The way a civilization buries its dead says almost everything about what it values in life. The Egyptian pyramids speak of a pharaoh whose power must extend into eternity. The royal tombs of Sumer, filled with gold, lapis lazuli and sacrificed slaves, speak of an elite that takes its wealth into the afterlife. The death pit of Queen Puabi at Ur — where dozens of servants were buried alive with their mistress, after taking a soporific — speaks of a society where some lives were worth less than others.
And the burials of the civilization of the 7 Rivers? They speak of something else.
What the excavations revealed
In The Civilization of the 7 Rivers, I document this precisely: archaeological discoveries have revealed an aspect of this society that is quite contrary to what was done in the other two great civilizations of the time.
The absence of luxurious and ostentatious tombs overflowing with treasures. Simple tombs, without excess of wealth. Some personal jewellery, a few utilitarian objects — but without the opulence and pomp associated with the other two great contemporary civilizations.
Kenoyer confirms this in his work:
“The majority of Harappan burials are of the elongated type, where the body is laid out lengthwise.”
And Wheeler:
“The principal mode of burial of the dead was inhumation, although various methods such as lying, split and urn burials were practiced.”
What is absent is as revealing as what is present. No monumental funerary chamber. No sumptuous grave goods. No sacrificed servants. No immolated horses. No inscriptions extolling the glories of the deceased. No visible difference, in the tombs, between those who held power and those who did not.
Equality in death: the contrast with Egypt and Mesopotamia
To measure the originality of this funerary practice, one must compare it with what was happening simultaneously in the other two great civilizations.
In Egypt, around 2500 BCE — exactly when the 7 Rivers civilization was at its peak — pharaohs were having pyramids built to house their mummified bodies, surrounded by funeral furniture of extravagant richness: statues, jewels, provisions for the afterlife, effigies of servants. The nobles who had access to proper tombs were clearly distinguished in death as in life. The poor were buried in the sand, with nothing.
In Mesopotamia, the excavations of the royal tombs at Ur — conducted by Leonard Woolley in the 1920s — uncovered the death pit of Queen Puabi: seventy-three servants and soldiers buried alive with their sovereign, after taking a soporific. A literal demonstration, in stone and bone, of what a common life was worth compared to the life of a queen.
In the civilization of the 7 Rivers: nothing of the kind. Simple tombs. For everyone.
What the simplicity of burials reveals
In The Civilization of the 7 Rivers, I formulate the hypothesis that this funerary simplicity reflects a form of social equality within this society — inequalities of wealth and status that were not as marked as in other civilizations.
This interpretation is coherent with all the archaeological data. In the cities of the 7 Rivers civilization, even the most modest houses had toilets and a connection to the drainage network. There are no clearly delineated poor quarters facing rich quarters. The bricks are the same dimensions in modest houses and in collective buildings. No palace. No residence that would distinguish itself radically from others by its size or materials.
Death confirms what life shows: in this civilization, ostentatious accumulation was not the norm.
Funerary practices: diversity and continuity
The excavations also revealed a diversity of funerary practices — inhumation and cremation coexisted according to communities and regions. Some bodies were laid out at full length, oriented in precise directions. Others were buried in a flexed position. Cinerary urns testify to cremation.
This diversity is itself revealing. In civilizations where centralized power dictates practices, funerary rituals tend to become uniform — the State imposes its codes, even in death. The diversity observable in the 7 Rivers civilization suggests a decentralized organization, where local communities maintained their own traditions.
The Rig Veda and death
The Rig Veda provides complementary insight into this vision of death. The tenth mandala contains several funeral hymns — notably hymns 10.14 to 10.18 — that give a vision of death radically different from that of contemporary civilizations.
In these hymns, the dead person does not disappear. They join the ancestors — the Pitṛs — in a world that is not a reward for the rich and a punishment for the poor. The path of Yama, the first of mortals who crossed to the beyond, is open to all.
Hymn 10.16.3, in my translation, formulates it with sober beauty:
“May the living give birth to Agni, and may Agni lead our ancestors to the sky.”
The funerary act — cremation or inhumation with its rites — is an act of liberation, not of accumulation. One liberates the deceased so that they may join the ancestors. One does not burden them with treasures that will serve them for nothing.
What this says about us
The necropolises of the contemporary Western world are also revealing. The family vaults of wealthy families in old European cemeteries. The grandiose funerary monuments. The celebrity necropolises. The difference in treatment between an ordinary death and a mediatized one.
We have not really changed, in this sense, since Sumer or Egypt. Accumulation continues in death as in life.
The civilization of the 7 Rivers made another choice — for fifteen centuries. And this choice was not imposed on it by poverty: it was a prosperous civilization, which exported carnelian, gold and textiles across the entire ancient world. It had the means to build lavish tombs. It chose not to.
This is not a lack. It is a philosophy.
