe. Transl. H.N. Michael. Philadelphia: The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.

Menninger, K. 1969. Number Words and Number Symbols: A Cultural History of Numbers. Transl. P. Broneer. Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press.

Newcomb, W.W. Jr. and F. Kirkland. 1996. The Rock Art of Texas Indians. Austin: University of Texas.

Wieger, L. 1965. Chinese Characters, Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification and Signification. Transl. L. Davrout. New York: Paragon and Dover (orig. 1927 by Catholic Mission Press).

Willis, W.B. 1998. The Adinkra Dictionary: A Visual Primer on the Language of Adinkra. Washington, D.C.: Pyramid Complex.

Indus Script: Beyond Signs to Sequences

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 1^st through the 11^th 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).

The relative paucity of the random type of repetition suggests to some researchers that sound is not encoded in the Indus inscriptions (Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel 2004).  If there really is no phonetic information in the script, then by the definition of many linguists, it is not a fully developed writing system.  We will explore this possibility in greater detail in the next post.

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.