JessicaM

Generation Girl 4/11/07

Mendoza, Jessica Period 6,7 Mrs.Zana

Artifacts of Mohenjodaro

Have you ever heard of a city in India, called Mohenjodaro? I have. Mohenjodaro was a large city and the people who lived there had a very advanced culture. No one knows for sure what happened to this lost city in ancient India. Some scientists thought that the invaders were to blame. Archeologists have found a lot of cool architecture and artifacts there. Today in this essay I am going to talk about the artifacts of Mohenjodaro. Some examples of the artifacts that they found are the Games, the Jewelry, the Seals and the Weights & Scales. In Mohenjodaro, children used to play with games. The games were made up of Terre-cotta clay. Terra-cotta clay is a soft light brown clay. The games were also very simple, not like today that there is mystery games and all kinds of games. Some of these toys, like the cart was how an actual cart looked like. Some of the games that they played were mazes and tracks. Archeologists found that the toys and the games were made by hand, so it was man made. Another interesting Artifact is the jewelry. Back in Mohenjodaro both men and women wore jewelry. Gold and Silver were very precious to them, it also cost a lot of money. Jewelry was made of different things. Some were made of shells and others were made of colorful glass. Some jewelry was made of clay beads. Then the beadmakers would bake them in an oven called a kiln. In Mohenjodaro Jewelry was a nice and elegant thing to have. If you had Jewelry you were considered Elegant. A third example of an artifact is the Seals. Seals were small flat squares and were used for stamping when customers purchased something. I think that it was some kind of receipt the merchants gave to the customers. Some symbols on the seals were actually old ways of writing. Archeologists also think that the seals were used in religious ceremonies. They thought that, since the seals had a loop in the back, people wore them as good luck charms to keep away evil. On the seals they have animals like buffalo, bulls, tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses, fish, and crocodiles. The last artifact is the weights & Scales. Archeologists think that they used the weights to weigh the grain so that was considered as taxes. I think that they probably weight different amounts of flour for different amounts of money. They also weight flour and used it for trading. Archeologists found the weights and scales in the Granaries. They also found wheat and barley inside the granaries. The farmers also had their own granaries outside the city. In Conclusion, I think that Mohenjodaro is a really cool city. I learned a lot about the artifacts like the games, the jewelry, the seals, and the weights & scales that the Archeologists found there. Although all the artifacts are interesting, the one I thought was most interesting was the Jewelry because I learned a lot about how the jewelry is made and what you are considered if you wore it or had it. My second most favorite artifact, was the seals because of the weird symbols. I hope that all of you can learn something about this lost city in India. Bibliograghy

Frey,Wendy. History Alive. Palo Alto.TCI. 2004\

Chatterjee, Manini. India. United States. Dorlingkin dersley.2002