About this piece

The Priest-King owes his name to a guess. In the 1920s, archaeologist Kashinath Narayan Dikshit unearthed a small stone bust among the ruins of Mohenjo-daro. Ernest Mackay, who led the excavations, thought he might be a priest. Sir John Marshall, head of the Archaeological Survey of India, wondered whether he was a "king-priest." It was Mortimer Wheeler who finally gave him the title that stuck. No one has ever proved he was either, and because the Harappan script remains undeciphered, the man himself has never spoken. Instead, he leaves clues. The patterns on his cloak were bored with a specialised drill and once glowed with red pigment. His deep-set eyes may once have held inlay, and two tiny holes beneath his ears hint at a necklace long since lost. Even his full form is a mystery, since he was probably once a complete seated or kneeling figure. Four thousand years later, this small, nameless face has become the most recognised image of one of the world's first great civilisations.