Saturday, April 21, 2012

Mohenjo-Daro

Posted by Unknown on 11:05 AM

Mohenjo Daro

Mohenjo-daro was a city of the Indus Valley Civilization, 20 km from Larkana and some 80 km southwest of modern Sukkur, Sindh, Pakistan. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and better preserved than Harappa. However, due to rain the upper part of tomb is now destroyed despite steps to further save this world historical place.














Ancient city on the bank of the Indus River, in present-day southern Pakistan


The site of Mohenjo-Daro (also Moenjo-daro, latitude 27 degrees, 25 minutes north, longitude 67 degrees 35 minutes east), in Larkana District, Sindh, Pakistan, is the largest and most extensively excavated Indus city in Pakistan.

This city would have dominated the major trade routes and agricultural potential of the southern Indus plain, from around 2600-1900 BCE.
Mohenjo-Daro is located in District Larkana at a distance of about 28 km from Larakana and 107 km from sukkur.
Mohenjo-Daro was a city located in the south of Modern Pakistan in the Sind Province, on the right bank of the Indus River. It was built between four and five thousand years ago, and lasted until 3,700 BP. It was part of the Harrapan Civilization, and the city had at least 35,000 residents. Mohenjo-Daro means “mound of the dead”.

The city was approximately one square mile in size. In 1922-1927 large scale excavations at Mohenjo-daro were carried out by R. D. Banarjee and continued by M. S. Vats and K. N. Dikshit under the direction of Sir John Marshall. E. J. H. MacKay carried out further excavations from 1927 to1931. Sir Mortimer Wheeler made small excavations in1950.

As a result of this extensive work almost one-third of the area of the old city was exposed, revealing for the first time the remains of one of the most ancient civilizations in the Indus Valley. Typical of most large and planned cities, Mohenjo-daro had planned city streets and buildings. The settlement was thought to house roughly 5,000 people, and had houses, a granary, baths, assembly halls and towers.


Mohenjo-Daro – largest city of the Indus Civilization

The site of Mohenjo-Daro (also Moenjo-daro, latitude 27 degrees, 25 minutes north, longitude 67 degrees 35 minutes east), in Larkana District, Sindh, Pakistan, is the largest and most extensively excavated Indus city in Pakistan.

Mohenjo-Daro – It was built around 2600 BC, and was abandoned around 1700 BC, probably due to a change of course of the river which supported the civilization.

Mohenjo-Daro – The high western mound is generally referred to as the “citadel” mound, but it is subdivided into several sectors.
The city was divided into two parts, the Citadel included an elaborate tank or bath created with fine quality brickwork and drains; this was surrounded by a verandah. Also located here was a giant granary, a large residential structure, and at least two aisled assembly halls. To the east of the citadel was the lower city, laid out in a grid pattern. The streets were straight, and were drained to keep the area sanitary. The people of the city used very little stone in their construction. They used two types of bricks- mud bricks, and wood bricks, which were created by burning wood.

They used timber to create the flat roofs of their buildings; there are brick stairways leading to the roofs of many houses. Some houses were small, and others were larger with interior courtyards. Most had small bathrooms. Potter’s kilns, dyer’s vats, as well as metalworking, bead making, and shell-working shops have all been discovered. The people were good at irrigation and flood control. However, when the Indus River changed its course around 3700 years ago, the civilization died.


All Indus valley sites including Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, were built according to a grid pattern plan. Each city had broad parallel streets which crossed each other to divide the city into compact rectangular blocks, and had an advanced and extensive drainage system. In addition to it’s numerous other achievements Mohenjo-daro and other Indus sites made extensive use of baked brick (unlike the sun-dried brick typical of Mesopotamian civilization), which gave greater durability to all of its buildings.

Mohenjo-Daro – Mohenjo-daro is about 400 miles away from Harappa

The site of Mohenjo-Daro (also Moenjo-daro, latitude 27 degrees, 25 minutes north, longitude 67 degrees 35 minutes east), in Larkana District, Sindh, Pakistan, is the largest and most extensively excavated Indus city in Pakistan.
It was rediscovered in the 1920s by Sir John Marshall’s archaeologists.
The language of the Indus Civilization has yet to be deciphered.

Defensively Mohenjo-daro was a well-fortified city. Though it did not have city walls it did have towers to the west of the main settlement, and defensive fortifications to the south. These fortifications taken into consideration, as well as a comparison to the Harappa ruins to the northeast, lead to the question of whether Mohenjo-daro was an administrative center. Both Harappa and Mohenjo-daro share relatively the same architectural layout (Harappa is less well preserved due to early site defilement), and were generally not heavily fortified like other Indus Valley sites. It is obvious from the identical city layouts of all Indus sites, that there was some kind of political or administrative centrality, however the extent and functioning (and even the placement and type) of an administrative center remains relatively

The site covers an area of over 250 hectares, representing various phases of urban growth and reorganization. The Indus river is currently situated to the east of the site, but in antiquity it may have been on the west and one channel of the river cuts through the site dividing the so-called “citadel” mound from the “lower town.”

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