Mohenjo-daro: Great Bath and Planned City of the Indus Valley

Mohenjo-daro is the ruined site of the largest and best-preserved city of the Indus Valley Civilisation, built in what is now Sindh, Pakistan, around 2500 BC. Its grid of streets, brick houses, covered drains and the waterproofed Great Bath made it one of the most sophisticated cities of the Bronze Age world. Excavated from the 1920s and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980, it remains the most famous symbol of the Indus civilisation.

Location and name

Mohenjo-daro stands on the plain of the lower Indus, in Larkana District, close to the river’s west bank. Fertile floodplain soils supported farming, and the river connected the city with the sea to the south and with other Indus settlements to the north.

The name Mohenjo-daro is Sindhi and is usually translated as “mound of the dead”. It was given to the ruins by local people long after the city was abandoned. The original name of the city is unknown, because the Indus script has not been deciphered.

At its height the city covered at least 200 hectares, and possibly considerably more. Only a fraction of it has been excavated. Population estimates are uncertain, but most fall around 30,000 to 40,000 people, which would have made it one of the largest cities in the world at the time.

Discovery and excavation

The highest point of the ruins is crowned by a Buddhist stupa and monastery built many centuries later, probably in the Kushan period in the early centuries AD. In 1919–20 the Indian archaeologist R. D. Banerji of the Archaeological Survey of India visited the site to study this stupa and noticed much older remains beneath it.

Banerji began excavating in 1922 and found stamp seals similar to those from Harappa, hundreds of kilometres to the north-east. John Marshall, the Survey’s Director-General, recognised that the two sites belonged to the same unknown civilisation and announced the discovery in 1924. Large-scale excavations followed under Marshall from 1925 and under Ernest Mackay until 1931.

Mortimer Wheeler worked on the citadel in 1950, and George Dales carried out the last major excavation in 1964–65. Since then digging has been kept to a minimum because exposed brickwork decays quickly. From the late 1970s German and Italian teams carried out detailed surface surveys and documentation without large new excavations.

A planned city

Mohenjo-daro was divided into two main parts. To the west, a high mound often called the citadel stood on a massive artificial platform of mud brick and earth, raising it well above flood level. To the east lay a larger lower town, where most people lived and worked.

The lower town was laid out on a roughly regular grid. Broad main streets ran north–south and east–west, with narrower lanes between blocks of houses. The houses were built of fired brick, often around a central courtyard, and many had more than one storey. Entrances usually opened onto side lanes rather than main streets, which gave privacy.

Water was central to the city’s design. Excavators found many private wells, and the total for the city has been estimated at several hundred, perhaps around 700. Many houses had a bathing platform and a latrine. Waste water flowed through clay pipes or channels into brick drains running along the streets, covered with bricks and provided with soak pits and access points for cleaning. Few ancient cities anywhere had such a comprehensive system.

The Great Bath and the citadel

The best-known structure on the citadel is the Great Bath, a rectangular tank measuring about 12 by 7 metres and about 2.4 metres deep. It was built of finely fitted bricks set on edge with gypsum mortar, and a layer of bitumen behind the walls helped make it watertight. Two flights of steps led down into it from the north and south, and a drain in one corner allowed it to be emptied.

The tank was surrounded by a brick courtyard and rooms, and a well in a nearby room may have supplied it with water. Most scholars think it served for ritual bathing, a practice that has a long history in South Asian religions, although this connection cannot be proven.

Next to the Great Bath, Wheeler identified a large building with a solid brick base crossed by narrow channels as a granary. As at Harappa, no stored grain was found, and many archaeologists now call it the Great Hall. Other buildings on the citadel include a large hall with rows of brick piers, sometimes described as an assembly hall, and a complex of rooms once nicknamed the “college of priests”. These labels reflect early interpretations rather than proven functions.

Art and everyday objects

Mohenjo-daro has produced some of the best-known Indus objects. A small steatite bust of a bearded man wearing a patterned robe, found in 1927 and nicknamed the “Priest-King”, is now in the National Museum of Pakistan in Karachi. The bronze statuette known as the Dancing Girl, found in 1926, is in the National Museum in New Delhi.

Excavators also found hundreds of square stamp seals carved with animals such as the “unicorn”, bull, elephant and rhinoceros, together with short inscriptions in the Indus script. Other finds include painted pottery, terracotta figurines and toy carts, gold and carnelian jewellery, copper and bronze tools, stone weights and gaming pieces.

Despite these riches, no building has been firmly identified as a palace or temple, and there are no monumental statues of rulers. How Mohenjo-daro was governed remains unknown.

Daily life

Although no texts can be read, the buildings and objects allow a picture of daily life. Most households seem to have had access to clean water and private washing facilities, a level of comfort that would not become common in many cities until modern times. Courtyards were used for cooking and work, and staircases suggest flat roofs used for sleeping in hot weather.

Craft production took place throughout the city. Archaeologists have identified areas for bead-making, shell working, pottery firing and the dyeing of cloth. Standardised stone weights point to regulated trade within the city and beyond, while seals were probably used to mark bundles of goods. Cotton cloth, grain and finished crafts may have travelled down the Indus to the coast and on to the Persian Gulf.

Decline and the massacre myth

From about 1900 BC Mohenjo-daro declined. Building quality worsened, rooms were subdivided, and craft workshops spread into former living areas. The city was eventually abandoned, though the reasons are debated. Suggested factors include changes in the course of the Indus, floods, a weakening monsoon and the decline of trade.

In 1947 Mortimer Wheeler argued that groups of skeletons found in the upper levels were victims of a final massacre by Aryan invaders. In 1964 George Dales published a critique titled “The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjo-daro”, showing that the skeletons came from different levels and periods. Later studies by the physical anthropologist Kenneth Kennedy found little evidence of violent injury. The invasion theory has been abandoned, but it still circulates in popular accounts.

Key people

• R. D. Banerji (1885–1930): Indian archaeologist who recognised the ancient remains beneath the Buddhist stupa and began excavating in 1922.
• John Marshall (1876–1958): Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, who announced the Indus civilisation in 1924 and edited the three-volume report on Mohenjo-daro published in 1931.
• Ernest Mackay (1880–1943): British archaeologist who led excavations from 1927 to 1931 and found many of the site’s best-known objects.
• Mortimer Wheeler (1890–1976): excavated the citadel defences and promoted the theory of an Aryan massacre, which later research rejected.
• George Dales (1927–1992): American archaeologist who led the 1964–65 excavations and challenged the massacre theory.
• Michael Jansen: German architectural historian whose documentation project from 1979 mapped the city’s buildings, wells and drains in detail.

Preservation today

Mohenjo-daro faces serious threats. Rising groundwater carries salts into the ancient bricks, which crumble as the salts crystallise. Floods, heavy monsoon rains and the large number of visitors add to the damage. In 1974 UNESCO launched an international campaign to safeguard the site, and conservation work has continued since its listing as a World Heritage Site in 1980. Heavy rains in 2022 caused further damage to some walls. Conservators have experimented with protective mud-brick capping, drainage and lowering the water table, and many archaeologists argue that the best way to protect the unexcavated parts of the city is to leave them buried.

Timeline

• c. 2500 BC: The planned city of Mohenjo-daro flourishes; earlier levels lie below the water table.
• c. 1900 BC: The city begins to decline.
• c. 1st–3rd century AD: A Buddhist stupa is built on the citadel mound.
• 1919–20: R. D. Banerji visits the site.
• 1922: Excavations begin.
• 1924: John Marshall announces the discovery of the Indus civilisation.
• 1926–27: The Dancing Girl and the Priest-King are found.
• 1964: George Dales publishes his critique of the massacre theory.
• 1974: UNESCO launches an international safeguarding campaign.
• 1980: Mohenjo-daro becomes a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

Mohenjo-daro shows how far urban planning had advanced in South Asia more than 4,000 years ago. Its streets, drains and Great Bath remain central to understanding the Indus Valley Civilisation and early urban life worldwide. Protecting its fragile brickwork is now as important as studying it.