Mohenjadaro & Harappan Town Planning

This blog is an article on the marvelous town planning skills of the ancient Indus Valley Cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa.

The most amazing aspect of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa is the town planning. Some key features of the town are as follows:

The streets which divided the city into neat rectangular or square blocks, varied in width but always intersected each other at right angles.

The city had an elaborate drainage system consisting of horizontal and vertical drains, street drains and so on.The architecture of the buildings was clearly intended to be functional and minimalist, and certainly not to please the aesthete.

Due to its elaborate town plan, Mohenjo-daro was considered a cosmopolitan city, the capital of the civilization with people of different races mingling with the local populace.

Indus Valley Civilization used mudbrick extensively, as can be seen in the ruins of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. In the Indus Valley Civilization particularly, all bricks corresponded to sizes in a perfect ratio of 4:2:1, and made use of the decimal system. The ratio for brick dimensions 4:2:1 is even today considered optimal for effective bonding.

Surprisingly, the usage of mudbricks for construction can also be seen in the Ancient Egyptian metropolis, showing that forms of trade existed between ancient civilisations, also as inferred from the Port city of Lothal. However, the bricks used in Egypt had a different production procedure.

The quality of municipal town planning suggests knowledge of urban planning and efficient municipal governments which placed a high priority on hygiene. The streets of major cities such as Mohenjo-daro or Harappa were laid out in a perfect grid pattern, comparable to that of present day New York. The houses were protected from noise, odors, and thieves.As seen in Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, and the recently discovered Rakhigarhi, this urban plan included the world's first urban sanitation systems. Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells. From a room that appears to have been set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets. Houses opened only to inner courtyards and smaller lanes.The houses were built on plinths that rose above the street level with stairs recessed at the wall at the front door. The planning did not allow any hindrance on the roads, so everything was well planned.

The ancient Indus systems of sewage and drainage that were developed and used in cities throughout the Indus Empire were far more advanced than any found in contemporary urban sites in the Middle East and even more efficient than those in some areas of modern Pakistan and India today.

The advanced architecture of the Harappans is shown by their impressive dockyards, granaries, warehouses, brick platforms, and protective walls. The massive citadels of Indus cities that protected the Harappans from floods and attackers were larger than most Mesopotamian ziggurats.

The purpose of the "Citadel" remains debated. In sharp contrast to this civilization's contemporaries, Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, no large monumental structures were built. There is no conclusive evidence of palaces or temples—or, indeed, of kings, armies, or priests. Some structures are thought to have been granaries. Found at one city is an enormous well-built bath, which may have been a public bath. Although the "Citadels" are walled, it is far from clear

that these structures were defensive. They may have been built to divert flood waters.

Although some houses were larger than others, Indus civilization cities were remarkable for their apparent egalitarianism. For example, all houses had access to water and drainage facilities. One gets the impression of a vast middle-class society.

Mohenjo-daro is a remarkable construction, considering its antiquity. It has a planned layout based on a grid of streets, which were laid out in perfect patterns. At its height the city probably had around 35,000 residents. The buildings of the city were particularly advanced, with structures constructed of same-sized sun dried bricks of baked mud and burned wood.

The public buildings of these cities also suggest a high degree of social organization. The so-called Great Granary at Mohenjo-daro as interpreted by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in 1950 is designed with bays to receive carts delivering crops from the countryside, and there are ducts for air to circulate beneath the stored grain to dry it. However, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer has noted that no record of grain exists at the "granary." Thus Kenoyer suggests that a more appropriate title would be "Great Hall."

Close to the granary, there is a building similarly civic in nature - a great public bath (sometimes called the Great Bath), with steps down to a brick-lined pool in a colonnaded courtyard. The elaborate bath area was very well built, with a layer of natural tar to keep it from leaking, and in the center was the pool. Measuring 12m x 7m, with a depth of 2.4m, it may have been used for religious or spiritual ceremonies.

Being an agricultural city, it also featured a large well, and central marketplace. It also had a building with an underground furnace (hypocaust), possibly for heated bathing.

Mohenjo-daro was a well fortified city. Lacking actual city walls, it did have towers to the west of the main settlement, and defensive fortifications to the south. Considering these fortifications and the structure of other major Indus valley cities like Harappa, lead to the question of whether Mohenjo-daro was an administrative centre.

Both Harappa and Mohenjo-daro share relatively the same architectural layout, and were generally not heavily fortified like other Indus Valley sites. It is obvious from the identical city layouts of all Indus sites, that there was some kind of political or administrative centrality, however the extent and functioning of an administrative centre remains unclear

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Mohenjo-daro was successively destroyed and rebuilt at least seven times. Each time, the new cities were built directly on top of the old ones. Flooding by the Indus is thought to have been the cause of destruction. The city was divided into two parts, the so-called Citadel and the Lower City. Most of the Lower City is yet to be uncovered, but the Citadel is known to have the public bath, a large residential structure designed to house 5,000 citizens and two large assembly halls.

Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and their civilization, vanished without trace from history until discovered in the 1920s. It was extensively excavated in the 1920s, but no in-depth excavations have been carried out since the 1960s.

The Harappan and Mohenjo-daro town planning has stunned the archaeologists worldwide.

Excavations are being carried out even today. The remains of these citites has left an everlasting effect on the people of today. It is unbelievable that even in that ancient past people could think scientifically and were so conscious as to build a dream city with everything well-planned and properly executed. It has become a specimen of wonderful town planning in today's world and has inspired the contemporary generation.