Seals

Seals and tablets with inscriptions from the ancient Indus Valley Civilization.

Yogic Deity M-305

"Astronomy, including the use of a star calendar, played an important role in ancient Mesopotamia, and deeply influenced its religion: all the main gods were symbolized by particular stars or planets. In West Asia, one or two "star" symbols placed near the head distinguished divinities in pictorial representations. The practice seems to have been borrowed by the Indus civilization, for a seal from Mohenjo-daro depicts an Indus deity with a star on either side of his head enclosed by a pair of curved horns. (Asko Parpola, The Roots of Hinduism, p. 272). Elsewhere he writes: "Indus signs

Bare Handed Tiger Wrestling Seals

Images show a figure strangling two tigers with his bare hands.
In color is a seal, in black and white two seals and corresponding sealings made from them (Joshi and Parpola, Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions, Vol. 1, M 306-8). Mark Kenoyer writes that "discoveries of this motif on seals from Mohenjo-daro definitely show a male figure and most scholars have assumed some connection with the carved seals from Mesopotamia that illustrate episodes from the famous Gilgamesh epic.

Near Eastern Seal

Impression of an Indus-style cylinder seal of unknown Near Eastern origin in the Musee du Louvre, Paris. All indications are that the Bronze age was built on a robust international trade system. Massimo Vidale's article Growing in a Foreign World: For a History of the "Meluha Villages" in Mesopotamia in the 3rd Millenium BCE gathers together all facts about Indus settlements and trading with ancient Mesopotamia around 2500 BCE. Conjectures and implications by an Italian archaeologist who is a pioneer in multidisciplinary analysis.

Unicorn Seal

Large square unicorn sealing (left) and seal from Mohenjo-daro. The unicorn is the most common motif on Indus seals and appears to represent a mythical animal that Greek and Roman sources trace back to the Indian subcontinent. A relatively long inscription of eight symbols runs along the top of the seal. The elongated body and slender arching neck is typical of unicorn figurines, as are the tail with bushy end and the bovine hooves. This figure has a triple incised line depicting a pipal leaf shaped blanket or halter, while most unicorn figures have only a double incised line.

The Pleiades Seal

This seal from Mohenjo-daro contains, perhaps more compactly than any other, what we can tell of ancient Indus beliefs and traditions. Several script signs are interspersed with the figures along the top of the seal and a single sign is placed at the base of the tree. This scene may represent a special ritual sacrifice to a deity with seven figures in procession. The seal has a grooved and perforated boss and the edges are worn and rounded from repeated use. It shows a deity with horned headdress and bangles on both arms, standing in a pipal (sacred fig) tree and looking down on a kneeling

Unicorn Sealings and Seals

"The earliest representation of a unicorn is found on seals and sealings from sites in the northern Indus region, dated to c. 2600 BCE," writes Jonathan Mark Kenoyer. "This motif is not reported from any other contemporaneous civilization and appears to be unique to the Indus region. The unicorn motif continued to be used throughout the greater Indus region for over 700 years and disappeared along with the Indus script and other diagnostic elements of Indus ideology and bureaucracy c.

Seal with Two-Horned Zebu Bull

Courtesy of The Cleveland Museum of Art, J. H. Wade Fund 1973.160.
"At their best, it would be no exaggeration to describe them as little masterpieces of controlled realism, with a monumental strength in one sense out of all proportion to their size and in another entirely related to it," wrote Sir Mortimer Wheeler. Seal with Two-Horned Zebu Bull and Inscription, ca. 2000 BCE. As Mark Kenoyer writes "The majestic zebu bull, with its heavy dewlap and wide curving horns is perhaps the most impressive motif found on the Indus seals.

Pipal Leaves: Revisited

The impressions of a pipal leaf found in the upper clay levels of a drain in Harappa, shown here with a modern pipal leaf, indicate that what many think was a sacred tree was growing in the ancient city of Harappa even at that time. A well at Mohenjo-daro, a sealing from the city and the pipal motif on a unicorn seal are other examples of this critical motif in Indus culture. See also Unicorn and Pipal Tree Seal.

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