Mohenjo-daro's Great Bath and Urban Sanitation

Date

c. 2600 BCE

Category

Science, technology & invention

Region

Indus Valley (Pakistan)

Era

Ancient Civilizations

Significance

Among the public works of Mature Harappan Mohenjo-daro was the Great Bath, a watertight brick tank about 12 by 7 metres set atop the citadel mound, sealed with a thick layer of bitumen and fed and drained by carefully engineered channels.

Widely called the earliest known public water tank of the ancient world, it was likely used for ritual bathing. More remarkable still was the city-wide sanitation infrastructure: most houses had private bathing areas and latrines connected to covered brick drains running beneath the streets, with soak pits, manholes and a network for carrying away waste water. This systematic approach to water supply and drainage was arguably more advanced than anything in contemporary Mesopotamia or Egypt and would not be matched in many parts of the world for thousands of years. The Harappan emphasis on cleanliness and hydraulic engineering stands as one of the civilisation's defining technological achievements.

Empires active in c. 2600 BCE

• Egyptian Old Kingdom
  2686 BCE – 2181 BCE
• Indus Valley (Harappan) Civilization
  2600 BCE – 1900 BCE
• Elamite Kingdom
  2700 BCE – 539 BCE

Related science, technology & invention events

• Planned Cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa Built
  c. 2600 BCE
• Great Pyramid of Giza built for Khufu
  c. 2560 BCE
• Step Pyramid of Djoser built at Saqqara
  c. 2670 BCE
• Lothal Dockyard and Dholavira Water Works
  c. 2300 BCE
• Sintashta culture and the first spoke-wheeled war chariots
  c. 2100–2000 BCE
• Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions: the first alphabetic writing
  c. 1850 BCE

Further reading

A Little History of Science

The wider story

A Little History of Science

William Bynum

Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.

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