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.
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Empires active in c. 2600 BCE
- Egyptian Old Kingdom2686 BCE to 2181 BCE
- Indus Valley (Harappan) Civilization2600 BCE to 1900 BCE
- Elamite Kingdom2700 BCE to 539 BCE
Related science, technology & invention events
- Planned Cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa Builtc. 2600 BCE
- Great Pyramid of Giza built for Khufuc. 2560 BCE
- Step Pyramid of Djoser built at Saqqarac. 2670 BCE
- Lothal Dockyard and Dholavira Water Worksc. 2300 BCE
- Sintashta culture and the first spoke-wheeled war chariotsc. 2100 to 2000 BCE
- Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions: the first alphabetic writingc. 1850 BCE
Essential reading
- Standardised Binary Weights System of the Indusc. 2600 BCE
- Rise of Kerma as an Urban Centre in Nubiac. 2500 BCE
- Monumental urbanism at Caral and the Norte Chico civilisationc. 2600 BCE
- Decline and De-urbanisation of the Indus Civilisationc. 1900 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
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