#Cuneiform Script

[jackoshadows]

A 3,800-year-old Akkadian cuneiform tablet was found during the archaeological excavations carried out in the Aççana Mound, the old city of Alalakh, in the Reyhanlı district of Hatay city in southern Turkey.

Removing the wall rubble as part of the study, the team found a cuneiform clay tablet among the remains.

In the first examination of the Akkadian tablet, information regarding the agreement made by Yarim-Lim, the first known king of Alalakh, to buy another city was found.

Akar emphasized that the tablet found among the remains, dating back 3,800 years, is in a well-preserved form. "While removing the debris of a few collapsed walls at the mound, it was very exciting to come across a tablet that had never been touched or damaged," he said.

Akar continued by stating that the historical period of the artifact extends to the Middle Bronze Age. "During the Middle Bronze Age, a period we define as such, we observe that the kings of this region possessed economic power. This is evidenced by astonishing examples documented in written records. In this tablet, we see that Yarim-Lim, the first known king of Alalakh, intended to purchase another city and, in this regard, entered into an agreement. This actually demonstrates that the kings in this region had the economic capability and potential to acquire another city," he said.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Akar, who pointed out that the tablet would also contribute to understanding the economic structure of the era, stated,

"The tablet likely contains the names of significant individuals from the city who witnessed this sale. In a sense, we see evidence of a witness list from that period,"

"The work came out as an extremely unique example, especially to decipher the economic structure of that period, the relationship between cities, and the economic and political model," he said.

[eyesontime-luxury-watches]

Montblanc is honouring the 100th anniversary of its Meisterstück writing instrument with a remarkable tribute to Enheduanna, the world’s earliest known author, through the new Montblanc Star Legacy Suspended Exo Tourbillon Skeleton.

This extraordinary timepiece encapsulates the historical significance of writing and its evolution from ancient Mesopotamia.

[sakuraswordly]

[a-witch-in-endor]

Three Jewish Commonwealths: Reflections on Religion

Today has been Yom Ha’atzma’ut, or Israel’s Independence Day. I’ve been thinking about what it means to live within a historical period while able to reflect on past time periods, and my “thinking out loud” (or: via tumblr post) on that has turned into this slightly unhinged text on the history of religious development in the three Jewish Commonwealths. I have no excuse. Just lots of thoughts. Feel free to join me on a meandering path through religious history...

Please note: my expertise is religious studies, not in modern politics. If you have a unique perspective or expertise in politics, I’m generally happy to chat (recently met a previous head of the Shin Bet; it was intense; I was interested and frightened), but at this point I have learned Too Much and it is all falling out of my ears, so I won’t be engaging much with political discussions. 

The First Jewish Commonwealth: ???? BCE - 586 BCE 

When and how did the First Jewish Commonwealth come about? The truth is: we don’t really know. 

The earliest potential reference to Israel is the Merneptah Stele (1213 BCE - 1203 BCE). It’s absolutely gorgeous! Behold!

https://www.worldhistory.org/image/9384/stele-of-merenptah/

Does it refer to Israel? Maybe. I’d err on the side of “probably”. The hieroglyphs do lend to being read as “Israel”, and the context would make sense. But there are alternative readings, and it’s an unusually early reference. For comparison, David (second king of United Israel, after what the Bible reports to be a long period of “Judges” [read: tribal chieftans]) looks to be around at 1000 BCE. 

And here is the recent discovery at Mount Ebal in Hebrew, which parallels almost absurdly well with a Torah story, which is dated to around 1200 BCE.

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/inscriptions/mt_ebal_inscription/

So let’s assume that we’re unsure about the stele but happy with the tablets. The tablets tell us a few things: worship of the God of Israel was already in place (note: it does not tell us the extent, just the existence); Hebrew literacy had begun; the Torah story of the curses of Mt Ebal have some kind of historical basis. 

The Jewish cultural narrative is that the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, escaped with Divine aid, spent 40 years in the wilderness, and ended up in the Holy Land (where some of their ancestors had previously been but had left due to famine). It’s a great story. In terms of its historicity, it’s unclear. Until recently, archaeologists were tending toward being minimalists and stating that basically nothing was historically accurate up to, really, the reign of King David. It turns out, some hats do need to be eaten (due to things like the stele and tablets above), but they can keep some of their hats.

In terms of historical evidence outside archaeology, there are some fun linguistic and historical-social reasons to assume that at least some of the people who would come to call themselves Israelites had an experience of slavery in Egypt. For more on this, I recommend Richard Elliot Freidman’s “The Exodus” (biblical scholar; thesis: a small group went through slavery and came to Israel, introduced their monotheism/monolatry, and the story became part of the cultural narrative) and Jan Assman’s “Moses the Egyptian: the Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism” (egyptologist; thesis: the short-lived monotheistic/monolatric cult of Pharaoh Akhenaten influenced Jewish, and therefore monotheistic, history). 

(Also, by-the-by, they’re both wonderful guys as well as fascinating scholars.) 

What we do know is: there was a monotheistic cult (or perhaps a monolatric cult) who worshipped what we now recognise as “God” with a capital G. There was a certain amount of theological messiness with Canaanite polytheism (inasmuch as polytheism really exists, which is a rant for another day). The lines between the two are very blurry indeed, which indicates that much of what we now think of as “Israelite” religion was really a development within “Canaanite” religion. Genetically speaking, we know that “Israelites” and “Canaanites” were really the same people. So it’s a safe assumption, when one adds the archaeology and the genetics and the linguistics all together, to see the development of the Israelite religion as internal to the Land of Canaan/Israel, as well as pondering how/when/to whom an exodus from Egypt really occurred. 

That’s a short note on the origins of Israel. By the time we get to King David, we’re more comfortably in Israelite history, though how united his reign really was remains unclear. But we do know that, however united it might have been under his son King Solomon, it was not destined to remain that way. 

The Time of Two Kingdoms: The Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah

The good news is that we’re in more solid territory, archaeologically speaking. 

The bad news is that the kingdom split asunder. The Southern Kingdom had, in Jerusalem, the Holy Temple (known herein as the First Temple, which is spoiler-y, I suppose). The First Temple was the central place of worship for the monotheistic cult, but it was in constant battle with bamot, or “high places”, where Israelites would worship God (with a capital G) in ways that were, um, a little idolatrous according to the Temple cult. 

In the Northern Kingdom, more bamot were built. According to the biblical narrative (which, at this point in biblical literature, is mostly dry history with a good helping of Polemic Against the North), King Jeroboam I (first king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel) built two particular sanctuaries at Beth El and Dan, in which he placed two golden calves for worship. Cows were certainly an important religious symbol, and golden calves have an, um, historical... thread... in Israelite religion, so it’s entirely possible it played out this way. I’ve been to the ruins of Dan and the sanctuary there, which fit pretty well with what the biblical narrative describes. Beth El is a lot trickier to identify, and if it has been found (which is arguable), it doesn’t really seem to align as well. 

The Southern Kingdom fluctuates in terms of religious practice, but seems to stick more clearly to what we would recognise from biblical literature. However, to be clear, this is because the Southern Kingdom of Judah is where most of the biblical literature gets written, and even when it doesn’t get written there, it usually gets edited there. So take its aspersion on the North with a grain of kosher salt. 

The North Falls: 722 BCE

The Northern Kingdom eventually falls to the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The entire land was divided into tribal settlements even when it was “United”. The North consists of Ten Tribes. The South is mostly just Judah, which is where it got its name. Therefore, when the Northern Kingdom of Israel was dispersed, we mostly lost ten whole tribes. It’s a huge upset to Israelite history, and certainly to the history of religious development in the area. The Southern relationship with the Temple tightens. Whatever was going on in the North, religiously, is understood by the Southern Kingdom to have been their downfall. 

(Note: some groups claim to be part of the Ten Northern Tribes. Most famously, Ethiopian Jews have an oral history of descent from the Tribe of Dan. While we don’t know the historicity of that claim, the Ethiopian Jewish community is old af, with whispers of their existence reaching the mainstream Jewish community as early as the 9th Century CE, so it’s certainly plausible. Most Ethiopian Jews now live in the Modern State of Israel, having arrived under the Law of Return after fleeing persecution. Their experience is a mixed bag; better than Ethiopia, and with much love of the Holy Land, but Israel retains a racism problem that is having a significant impact on their ability to thrive.)

The First Exile: 586ish BCE - 538ish BCE

We’re in safer hands now, historically speaking. Israel is enough of an entity that not only are they popping up everywhere archaeologically, but the story of the exile itself is recorded (above is a pretty cuneiform tablet referencing the exile, from 580ish BCE, in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin). 

The Babylonian Exile began and ended in stages, which means that while we do know when things occurred, it’s harder to define when the exile actually began and ended. For the Israelites, this meant life without access to a) the Holy Land, which the entire religion was built on, and b) the Holy Temple, where worship occurred. In this time, we see the first seedlings of religious practice being community-based in a way that wasn’t, um, arguably idolatrous according to the Temple cult. We might call this the beginning of the era of synagogues. 

The seeds of messianic redemption are born in a pre-exile world, and probably sustain the Jews through the First Exile. The idea is messy and contradictory, but it boils down to: God will bring us home. Jeremiah tells the exiles to pray for the country in which they reside (which is the basis of the Prayer for the Country that Jews still do in synagogues today). 

Why did this exile happen (historically) and why did the exiles think it happened? Largely, the First Exile was due to a game of politics. The kingdoms were small and needed to make allies, and variously become vassals of other states, and sometimes made decisions that were obviously poor in the grand scheme of history but weren’t so obviously poor at the time. The story retained in the South would be mixed explanations about turning against God: idolatry, lack of trust, trying to play games with empires instead of just trusting that God would protect, etc.

But what really bothers me about it is: if the North and South had managed to be consistent allies with one another, or perhaps not split in the first place, they probably would have been in a much stronger position. But it seems they were constantly squabbling with one another, including (but not limited to) royal assassinations. And in a sea filled with bigger, more dangerous fish, it probably doomed them more than a little. 

Return From Exile (Thanks to Cyrus the Messiah): 538ish BCE

Big picture history: the Neo-Assyrian Empire went caput, giving a brief period of terrifying political vacuum (at which point the Southern Kingdom of Judah kept changing its mind on allies and betting on the wrong horses), leading to the rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The Assyrians had scattered the Northern Kingdom of Israel (722 BCE). The Babylonians then exiled the Southern Kingdom of Judah (destruction of the First Temple was 586 BCE). Then the Babylonians fell to the Persians, and we came to the reign of the only non-Jewish king referred to as a moshiach (messiah) in biblical literature: Cyrus the Great. 

We love him. Why? Because Cyrus had some weirdly forward-thinking views about religion, and he sent the Jews home and supported the rebuilding of the Holy Temple.

The Cyrus Cylinder details how Cyrus was in the practice of sending peoples home and restored shrines. We stan one (1) Achaemenidian Emperor. 

The Second Jewish Commonwealth: 586ish BCE - 70 CE

Second Temple Judaism was a slightly different creature. The Israelites had now survived being uprooted from the sacred land and had to deal with what it meant to, well, replant themselves on it. This is the period in which the prophets of old drew their last breaths and a more textual Judaism came to be. 

Some scholars argue that this is when the religion developed from monolatry (the worship of one god, but the belief that many exist) to monotheism (the belief that there is only one God). Honestly, I am decreasingly convinced that any of these labels reflect religious reality anyway, so take what you want from that. However, the idea that the experience of being away from the land belonging to the local god could develop into the concept that there truly is only One God is, in itself, fascinating as a development. 

Our expectations, when an indigenous religion is uprooted from the land, might be that the development is a) defensive (a scramble to keep the culture and practices alive, sometimes to the point of adapting in opposition to the surrounding culture), b) inwardly assimilative (not always deliberately, the beliefs/culture/practices of the surroundings become part of the indigenous religion), and c) outwardly assimilative (not always deliberately, the beliefs/culture/practices of the indigenous group become part of the surroundings). If we agree with the scholars who claim that monotheism was a development of exile, we have quite a bizarre example of religious development which fits under none of those categories. 

(Super interested in examples of other indigenous cultures developing in exile in a way that doesn’t fit a, b, or c. Do reach out if you know of any.)

But the newly-returned exiles aren’t safe. Yehud/Judea is still a teeny thing without much political power. It goes through phases of vassalhood, independence, and occupation (famously by the Greeks, who then got booted out in a rebellion, which you might know as the Story of Chanukah). 

The Second Temple Mark I was a bit plain compared to the First Temple, but became absolutely glorious when restructured under the reign of Herod. However, it never quite gains complete centrality. The reason now is less to do with alternative worship (such as the bamot of old), but rather to do with groups like the Pharisees (a group devoted to the working classes, interested in literacy and learning, and... you know, law and stuff, we stan) and the Essenes (who say “fuck it, everything’s corrupt, let’s go to the wilderness and not have babies for some reason”). 

Messianism/redemption theology continues to develop, now utilising the previous exile-and-return as a model for what will happen in the future, too. Various messianic figures pop up, famously including Bar Kokhba (a military leader who led a rebellion aimed at Jewish independence from Roman occupation). He turns out to be one of the most influential messianic figures, because the failure of his great revolt led to...

The Second Exile: 70 CE - 1948 CE?

The Romans eventually got tired of the people they were occupying fighting back and decided to squash all future rebellion through... well, murder, destruction, and exile. The Second Temple was destroyed. Due to the seeds planted by the Pharisees (regarding Jewish practice of individuals and communities being able to exist outside of the Temple-based system), Rabbinic Judaism is able to grow from the ashes of the Temple. It was not a guarantee that Judaism could survive at all, but thanks to the rabbinic movement and the fact that the Jews had survived one exile, Judaism struggled forward. 

Why did this exile happen and how was it understood? Historically, we can point to the constant occupations and empires. But the rabbis have woven different narratives alongside the politics: it happened because of sinat chinam, they said; “baseless hatred” between Jews. Or it happened because leaders were so interested in harsh justice and forgot that mercy has always been a part of the law. Either way, the surviving story is less interested in the evil of the Roman Empire and more interested in how our values and actions on an individual level spin out of control and affect the whole world. It’s a slightly less theological explanation. While the First Exile was due to “God is punishing us”, the Second Exile is understood more along the lines of “we caused this with our actions and values”. 

The Second Exile stretches long and far. Empires fall, as they are wont to, and other empires colonise and capture and conflict with one another. Jews spread out farther than ever before, but whenever they set down roots anywhere, expulsion is a constant threat. 

Christianity develops out of a mixture of Judaism and Hellenism, based on the cult following of a messianic figure, and crawls to a position of power and then starts running in the way it spreads. Islam is birthed by a single central leader with inspiration from both Christianity and Judaism and is immediately on the move and spreading. Christian and Islamic political entities conflict with one another. Things are generally worse for Jews in Christendom and pogroms are a semi-constant threat. Ashkenazi Jews, as a result, become more religiously defensive (see point a above) and develop a firmer view of the law. Rule under Islamic empires is usually better, but maintains a level of hostility, such as special taxes being levied and not being allowed to be physically “above Muslims”. 

The messianic dream continues to develop; the idea that “God will take us home” remains a deep and important thread in Jewish religion and liturgy. Jewish languages develop out of Hebrew and relationship with the outside world, such as Judeo-Arabic and Yiddish. Jews suspicious of the outside world tend to be more entrenched in messianic ideals. 

The Enlightenment seems like a positive thing for Jewish life in exile; many Jews get increasingly comfortable with life in exile. Some are more suspicious, due to events such as the Dreyfus Affair, and start to deliberately move the messianic dream into a potential political reality, now referred to as Zionism. The messianic dream becomes a political goal to end exile. 

Big picture history: The land is captured and colonised and recaptured time and time again. For a very brief version, it goes (deep breath): Roman Empire into Byzantine Empire, conquered by the Arab Caliphate (7th Century), conquered by the Fatimid Caliphate (10th Century), some skirmishes with the Byzantines wanting things back, into the Crusades where it went back and forth for centuries (no fun at all, do not recommend, zero stars), then the Mongols turned up and were ultimately defeated by the Egyptian Mamluks (13th Century), who were then conquered by the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire (16th Century), who were then defeated by the British (20th Century). Phew.

In this time, the holy site of the Temple (”Temple Mount”, or Mount Moriah) has been the site of the First Temple (destroyed by the Babylonians), the site of the Second Temple (destroyed by the Romans), the site of Al-Aqsa Mosque / the Dome of the Rock (still there), and, briefly, an Augustinian Church (I admittedly do not know how they did this, but I imagine they just turned up and said “this is a church now”). 

Back to the exile itself: one third of all Jews were murdered in the 20th Century in the Sho’ah. (We’ve just about recovered those raw numbers at this point, but the world population has gone from 2 billion to 8 billion in that time - so in reality, we’re a quarter of what we should be.) The British were occupying a land with some significant violence occurring and no living empire to give it back to, and they overpromised to get allies. A mess was made. The UN made a half-hearted suggestion about trying to fulfill two promises at once, and we get to...

The Third Jewish Commonwealth (1948 CE - present)

I’m going to make an assumption here that you know some of this story already, and we’re treading into “modern politics” land, which is neither my forte nor my interest. In short: Everything was a mess when the British left. Israel declared independence. The Nakba. The war, then another war, then another war. There have been small glimmers of hope and then everything has crashed back to being terrible again. 

Religiously, the establishment of the Third Jewish Commonwealth has had a really interesting impact on self-definition. Did exile end with 1948? Some say yes; we’re now in diaspora rather than exile. Some say no; there might be a Law of Return, but with the state of the State, it’s hardly true that all Jews feel safe returning, and there’s no reason to think of diaspora as meaningfully different to exile. This brings up questions of Jewish identity worldwide. Are we a people exiled or a people redeemed? Is it possible to be neither of those things? Do we understand the establishment of the State in the kind of theological terms we understood the return from Babylonian Exile, or does the fact that we ultimately drew our understanding of the Second Exile from naturalistic/value-based/human causes mean that we see the “end of the exile” in the same ways?

There are no good answers to the above questions. Communities and individuals are split. On the one hand, it’s miraculous. On the other hand, it’s really, really not. 

In general, something that I think is religiously fascinating about Take Three is that the Jewish population is split between the very religious and the very secular. The middle path, what I might call Mainstream Judaism (from mainstream Orthodoxy through to Reform Judaism) barely exists at all. But what divides the Chareidim (ultra-religious) from the Chilonim (secular) is not a matter of Jewish identity or relationship with the land; it’s just a difference in whether or not religion matters. The answers appear to be “absolutely yes” and “absolutely no”, without much room for anything between. There is a kind of symbiotic relationship between the two sides, but they are very much two sides.

That there is such secularism is of course partly due to living in the modern world. But it also tells of a whole new relationship to the land. Chilonim still identify with the ancestral homeland, still see it as sacred in a sense, but don’t tie this sanctity to God. 

Why is the middle missing? Why has mainstream Judaism failed to get a foothold in the Third Jewish Commonwealth? It’s not for lack of trying. I’m at a bit of a loss as to why this would be the case. Looking back to Take One and Take Two, I can see how the development in the area led to the religious/political groups, but I’m at a loss for this one. Perhaps it’s about the impact of politics requiring people to take more extreme stances. Perhaps the trend is toward secularism, but the Chareidim just have so many babies that it bucks the trend. Perhaps middle-of-the-road Judaism is only appealing in exile/diaspora. 

And that brings me to the end of my musings. This has been on my mind because Israel’s democracy is currently under internal threat, which I find interesting in comparison to the First and Second Jewish Commonwealths. As Kohelet would say: there’s nothing new under the sun. 

[sannehnagi]

Matit' matip'it ušivaiitš'ikin, matirap' itakitšiš. You -that-knows may show he-that-knows, he-that-does-not-know may not see.

[polysprachig]

What was the first thing you did when creating your conlang? Did you start with the Latin alphabet or did you start with the cuneiform? Or something totally different?

The first thing I did when creating my conlang Ätchgö was to work on how the script would look. This was before anything but the name of the language, its literal meaning and a handful of key words were in my mind; I hadn't even fully worked out the sounds of it at that point, although personal verb endings and pronouns had been listed out (and later altered).

At the time it wasn't cuneiform, but it could be read from top to bottom or right to left. Some students at the uni I was studying at asked me if it was Chinese, but I think I was trying to make it look similar to Arabic back then. (I knew the region the Bronze-age Ätchgöans were from, plus there were signs all over the uni for free Arabic classes which had the alphabet on them.)

It looked laugh if you will like this:

Needless to say it was a D: idea when looking back on it now. Also, I just want to note that there was a strong Irish influence on the grammar at that time, and its since also been developed into something else.

Whereas this is the new cuneiform script:

The text on the left is an epitaph written in a hybrid semi-standard text which includes some traditional characters (often incorrectly), as it was written by a foreign travelling companion of an Ätchgöan kerim (traveller/explorer) upon the latter's death and buried with the kerim as a grave good.

The right shows the most recent grammatical additions (literally from this past week) to the Ätchgöan standard, which mean to clarify words by topic. Ex. a djjan is a 'tool' used for 'lemah' (building). It can become a 'long tool' with the adjective 'leh' (long), but if you add a 'sek' (content marker signifying 'death'), it changes from a long tool into a spear, sword, weapon, etc.

The cuneiform script can be read from top to bottom or left to right.

[sere-ness-ima]

[this-is-a-new-low-for-me]

Get handed an open summoning book but they forget I love trying new words and I immediately speak the ancient chant. No hesitation. No idea what it says or does. I just like the way unfamiliar words feel as I speak them. I mispronounce everything horribly. The demon is here and judging me.

[dadaonice]

Back to cuneiform school

[luwupercal]

working on art stuff and went on a side tangent and tl;dr now you too can start on your colchisian lessons. if you can guess what this says correctly i'll draw magnus in an outfit, this is a cypher for english basically atm. im tempted to doodle serious thoughts on alphabets for different languages in 40k though

[npcdeath]

autism is all fun and games until it causes unbridgeable communication rifts between you and all the people in your life who understand intellectually why you come across as rude, forceful or dismissive unintentionally but still struggle to marry that intellectual understanding to day to day life and become resentful of you because of it

[incesthemes]

i don't think they actually tried with this one

[monkvyasablog]

To comprehend the astrological concept of Omens, one must first understand the birth and the ancient world of Astrology. To know more abourt Astrology Omens and Calendar Astrology read our full blog.

[gingerest-ale]

Listen he’s trying really hard ok

This comic is based on Language Barriers by the amazing @quasar-crew!! I love this fic so much and I was thrilled to be able to make ark for it for the LU Writers Appreciation Project!

I also thought it was a great time to bring out the language nerd in me, so it was fun researching different scripts that could work to represent the different languages!! (Although the research mainly comes from Wikipedia, so I can’t guarantee accuracy) Breakdown under the cut!

Hylian: I used the in-game hylian script for this one

Goron: the script is Old Persian cuneiform! I picked this one because I thought the look fit well and it’s a script designed to be primarily cut into stone

Zora: the script is nushkuri, a writing system used for the Georgian language. It was picked because was trying to match the script that’s present on the Zora monuments in botw, which is also why I added a heavy slant to it!

Rito: this script is Tifinagh, used to write Berber languages. This one was mostly picked because I thought the look fit well!

Gerudo: this is the Gerudo alphabet, it makes it’s first appearance in Ocarina of Time!

[linguisticdiscovery]

A lost Canaanite language called Amorite has been decoded thanks to the discovery of bilingual tablets, similar to the way the Rosetta Stone helped scholars decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The tablets were written in Amorite and Akkadian using the cuneiform script. Prior to the discovery of these tablets there was such little written evidence for Amorite that some scholars doubted whether it even existed. Amorite was a Canaanite language related to Hebrew, in the Semitic language family.

Pretty cool, Amorite? 😅

[whencyclopedia]

A Gallery of the Indus Valley Civilization

The Indus Valley Civilization (c. 7000-c. 600 BCE) is among the oldest in the world but, as it was only “discovered” in 1829 – after ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian sites had already been excavated – many of the “firsts” of civilization were attributed to these cultures while, today, scholars believe they should be credited to the region of modern-day India.

Little is known of the Indus Valley Civilization (also known as the Harappan Civilization and the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization) because, unlike Egyptian hieroglyphics or Mesopotamian cuneiform, the Indus Script (also known as Harappan Script) has not yet been deciphered. All that is known of the culture comes from physical artifacts found at sites such as the ruins of the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro.

This gallery presents some of the best-known sites and artifacts excavated to date along with maps of the region based on the chronology suggested by these finds and their location. At the height of the Indus Valley Civilization, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro are thought to have had populations numbering between 40,000-50,000 but little is known of their daily lives today other than what is suggested by their art and architecture.

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