'Detectives' unearth secrets of the past (Dilmun seals inscribed with Indus Valley inscription)

Daily News the Voice of Bahrain ^ | Monday 6th June 2005 | Rebecca Torr

[SunkenCiv]

Artefacts dating back 4,000 years, unearthed at a burial site in Janabiya, are shedding more light on merchant movements during the Dilmun era. Dilmun seals found at the site are inscribed with an Indus Valley inscription. Indus Valley was an ancient civilisation that thrived in an area between Pakistan and India between 2,800BC and 1,800BC... This is not the first time that Indus Valley inscriptions have been found on Dilmun seals, but it is rare, said archaeology and heritage acting director Khalid Al Sindi.

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

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[muawiyah]

Worth reading the article referenced at the bottom. They've found yet more in the way of Sun worship at this particular site.

[SunkenCiv]

which one?

[Unam Sanctam]

Have the Indus Valley inscriptions been deciphered yet?

[SunkenCiv]

Depends on who one asks. ;') There have been a few claims of decipherment, none of which have withstood the cursory scrutiny they've generally been given. I've even read that decipherment is impossible, due to the large number of signs which are used but once or twice. From the following title:

Parpula's two volumes of photographs covering the collections of India and Pakistan, which appeared in 1987 and 1991... and his 1994 sign list, containing 386 signs (as against Mahadevan's 419 signs), are generally recognized as fine achievements, not least by Mahadevan... This is a significant figure. It is too high for a syllabary like Linear B... and too low for a highly logographic script like Chinese. the nearest comparison... are probably the Hittite hieroglyphs with about 500 signs and Sumerian cuneiform with perhaps 600+ signs... Most scholars therefore agree that the Indus script is likely to be a logosyllabic script like its west Asian contemporaries. [pp 281-284]

These Dravidian speakers are presumably remnants of a once-widespread Dravidian culture submerged by encroaching Indo-Aryans in the 2nd millennium BC... The Indo-Aryan hymns, the Vedas... recount tales of conquest of the forts of the dark-skinned Dasa or Dasyu... the Vedas repeatedly mention the horse in their descriptions of warfare and sacrifice, and this animal was clearly a vital part of Indo-Aryan society... But there is not horse imagery at all in the Indus Valley civilization and virtually no horse remains have been found by archaeologists. Hence the Indus civilizations is unlikely to have been Indo-Aryan. [pp 290-291]

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Lost Languages: The Enigma Of The World's Undeciphered Scripts by Andrew Robinson

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Robinson mentions "a substantial inscription found at Dholavira near the coast of Kutch in 1990, which appears to have been a kind of sign board for the city." [p 295]

Uncracked Ancient Codes
(Lost Languages reviewed)
by William C. West

Sanskrit and early Dravidian, the ancient languages of India, seem to be the keys to deciphering the highly challenging script of the Indus Valley civilization of the third millennium b.c. in what is now Pakistan and northwest India. As with other languages, a photographic corpus of drawings, a sign list and a concordance must be compiled before decipherment will be possible. Work has proceeded along these lines for inscriptions on some 3,700 objects from the Indus Valley, most of them seal stones with very brief inscriptions (the longest has only 26 characters)... Robinson's descriptions of such analysis, and his accounts of both successful and unsuccessful decoding attempts, are clear, provocative and stimulating.

One sees what one wants to
by Iravatham Mahadevan

I agree with Rajaram that it is time we put this 'horse business' behind us and look at the decipherment itself. I have done so. The Jha-Rajaram 'decipherment' is completely invalid. It is, in fact, a non-starter for the simple reason that the direction of reading adopted by the authors is wrong, as demonstrated by Witzel and Farmer (Frontline, October 13, box item at p.12). The 'decipherment' makes as much sense as you would get out of this page if you try to read it from a mirror reflection.

Of Rajaram's 'Horses', 'decipherment', and civilisational issues
by Asko Parpola

It is sad that in South Asia, as elsewhere in the world, linguistic and religious controversies are the cause of so much injustice and suffering. We should remember that from the very beginning, Aryan and non-Aryan languages and associated cultures, religions and peoples have intermingled and have become inextricably mixed. Every element of the population has contributed to the creation of Indian civilisation, and every one of them deserves credit for it.

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Deciphering the Indus Script by Asko Parpola	Early Tamil Epigraphy from the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. by Iravatham Mahadevan

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[Unam Sanctam]

Thanks for the interesting post. I would think that the fact that Dravidian languages are known historically would help in the reconstruction. I have ordered Robinson's book.

[SunkenCiv]

I think you'll enjoy it. I've posted a review on Amazon. Plus, I'm always pimping for favorable votes on my reviews there. ;')

[SunkenCiv]

I just noticed... there's another thing about the script which makes Dravidian the better choice -- some researchers have discerned an agglutinative structure in the script, and Dravidian is agglutinative. I think I've posted that somewhere on FR... let's see... nope, can't find it right now.

AncientScripts -- Indus Script
http://www.ancientscripts.com/indus.html

[SunkenCiv]

Ancient writing found in Turkmenistan
BBC | Tuesday, 15 May, 2001, 05:57 GMT 06:57 UK | staff
Posted on 11/01/2004 10:24:57 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1265930/posts
27 posted on 11/03/2004 10:33:06 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1265930/posts?page=27#27

[SunkenCiv]

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