When archaeologists began excavating Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in the 1920s, they brought with them their mental categories — the categories of people trained in the study of Greek, Roman and Egyptian civilizations. They expected to find an acropolis — a fortress dominating the lower city, seat of royal or religious power, monument to the glory of the sovereign.
What they found was different. No less sophisticated. Radically different in what it reveals about the values of this civilization.
The two or three-part structure
In The Civilization of the 7 Rivers, I describe this precisely: the cities of this civilization were generally divided into two or three distinct parts: the lower city, the upper city, and in the largest, the citadel.
The lower city housed several residential and commercial districts. Excavations there revealed an intense communal life: thousands of artefacts, jewellery, figurines, objects of daily life. It was not a poor quarter relegated to the bottom of the social hierarchy. It was the living heart of the city — where people lived, traded, existed.
The upper city was the part elevated on large earthen embankments and surrounded by walls. Nineteenth-century archaeologists called it “the citadel” — a term borrowed from their studies of Greek and Roman civilizations, projecting a military and hierarchical meaning onto something quite different.
In some cities — notably Mohenjo-Daro — the distinction between upper and lower city was so marked that during the monsoon, when the plain was flooded, one had to take a boat to move between the two parts.
What the citadel actually contained
In the large cities, the common areas were located in the citadel. And what was found there is revealing.
In The Civilization of the 7 Rivers, I note it: in the citadel, there was a large common room without a roof where the inhabitants could gather for various activities, plus what archaeologists called a community granary.
At Mohenjo-Daro, there was also the Great Bath — that pool-shaped basin used for ablutions and purification rites.
No palace. No throne. No council chamber reserved for an elite. A common room. A community granary. A ritual pool. These three elements say everything about the nature of power in this civilization: it was not concentrated in a building, visible, monumental, intimidating. It was distributed in shared, functional, accessible spaces.
Possehl formulates it clearly in his work cited in The Civilization of the 7 Rivers:
“The absence of palaces, large temples or large tombs in the Indus Valley suggests that power and wealth were not concentrated in the hands of a few. Instead, governance may have been carried out by local councils or assemblies, indicating a decentralized but cooperative societal structure.”
The question of quarters
What is particularly interesting in the lower city is the question of the organization of the quarters.
In The Civilization of the 7 Rivers, I raise it honestly: the lower city housed several residential and commercial districts. The jewellery and statuettes discovered suggest a form of communitarianism among the population. Were these cultural, professional, or linguistic communities? The question is still being debated by historians and archaeologists.
What is clear: in this geographical area, dozens of different languages are still spoken today. It is likely that this was the case at the time. The 7 Rivers civilization was a plural civilization — and its cities probably reflected this plurality in the organization of their quarters.
What is remarkable is that this plurality coexisted with extraordinary technical standardization: the same bricks, the same grid streets, the same weights and measures, the same drainage systems. A common identity within the framework of daily life, and the freedom to be different in culture and traditions.
Infrastructure in the service of all
What fundamentally distinguishes the urban organization of the 7 Rivers civilization from contemporary civilizations is that its infrastructures — the upper city, the lower city, the wells, the sewers, the common rooms — were designed for the well-being of the entire population, not for the glory of a sovereign.
In The Civilization of the 7 Rivers, I document this: even the houses of the most modest inhabitants were equipped with a bathroom and a wastewater drainage system — an innovation unknown elsewhere at that time. Wells were found at every crossroads. Roads were planned and maintained.
In Egypt and Mesopotamia, pyramids and ziggurats concentrated collective resources to glorify a sovereign or honour a state god. At Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, these same resources built sewers, wells, bathrooms — the invisible infrastructures of everyone’s daily life.
This inversion of priorities is perhaps the deepest lesson of the archaeology of this civilization.
Dholavira: the unique case
Among the great cities of the 7 Rivers civilization, Dholavira in Gujarat presents a particularly sophisticated — and particularly revealing — urban organization.
In The Civilization of the 7 Rivers, I note that Dholavira is built in stone — a notable exception in a civilization that used fired brick everywhere. And its plan reveals three distinct zones: a fortified citadel on high ground, a middle town, and a lower town — separated by massive walls and monumental gates.
What is unique to Dholavira is its hydraulic system — water reservoirs that capture rainwater and distribute it throughout the city. It is the city best endowed with hydraulic infrastructure of the entire known civilization. And it is also at Dholavira that the only inscription signboard of the entire civilization was found — ten signs in white gyp stone above the main gate.
Not a monument to the glory of a king. A water system. And a public inscription.
