ASI to organise global meet on Indus script, Pg12

Context: 

• Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to host a three-day international conference from August 20–22 in Greater Noida.

Key Highlights:

• Focus of the conference: Discussing efforts toward deciphering the Indus Valley script.
• Invitations sent to Harappan civilisation experts from India and abroad.
• Follows Tamil Nadu CM M.K. Stalin’s announcement of a $1 million prize for successfully deciphering the script.

Detailed Insights:

• Conference aims to revive global academic interest in the Indus script, which remains undeciphered.
• Presentations will be made both in offline and online modes, enabling wider international participation.
• The Indus script includes over 400 pictorial symbols, found mainly on seals and pottery.
• The major obstacles to decipherment are absence of bilingual texts (like Rosetta Stone for Egyptian) and short length of inscriptions.
• Initiative reflects India’s effort to internationalize archaeological research and promote interdisciplinary collaboration.
• The monetary prize from Tamil Nadu could incentivize new scholarly breakthroughs in understanding one of the oldest urban civilizations.

Key Concepts Involved:

• Indus Script: An undeciphered set of pictographic symbols used by the Indus Valley Civilization (c. 2600–1900 BCE).
• Decipherment: The process of translating unknown ancient writing systems by comparing with known languages, contextual clues, and multilingual texts.
• Bilingual Texts: Texts written in both known and unknown scripts, crucial for deciphering (e.g., Rosetta Stone helped decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs).