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. 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.
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