Architecture & Sculptures of Mohenjo-Daro

2019
Submitted by
Samaviya Nadeem
Muhammad Saad
Nabeela Yousuf
Maliha Yasin
Submitted to
Ms. Sana Arslan
 University of Education

Topic: Architecture And Sculpture Of Mohenjo Daro

Submitted to: Miss Sana Arslan

Submitted by: Samaviya Nadeem

Nabeela yusuf

Maliha Yasin

Muhammad Saad

University of Education
Lower Mall Campus,

Lahore
Contents

 Architecture
 Sculpture

ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE OF MOHENJO DARO

Art throughout the civilization ranged from jewelry to pottery. Archaeologists were able
to find a few artworks from the Mohenjo-Daro city. One of the most famous piece of art
found in Mohenjo-Daro is known as the "dancing girl." The people also carved seals
from steatite with over 400 kinds of pictographs on them resembling various animals,
objects, ideas and sounds. Each seal were from about .75 to 1.74 inches. One that both
cities shared would be using pottery wheels for making clay pots ranging from plain to
decorated ones. Their bowls and dishes ranged from being made out of terracotta to
bronze to copper and to silver.
Structures from both Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro was usually built with baked
bricks. It is observed that throughout the cities there were not many monuments,
palaces, or temples. The layout of the houses were of multiple houses along a small
alley houses. Majority of the homes were two story, flat-roofed, mud-brick homes.
Although the structures were pretty much identical, some houses had one room while
others had twelve. It is believed citizens with one room homes are poorer than the
multiple rooms owners.

Did you know?

Civilians of the Indus River Valley Civilization loved wearing jewelry. They wore things
from earrings, necklaces, beads, and more.

Four examples of the different kinds of pictographs that were on seals.

This 11 cm long bronze sculpture of a little girl dancing was found by archaeologists in 1926.
Believed to be one of the most famous pieces of Indus Valley art. This sculpture also shows that
the people liked and knew of some form of dance.

This 8 feet by 39 feet by 23 feet rectangular pool is known as the Great Bath. The water
supply used for bathing came from wells.
This picture shows the walkway through the civilization.

A WELL-PLANNED STREET grid and an elaborate drainage system

hint that the occupants of the ancient Indus civilization city of Mohenjo
Daro were skilled urban planners with a reverence for the control of
water. But just who occupied the ancient city in modern-day Pakistan
during the third millennium B.C. remains a puzzle.

"It's pretty faceless," says Indus expert Gregory Possehl of

the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
The city lacks ostentatious palaces, temples, or monuments. There's no
obvious central seat of government or evidence of a king or queen.
Modesty, order, and cleanliness were apparently preferred. Pottery and
tools of copper and stone were standardized. Seals and weights
suggest a system of tightly controlled trade.

City of Mounds
Archaeologists first visited Mohenjo Daro in 1911. Several excavations
occurred in the 1920s through 1931. Small probes took place in the
1930s, and subsequent digs occurred in 1950 and 1964.

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The ancient city sits on elevated ground in the modern-day Larkana

district of Sindh province in Pakistan.

During its heyday from about 2500 to 1900 B.C., the city was among
the most important to the Indus civilization, Possehl says. It spread out
over about 250 acres (100 hectares) on a series of mounds, and the
Great Bath and an associated large building occupied the tallest
mound.

According to University of Wisconsin, Madison, archaeologist Jonathan

Mark Kenoyer, also a National Geographic grantee, the mounds grew
organically over the centuries as people kept building platforms and
walls for their houses.
Prized Artifacts
A miniature bronze statuette of a nude female, known as the dancing
girl, was celebrated by archaeologists when it was discovered in 1926,
Kenoyer notes.

Of greater interest to him, though, are a few stone sculptures of seated

male figures, such as the intricately carved and colored Priest King, so
called even though there is no evidence he was a priest or king.

The sculptures were all found broken, Kenoyer says. "Whoever came in
at the very end of the Indus period clearly didn't like the people who
were representing themselves or their elders," he says.

Just what ended the Indus civilization—and Mohenjo Daro—is also a

mystery.

Kenoyer suggests that the Indus River changed course, which would
have hampered the local agricultural economy and the city's importance
as a center of trade.

But no evidence exists that flooding destroyed the city, and the city
wasn't totally abandoned, Kenoyer says. And, Possehl says, a changing
river course doesn't explain the collapse of the entire Indus civilization.
Throughout the valley, the culture changed, he says.

"It reaches some kind of obvious archaeological fruition about 1900

B.C.," he said. "What drives that, nobody knows.