Scoperto un sigillo della tarda Cultura di Harappa. I vari segni presenti sono stati interpretati come simboli e non come scrittura. Prima si pensava che la scrittura di Harappa semplicemente 'non fosse ancora stata tradotta', ma gli approfonditi esami linguistici, di frequenza e logico statistici propendono per una pre-scrittura simbolica. La Cultura di Harappa era sì avanzata e complessa e certamente aveva rapporti con a cultura mesopotamica, che possedeva segni di scrittura, ma non ne condivideva l'omogeneità territoriale e sociale. Per questo motivo, da una parte copiò alcuni simboli ed altri ne inventò, ma non produsse mai una scrittura unitaria che avesse un significato fonetico e logico.
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| Unicorno, che ha davanti a sé una foglia di Fico Sacro (asvattha). Sul retro del siglillo o timbro, è presente un pomello a mo' di manico. |
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) last week unearthed a Harappan seal from Karanpura in the Hanumangarh district of Rajasthan.
“The seal consists of two Harappan characters, with a typical unicorn as the motif and a pipal leaf depicted in front of an animal. There is a knob behind the seal,” says VN Prabhakar, superintending archaeologist, who led the ASI team. Maintaining that the discovery ‘confirms’ that the site belongs to the mature Harappan period, the time when the civilization was at its peak (2600 BC to 1900 BC), he said: “A cubicle chert weight was also unearthed in a different house complex. Both the seal and the weight establishe that the people of this area participated in commercial transactions.” We are collecting charcoal sample to date the habitation through radio carbon dating, he said. The excavation at Karanpura, which started in 2012, had earlier brought to light two broad cultural levels, namely the early and the mature Harappan age. Besides artefacts, house complexes built of mud bricks of early Harappan and mature Harappan periods were also unearthed.
Source: Hindustan Times [February 01, 2014]
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