Decoding the Ancient Script of the Indus Valley

Decoding the Ancient Script of the Indus Valley

By Ishaan Tharoor Tuesday, Sep. 01, 2009

A Harappan unicorn seal, dated 2400BC, from the ancient Indus Valley civilization that spread across part of modern India and Pakistan

A Harappan unicorn seal, dated 2400 B.C., from the ancient Indus Valley civilization that spread across part of what is now modern India and Pakistan

Randy Olson / Aurora Photos

The ancient cities of the Indus Valley belonged to the greatest civilization the world may never know. Since the 1920s, dozens of archaeological expeditions have unearthed traces of a 4,500-year-old urban culture that covered some 300,000 square miles in modern-day Pakistan and northwestern India. Digs at major sites such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa revealed a sophisticated society whose towns had advanced sanitation, bathhouses and gridlike city-planning. Evidence of trade with Egypt and Sumer in Mesopotamia, as well as the presence of mining interests as far as Central Asia, suggests that the fertile Indus River basin could have been home to an empire larger and older than its more famous contemporaries in the Middle East.

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