Book Review: Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions. Volume 3.3 Indo-Iranian Borderlands

Abstract

The book under review is the fifth volume of the series ‘Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions’ and the first one dealing with artefacts not from the Indus valley but from the territory of the Indo-Iranian borderland. In the preface to the book Asko Parpola explains why non-Indus seals and other small objects are published in a series about Indus seals and inscriptions. The author’s intension is to supplement the corpus of Indus inscriptions with foremost geometric seals that predated the Indus civilization and were also found in the Indus valley. Some of the signs or symbols that can occasionally be found on the objects from the Indo-Iranian borderlands are the forerunners of the Indus script. Thus, the book appears to be an important contribution to the study of the origin of Indus writing and seal production. As emphasized in the preface, no such rich collection of photographs has ever been published for the region of the Indo-Iranian borderlands before. It is, therefore, an important contribution to the field that may allow us to study potential relations of this region with its two major contemporary neighbours, Mesopotamia in the west and the Indus valley in the east.

Keywords

• indus inscriptions
• geometric seals
• indo-iranian borderland