Indus Writing in Ancient Near East

Book excerpt: Based on corpora of Indus writing and a dictionary, the book validates Aristotle's insight on writing systems. Indus writing is composed using symbols of spoken words. The symbols are hieroglyphs of meluhha (mleccha) words spoken by artisans recording the repertoire of stone, mineral and metal workers. The writing results in a set of catalogs of metalworking of bronze age. Evidence of this competence in metallurgy which evolved from 4th millennium BCE of bronze age, is provided in corpora of metalware catalogs and a dictionary of melluhha (mleccha). Indus writing was a principal tool of economic administration for account-keeping by artisan and trader guilds and did not record literature or, history. Some sacred ideas and historical links across interaction areas between India and ancient Near East, may be inferred from the writing.