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How Does One Explain Harappan Brick Ratios?
A brick seems like a small thing to build a civilization around. Yet Harappan brick ratios may have helped make cities of the Indus Valley Civilization more orderly, not heaps of individual houses built on a whim. At Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Kalibangan, and other settlements, excavated bricks often show a 1:2:4 relationship between height, width, and…
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How Does One Read Mesopotamian Kudurru Stones?
A kudurru can look like a small, solemn slab of stone, the sort of thing you’d walk past in a museum before heading for the enormous winged bulls. That would be a mistake. These objects are full of land, money, family status, royal power, and enough divine threats to make a modern property solicitor blink.…
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How Does One Explain Why Mesopotamians Buried Foundation Deposits?
A new temple was never only a pile of mud bricks. For a Mesopotamian king, it was a promise made to a god, a public statement of power, and a message pushed into the earth for someone not yet born. Mesopotamian foundation deposits were objects left beneath buildings in ancient Mesopotamia and across the ancient…
