Stop 9 - Indus seals

These two tiny objects are evidence of international trade more than four thousand years ago. Each is a seal used to make a mark in wet clay to sign a document by a trader. The square one with the beautiful picture of the ball was found close to where it must have been first made somewhere in India or Pakistan. The round one was found thousands of kilometres away from home in what is today Iraq. It almost certainly got there by being carried by a trader or a merchant, perhaps travelling by boat with a cargo to sell in the Middle East all those years ago. These tiny stone seals are some of the most pertinent evidence of just how long trade and travel has been going on across the Indian Ocean. What's frustrating about them though is that no one can actually read what's written on them. If you look closely there's some very strange shapes which are actually letters of this ancient script used in what is today Pakistan and India all those years ago. But despite many attempts, over the years, no one as yet has been able to crack this code.

“Seals”