The Priest
The Indus Valley Civilization, also known as the Harappan civilization, was one of the earliest urban civilizations in the world, flourishing between the 3rd and 2nd millennium BCE in the region that now encompasses parts of India and Pakistan. Despite being one of the most advanced civilizations of its time, we still know very little about the Indus script that was used by the Harappans.
The script was first discovered in the early 20th century by archaeologists excavating the ruins of the Indus Valley cities. Since then, thousands of inscriptions have been found on seals, tablets, and other objects. However, despite the efforts of many scholars, the script remains undeciphered.
One of the main reasons for this is that there are no known bilingual inscriptions that could provide a key to understanding the script. In other cases where forgotten scripts have been deciphered, such as with the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, scholars were able to use inscriptions written in the forgotten script alongside their counterparts written in a known script to help decode the symbols. But in the case of the Indus script, no such inscriptions have been found.
Another challenge to deciphering the script is that we do not know what language the Harappans spoke. Without this knowledge, it is difficult to even begin to make sense of the symbols. However, some progress has been made in recent years with the use of computational techniques, which have allowed researchers to analyze the statistical patterns of the script and compare them to known languages. Despite these efforts, the Indus script remains a mystery, and we may never know for sure what the Harappans were trying to convey with their writing
